Sick Economies. Jonathan Gil Harris

libels of the 1590s are rhetorically close to Malynes’s fantasy of punishment in another respect. Even as they ostensibly target “Flemings and strangers,” the libels use “the Jew” as a figure with which to lend a name to the hybrid identities that were increasingly a feature of early modern Europe and its networks of transnational commerce. Understanding these libels, and the confluence of economic and pathological language that distinguishes them, is crucial to an understanding of the social and rhetorical horizons within which Shakespeare composed The Merchant of Venice.

      Infection: The Dutch Church Libel

      In May 1593, during a period of mounting hostility toward London’s immigrant Dutch community, a libelous poem was affixed to the wall of one of the city’s foreign Protestant churches. It directly addresses foreigners living in London:

      Ye strangers yt doe inhabite in this lande

      Note this same writing doe it vnderstand

      Conceit it well for savegard of your lyves

      Your goods, your children, & your dearest wives

      Your Machiavellian Marchant spoyles the state,

      Your vsery doth leave vs all for deade

      Your Artifex, & craftesmen works our fate,

      And like the Jewes, you eate us vp as bread

      The Marchant doth ingross all kinde of wares

      Forestall’s the markets, whereso ‘ere he goe’s

      Sends forth his wares, by Pedlers to the faires,

      Retayl’s at home, & with his horrible showes: Vndoeth thowsands

      In Baskets your wares trott up & downe

      Carried the streets by the country nation,

      You are intelligencers to the state & crowne

      And in your hartes doe wish an alteracion,

      You transport goods, & bring vs gawds good store

      Our Leade, our Vitaille, our Ordenance & what nott

      That Egipts plagues, vext not the Egyptians more

      Than you doe vs; then death shall be your lotte

      Noe prize comes in but you make claime therto

      And every merchant hath three trades at least

      And Cutthroate like in selling you vndoe

      vs all, & with our store continually you feast: We cannot suffer long.

      Our pore artificers doe starve & dye

      For yt they cannot now be sett on worke

      And for your worke more curious to the ey[.]

      In Chambers, twenty in one house will lurke,

      Raysing of rents, was never knowne before

      Living farre better than at native home

      And our poore soules, are cleane thrust out of dore

      And to the warres are sent abroad to rome,

      To fight it out for Fraunce & Belgia,

      And dy like dogges as sacrifice for you

      Expect you therefore such a fatall day

      Shortly on you, & yours for to ensewe: as never was seene.

      Since words nor threats not any other thinge

      canne make you to avoyd this certaine ill

      Weele cut your throtes, in your temples praying

      Not paris massacre so much blood did spill

      As we will doe iust vengeance on you all

      In counterfeiting religion for your flight

      When ‘t’is well knowne, you are loth, for to be thrall

      your coyne, & you as countryes cause to flight

      With Spanish gold, you all are infected

      And with yt gould our Nobles wink at feats

      Nobles said I? nay men to be reiected,

      Upstarts yt enjoy the noblest seates