Towards the end of his working life he became interested in forgiveness—or rather, he became interested again in forgiveness—because it’s there in the character of Helena against the selfish, spoilt Bertram’s pornographic narcissism in All’s Well That Ends Well, and it’s there in Isabella against the lustful savagery of Measure for Measure. And it’s there in Portia, the poet of mercy against the killing debt of a pound of flesh. It’s not that Shylock is a Jew—it’s that he’s not enough of a Jew. The Old Testament is predicated on wiping the slate clean: forgiving the debt. The past must not
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