A response to the article of James McDonald:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/22/othe-n22.html

Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene I, Shylock has just learned that his daughter is still missing, having eloped:

Shylock:

Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone,

cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse

never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it

till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other

precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter

were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear!

would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in

her coffin! No news of them? Why, so: and I know

not what’s spent in the search: why, thou loss upon

loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to

find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge:

nor no in luck stirring but what lights on my

shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears

but of my shedding. [Bold Added]

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/full.html

You can see that Shakespeare’s character, Shylock, who charged the protagonist a pound of flesh, literally, for failure to return a loan also would prefer his own daughter’s death to the loss of jewellery.

Also from Othello, Act IV, Scene I, Othello laments the necessary evil of killing the “gentle” Desdemona for his foolish, uncontrolled anger incited by a rebellious, lower-ranking officer:

Hang her! I do but say what she is: so delicate

with her needle: an admirable musician: O! she

will sing the savageness out of a bear: of so high

and plenteous wit and invention:–

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html

Othello, the Moor, the noble savage, complements his Venetian wife’s gentleness as if it is itself a weapon trained at him. He refers to himself as a savage bear duped into weakness by her singing and other cultural talents. Regardless of his Venetian education, his savage traits, inseparable from his race in Shakespeare’s view, emerge more powerful, proving the impossibility of civilizing the savage and justifying his extermination by imperialism.

Laurence Olivier’s particular depiction of Othello and its association with Minstrelsy only shows how crucial racist arguments remain for imperialism, even to this day. A complete rejection of racism does not mean eliminating Shakespeare from syllabi but recognizing his contribution to English poetry and drama despite the limitations imposed on him by Elizabethan capitalist society.

Elimination of this discussion, however, its censorship and rejection by official society proves the real danger posed to capitalism from an awakening to socialist ideas of universal equality and opposition to imperialism. The real barbarians rule the imperialist countries and call the rest savages only based on an assessment of their weapons production. An appreciation of the culture of oppressed nations can disprove and, more pertinently, ban the arguments of the imperialist exterminators of human populations.