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Pamphlet - A PLAY "THE JEW A COMEDY"..1823 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania edition....bY CUMBERLAND HIS BEST PLAY....FIRST PERFORMED IN 1794 IN ENGLAND...first printed in America 1795 NYC A "comedy" strictly in the "sentimental" sense common to the time, the play is notable for its main character, Sheva, a wealthy Jewish usurer who, by the end of the convoluted plot, has shown himself to be "the widow's friend, the orphan's father, the poor man's protector, the universal philanthropist." Such a sympathetic depiction of a Jew was rare, if not unprecedented, in the history of the English stage. Perhaps even more surprising was the play's success with audiences and critics alike; it re-established Cumberland's career after many years of flops. The play was hugely popular throughout Great Britain and America, and was performed to acclaim in Germany and Paris. "The benevolent design of the author appears to have been to rescue an injured and persecuted race of men from the general reproach which has fallen upon them, by exhibiting one of that body as uniting with the peculiarities of his sect eminent virtues" (The Analytical Review). Tarnishing Cumberland's humanitarianism a bit was his subsequent bitterness over the lack of "gratitude" (read: emoluments) rendered him by the Jewish community for his efforts on their behalf. "They gave me nothing;" he is reported to have said, "and to tell you the truth I am glad of it; for if they had, in all probability, I should have been indicted for receiving stolen goods." The Jew is a comedy written by playwright Richard Cumberland and first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in May 1794. The play is notable as the first play in the English theatre to portray a Jewish moneylender asthe hero of a stage production. The Jew is notable for being the first play in English theatre to portray a Jewish character as the hero of a stage production, reversing the tradition of presenting Jews negatively as the villains in dramatic works. 'The Jew is often read as a revision of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the vehicle for drama's most famous and notorious Jewish character: Shylock Sheva's [the protagonist] polar opposite. Though the play's plot mirrors much of Merchant's, it also updates it to reflect 18th-century stage traditions, including a complete overhaul of the romantic plot, and most importantly it highlights Sheva's charitable nature' (Jewish Public Library). The play enjoyed considerable success at the time, particularly in Ireland and North America where it was performed under the revised title The Benevolent Hebrew. Cumberland (1732-1811) was a civil servant in the Board of Trade and Plantations as well as a prolific writer estimated to have produced more than fifty plays. Notoriously self-important and thin-skinned, he was immortalized by Sheridan as the character Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic.

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