Sizing Up Shylock's Name Again

Robert F. Fleissner

Whence the name of the Hebrew moneylender Shylock?

Although Gross has a chapter title relating to this, the name sounds
basically more British than anything else. Indeed, the dramatist's
father was himself a lender of money and often considered a Catholic
recusant, so Shylock's name connects with that of another such
recusant, Shacklock, a name with curious associations with Sherlock.
Suggestions of the German scheu and Scottish loch with Shy-lock
are also possible. The name may also have connections with John
Florio.

John Gross's comprehensive new book on the moneylender

of The Merchant of Venice 1 fails to come to terms with the name
itself, even when an entire chapter is entitled ·Shylock is My
Name." Provided are the usual, suggested etymologies, including
an analogy in the Old Testament and the Hebrew meaning
cormorant, but these connections are not very close or helpful
apropos of the plot; nor is there any real likelihood that Shake-
speare would have had familiarity with such relatively obscure
words. Because of the general lack of documentation throughout
the book, no consideration of other possible, published etymolo-
gies appears. One passing hint, however, happens to point aslant
to a previous consideration of which I am culpable, one which
might even now be glanced at again.2 This involves his passing
reference to the Master Detective: "In the extent of his fame
Shylock belongs with ...Sherlock Holmes" (187). Although a few
other forenames are mentioned, the Shylock/Sherlock correlation,
however qualified, deserves at least passing reinvestigation under
the lens. Let us see how.

Names 41.4 (December 1993):282-287

ISSN:0027-7738
© 1994 by The American Name Society
282
 Shylock's Name 283

Let us hasten to affirm at once that no pre-Shylockian

Sherlock now is in the record. On the other hand, it is of curious
enough interest that both Shylock and Sherlock have had their
nomenclature traced to a certain Shacklock, though in the first
case the name is that of a Catholic recusant and in the second
that of a cricketplayer. Still, two things related to the same thing
may, in some quasi-mathematical guise, relate to each other.
Gross's hint therefore offers a re-examination procedure which,
even if coincidentally, may be of some assistance to the alert
reader open to new plausible resonances.
The most important point is that one Richard Shacklock
belonged to a well-known group of British recusants who com-
pared their alienated plight to that of the Jewish people historical-
Iy, one such recusant even being on record for associating the
story of Laban in the Bible that way, even as Shylock himself does
later, though in a rather different context (The Merchant of Venice,
1.3.71).3 Shylock's having to convert to orthodox Christianity at
the end (the play taking place in Roman Catholic Italy) means that
his name lends a properly ironic touch to his conversion-to-be,
that is if his Catholic-sounding name already prompts what is
readily in store for him. It might be added then that this irony is
evident also in the familiar "pound of flesh· motif: the fact that his
demand, which cannot be literally obtained without the drawing of
blood (and hence murder of his victim), can be met on the
preternatural level through his having to accept perforce and
thereby consume the Real Presence in Holy Communion. Although
such a reading can enlist a "cannibalistic· interpretation of what
was clearly meant to supersede such a primitivistic view, it need
not be taken on such a pagan-like level, but can instead be
relegated to what anthropo,logists and psychologists have allowed
for as acceptable ·omophagia.- The extent to which Elizabethan
playgoers may have been consciously aware of this is open to
question, but then the same happens to be true of Cali ban at the
tail end of The Tempest: he, too, is obliged to ·seek for grace,·
as he admits, and thereby live up to a sublimated form of the
obvious anagram which his name calls forth. Again, theatergoers
may be pardoned for ignoring this submerged meaning, but the
kinship of Shylock and Caliban in such a symbolic respect augurs
284 Names 41.4 (December 1993)

for at least subliminal significance. (Caliban, too, has Italian

friends.)
Demurrers may tentatively arise owing to the possibility of
other plausibly relevant onomastic associations. For example,
because Shylock cites Frankfurt (3.1.84), could not his name have
some sort of Germanic resonance? A modernized production I
witnessed at Stratford-upon-Avon (1993) even had him uttering
certain Yiddish expressions. It might be proposed that the German
word for shy is scheu and that a hesitancy to indulge in battle
(except when self-interest is obviously at stake) has been ethnical-
ly linked with German Jewish people all too often; to express it
most decorously, the penchant might better be phrased as their
"horror of war.· Indeed, Jesus Himself emphasized such
passivity, at least in terms of the standard pacifist interpretations
of the Bible. Hence Shylock would exhibit a certain ·shyness· in
disdaining to keep company, on the whole, with his gentile
brethren· (1.3.30-38). Whether such a broad reading would be
acceptable as objective enough may perhaps be questioned, at
least nowadays in the wake of World War II; in any case, a similar
argument could be made for his name as having Scottish· rather
than Hebrew characteristics, and these ought to be judged on a
similar level. Shy can stand on its own without any recourse to
German.
For instance, even if the first syllable of Shylock's name also
might suggest a kind of Germanic origin, so the last might hint at
the familiar waterway in Scotland known as the loch, the OED
providing sufficient evidence of early usages of this word this way.
So Shylock'S concentrated concern with funds even for their own
sake, as it were, might then be compared with the age-old English
penchant for finding the Scots stingy and thereby money-grub-
bing. Their so-called opportunism has even been summoned as
providing a basis for the tragedy of Macbeth, though too much
can be made of such an analogy, admittedly.
Yet the trouble is that one such connotation (that of the
German Jew) would effectively cancel out the other (that of a
possible Scottish innuendo), thereby hinting at both views as
being ultimately too subjective for truly serious consideration. The
charge of bias could also now be leveled, but the further question
 Shylock's Name 285

