Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc.

The question as to how Shakespeare named his characters is an interesting one. One 19^th century conjecture seems to have been left behind for all it is perhaps the best likelihood for the origin of the character name of Shylock.

George Brandes’s William Shakespeare: a Critical Study, is one of the more engaging titles in its genre. In it, he offers these observations:

The names of the Jews and Jewesses who appear in The Merchant of Venice he has taken from the Old Testament. We find in Genesis (x. 24) the name Salah (Hebrew Schelach ; at that time appearing as the name of a Maronite from Lebanon : Scialac) out of which Shakespeare has made Shylock ; and in Genesis (xi. 29) there occurs the name Iscah (she who looks out, who spies), spelt "Jeska" in the English translations of 1549 and 1551, out of which he made his Jessica, the girl whom Shylock accuses of a fondness for " clambering up to casements " and " thrusting her head into the public street " to see the masquers pass.[1]

The Scialac to which he seems to be referring was generally known in the West as Victor Scialac (Naṣrallāh Shalaq al-'Āqūrī in Syrian). Scialac was born in the 1580s and did not become known or publish until some two decades after the latest viable composition date for The Merchant of Venice.

His name, however, could have been the result of a phonetic adaptation, into Maronite Arabic, of the alternative Latin form of the name: “Shaelach”.[2] This would be pronounced Sha-ay-lach by traditionalist rather than as a dipthong. This to say that the pronunciation needs not depend at all upon Maronism.

It seems certain that Shelach was at least as popular a name in the 16^th century as it is in modern Judaism. Surely, Brandes statement that

…the traveler who arrived in Venice first rented apartments, and then applied to a Jew dealer for the furniture.[3]

is particularly interesting to Oxfordians. His dealer might well have been called “Shaelach” among the gentile travelers. Conjecture, however, it must almost surely remain.

Both names are mentioned in near proximity in the biblical book of Genesis. The fact argues for each having  been taken from the text. The 1580 English language Two right profitable and fruitfull Concordances does give the form Jescha and mentions that in the Syrian language the name meant “espying”. Dependable modern derivations run from “spy” to “to watch,” “observant”.

John Hales derives the name Ophelia from the Greek ωφελια, on the authority of John Ruskin, in his essay “Shakespeare’s Greek Names”.[4] Ruskin wrote sublime prose, but, nevertheless, entirely missed the point.

The name Ophelia was, by all indications, quite rare in the 16^th century. The place where Shakespeare certainly found it was Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504). The work was a 16^th century bestseller going through many editions. The name was spelled Ofelia at first. French translations spelled it Ophelia. Most Italian editions seem to have followed suit from then on.

So then, if it was derived from the Greek, as per Ruskin and Hales, it was Sannazaro who derived it not Shakespeare.   He also would have to have rendered φ as a simple f — a thing by no means improbable.

Some might argue that there is insufficient evidence to state with any certainty that the name comes from Sannazaro, no matter that the old Italian poet was highly popular among the Court and University writers of Shakespeare’s time. That argument fails once it is considered that one of the interlocutors in her eclogue is named Montano. That, of course, is the name in the first quarto of the character who became Reynaldo in the final texts of Hamlet.[5] That the names of two characters would appear both in a prospective source for a text under evaluation goes beyond coincidence.

As for Sannazaro’s Ophelia she resembled Shakespeare’s only in name. If she resembles any Shakespeare character it might be Rosalind from As You Like It — the most Arcadian of his plays.

There might be a question as to whether the frequent references to the flora of the shepherds’ world, in the Arcadia, bore any relationship to the naming of flora in Ophelia’s madness speech. If the choice of flora was suggested to Shakespeare in this way — either consciously or subconsciously — from Sannazaro’s work, the inspiration for the scene itself definitely came from elsewhere. The revelation as to just where must await a better time.

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[1] Brandes, George. William Shakespeare: a Critical Study (1898). I.186.

[2] Thargum, hoc est Paraphrasis chaldaica Onkeli. (1548). Gen. XI.24. “Et Arpachschad genuit Schelach, & Schaelach genuit Eber.” A quick check through Google Books for 16^th century Latin bibles and commentaries suggests the most common variations were Schelach and Shaelah. Schaelach does however appear in both a popular commentary and a bible text. In Hebrew texts themselves a proper transliteration would be Sh’lach.

[3] Brandes, I.186.

[4] Hales, John. “Shakespeare’s Greek Names”, Notes and Essays on Shakespeare (1884), 108.

[5] It is worth mentioning that the mainstream explanation of the cruder and shorter text of the 1^st (“Bad”) Quarto of Hamlet comes crashing down unless the copyist knew Sannazaro’s Arcadia well enough to inadvertently insert the name Montano rather than Reynaldo as in the 2^nd (“Good”) quarto. How could the bad quarto have so good a name unless it is in fact an earlier version, not a poor transcription of a performance of the 2^nd quarto play?

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Thomas North Theory Springs Leaks Under Scrutiny. June 6, 2021. ‘In McCarthy’s video “How We Know Sir Thomas North Wrote Richard II,” at 1:10, we are informed that “there is zero doubt that this was the passage used.”’
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
• King’s Place: home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford, 1596-1604. November 10, 2020. “In 1596, Elizabeth Trentham received King’s Place, in Hackney, from the estate of one Sir Rowland Hayward. She and her husband, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, moved in shortly afterward.”
• Shakespeare’s Funeral Meats. May 13, 2020. “Famous as this has been since its discovery, it has been willfully misread more often than not.  No mainstream scholar had any use for a reference to Hamlet years before it was supposed to have been written.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.