Billy the Bard wrote it as he saw it. Mostly his plot devices are trivial (except for his historical plays). The canvas of language, the swoop and soar of the words, were what his audiences came to see and hear. They certainly weren't there for the magnificent sets or the authenticity of the actors' make-up. The plays caught their imaginations and took them out of their generally miserable existences for a space. The plots were simply devices on which to hang the oratory and it was the oratory which worked the magic. The better known the plot, the easier it was for Bill to grab the gray matter in the audience and stir it.
Oour Wullie was a child of his times. Why would he question something as self-evident as the low status of the Jews? He was a keen observer of events around him but he was not a trained anthropologist, nor was he any kind of a social evangelist. He wasn't trying to improve the human condition, he was commenting on it and even entertaining it. The hounding of Shylock may have struck him personally as vaguely unfair, but it made a good story; his audience evidently agreed. And even well-liked scribblers such as Master William got little in the way of money and had to eat.
To Elizabethan audiences, MoV was a comedy. To us, it appears prejudiced, unfair and to some (as has been stated above) just totally unacceptable. Nonetheless, as a story it MUST be judged in its historical context, in my opinion. If a modern playwright wrote it, I would think it was totally unacceptable myself, Nazi propaganda. Personally, however, even though I know that Henry V was basically a murderous brigand for whom fighting was the main object in life, and that Shakespeare was basically glorifying that, I can enjoy the play without assigning any real value to the message.
[FWIW/rant]