then would be whether such prejudice need be wholly on the part

of the critic or whether it might not be also (or rather) imputed to
the writer himself or perhaps his age, which could well have
prompted his critical reactions or attempt at verisimilitude. So why
get involved with this?
In contrast, the -recusant- solution here proposed again
would tie in with Gross's own evidence that John Shakespeare,
often himself considered a Catholic recusant, was a prototype for
Shylock. In particular, the father was himself a money-lender (47);
the son himself, as Gross shows, citing E. A. J. Honigmann, may
even have charged interest on loans. The most curious evidence
to this effect, as he points out, is the Monesurviving letter ad-
dressed to him by his 'loving good friend' Richard Quiney in
1598,· for Quiney, originally a fellow Stratfordian but then in
London, had Mrequested a loan of £30" (47). As Denis Kay has
also recently shown,4 "recent research in the Public Records has
unearthed some further evidence that John Shakespeare was a
business man on a substantial scale and that, as well as trading
in large quantities of wool, he was also involved in lending
money· (13). The most recent confirmatory evidence for this
thesis is that Falstaff's original prototype, Sir John Oldcastle,
though often taken as strongly Protestant, was at times admired
by Catholics. In a note on a Catholic Oldcastle, R. W. F. MartinS
finds a positive reference to him in Jane Owen's An Antidote
Against Purgatory, a Catholic work which then alludes to Falstaff
as well in this connection. In the same issue of the journal in
which Martin's research appears, Eric Sams, writing on Oldcastle
and the Oxford Shakespeare,6 claims that though -Shakespeare
was said to have 'died a Papist,'- there is -abundant evidence
he was held to have lived and thought as one too· (184).7
Sams's conclusions are at odds with Martin's in a sense, in that
he disputes the entire Oldcastle/Falstaff connection, but, to sum
things up, any connection between Oldcastle and either John
Falstaff or Catholicism works hand-in-glove with Garry O'Con-
nor's recently stated belief that Falstaff was ultimately based on
Shakespeare's father,8 two of whose "associates who hid from
the law and from creditors" being "William Fluellen and George
Bardolphe, names which Shakespeare later revived in Henry IV
 286 Names 41.4 (December 1993)

and Henry V- (19). Ironically, both Falstaff and Shylock may have
a similar biographical origin.9

Central State University

Notes

1Namely, Shylock. Gross's title reflects the notion that the play appeared
as early as 1592, whereas it is generally thought to have been composed in
1596-7. See Halliday 311.
2See my ·Key." I confess being guilty of a little titular coyness here, but
perhaps Shakespeare's own flair for punning provides at least a wholesome
precedent. Richard Coates, in his annotated bibliography for the special
Shakespeare issue of Names, was definitely not captivated by my suggestion
in his annotation (211), but his gloss (-Possible references to historical
personages; most implausible") may be also misleading and in need of a
gloss now itself. Presumably what he meant is that I provide such ·possible
references" in summary form but specifically reveal then that most of them are
implausible. Certainly I refrain from promoting a variety of references as
plausible on my own (a rather implausible thesis in itself) but rather single out
one among the candidates as worth dealing with: my original suggestion then
is that an English name is the most likely progenitor.
3Shakespearean references are to the Pelican ed.
4His is the most recent and liveliest of recent Shakespeare biographies,
though he does also, to my mind, indulge in some unwarranted speculation
(e.g., assuming that Gardenio is the name of a long lost play by the man from
Stratford, the evidence for which is extremely sketchy).
5The title of the article can be misleading, for Oldcastle was the
recognized prototype for Sir John Falstaff, whose only affinity with Catholic
behavior may be in his indulgence in alcoholic beverage.
6Sams is no doubt the most controversial Shakespearean of note
operative today. He rejects, for instance, new theories of the Oxford Shake-
speare edition, in this case notably Gary Taylor's substitution of the name of
Oldcastle for Falstaff in 1 Henry IV. Taylor's purpose was to try to revert to
the dramatist's original intent.
7Yet most Shakespeareans, even some Catholic ones, would still contend
that the Stratford Bard was later a conformist and followed the Church of
England, as seen in his prominently echoing The Book of Gommon Prayer, as
is widely recognized, in Hamlet.
 Shylock's Name 287

80'Connor's authority comes from his practical work on the stage. He

was former Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. Cf. the
similar interplay of syllables in the names: Fa/(lj-staff and Shake-speare. Kay
provides evidence that the latter name was sometimes taken as having an
unfortunate punning effect and that at least one person is on record for having
changed it: -Hugh Shakespeare, a Fellow of Mertin College, Oxford, changed
his name to read 'Hugh Sawnders' because it was then said 'Shake-
speare' has such a bad repute" (5).
9Cf. Ashley, who contends that -Florio (if Rowse is right in thinking he
had marrano origins) may have something to do with Shylock" so that
·Shakespeare obtained much" from this friend instead of from any ·sup-
posed visits to Italy" (49).

Works Cited

Ashley, Leonard R. N. MFloreatFlorio." The Shakespeare Newslet-

ter 30 (1980) :49.
Coates, Richard. MA Provincial Bibliography of Names in the
Works of Shakespeare." Names 35 (1987):206-23.
Fleissner, R. F. MAKey to the Name Shylock." American Notes
and Queries (now ANQ) 5 (1966):52-54.
Gross, John. Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1992.
Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964. Baltimore:
Penguin, 1964.
Kay, Denis. Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era. New York:
Morrow, 1992.
Martin, R. W. F. MACatholic Oldcastle." Notes and Queries 238
(1993): 185-86.
O'Connor, Garry. William Shakespeare: A Life. London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1991.
Sams, Eric. MOldcastle and the Oxford Shakespeare." Notes and
Queries 238 (1993): 180-85.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Rev. ed. Gen. ed.
Alfred Harbage. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969. (The Pelican Ed).