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
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