"The Uncontrollability of Real Things": Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, and Philip Roth's Falstaffian Theology of Judaism

ABSTRACT:Philip Roth's engagement with William Shakespeare has been a steady and intense career-long affair. Hermione Lee, in remarks delivered on the occasion of Roth's eightieth birthday, observed that Roth's use of Shakespeare extends at least as far back as Portnoy's Complaint (1969). "Roth has Shakespeare deep in his head," Lee averred, and of this there can be no doubt. What can be questioned, however, is the upward-charting trajectory of Roth's use of Shakespeare. Even a cursory reading of Roth reveals that the more he aged, and the more his career progressed, the more he invoked Shakespeare, demonstrated in the series of novels beginning with Operation Shylock (1993), crescendoing in Sabbath's Theater (1995), and culminating in Exit Ghost (2007) and The Humbling (2009). Roth's greater use of Shakespeare in the later stages of his career—greater in the dual senses of frequency and engagement—can be ascribed, this article argues, to Roth's growing involvement with Jewish identity and human mortality.