>>>However, I’ve heard that in IRL the Jew was in fact the hero of the story, and Shakespeare made him into the villain only because he knew that in those anti Semitic times no one would show to a play in which the Jew was the good guy, and that he was not in fact an anti Semite
I’ve seen the claim that the Jew was the hero of the story and Shakespeare changed the roles is a Marcus Lehman. I question if the story ever happened to begin with that anyone had any role in it.
As far as Shakespeare himself is concerned the excuse sounds like all the Germans who said after the war “we only members of the Nazi party for business purposes” And in the case of the Germans some of them really didn’t actively do anything other than belong to the Nazi party whereas Shakespeare personally wrote anti-Semitic works