Looking up 'Ducat' to determine if it's antisemitic and then clenching as I see it's popularised in Merchant of Venice
Merchant of Venice is a very complicated play that I am too tired right now to fully go into, but what I will say is this: if we can have Othello be not inherently racist, we can have Merchant be not inherently antisemitic.
Merchant is considered a "problem play", but only if you think the Christians are the protagonists. It becomes a very straightforward tragedy if we view Shylock as the protagonist and the Christians as the villains (and let's face it, basically all the Christians in the play are massive assholes who are very antisemitic in their own right). Shylock's sin in Venetian society is being a Jew, a proud Jew at that, someone who has no interest in assimilating.
What is his punishment for such a stance? Forcibly having his identity destroyed.
No one ends the play in a happy marriage. There is nothing joyous about what happens in the script at its conclusion.
Now this isn't to erase the long and storied history of antisemitic productions of the play. We will never be rid of those and the marks they left on the play. But reading the script, there is nothing inherently antisemitic about this play.
Do I as a trans Jew in 2023 need to be espousing the virtues of a dead Englishman whose work has been used in every which way since it was published? not really. I would rather confront one of the common ways a gentile will learn about my culture and ask them to read more carefully, than simply give up.
Also, one of these days I will do a trans Shylock in Merchant.