If you prick us: Shylock and the Politics of Touch

Abstract Shylock is the most celebrated and contested figure of a stage Jew, who makes his memorable appearance in Shakespeare’s problematic comedy The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596). His best-known speech “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?” – often cited out of context as a plea for tolerance – engages with the politics of touch as a way to constitute and at the same time question an emphatic practice of communion. My contribution looks at this speech once again, and at the figure that delivers it, in a double perspective: offering a dramatic exploration of touch management as well as a metatheatrical exploration of the conditions and effects of playacting. Thus, Shakespeare may have staged Shylock’s body politics so as to test the possibilities and power of his own medium, the theatre, to touch.