Watch List notes:

Great Britain: "Shylock" anti-Semitic medal, 1809; struck in white metal; no maker/medalist mark; 42mm, 24.55g. Obverse shows a devil-like bust with tall pointy ears and a sharp goatee + legend on top & bottom of outer rim & legend above and below bust: "This is the Jew, Which Shakespear Drew. | VP / No Private Boxes" and "Av'rice and Titled Lust, Alone we Blame. | Yet Blush we Must for 'tis a Nations Shame.". Reverse depicts abbreviations surmounted by leaves and English legend around edge; legend reads "The Dramas Laws, the Dramas Patrons Give. And he Who Lives to Please, Should Please to Live."; text in center reads "What D'ye / Want? OP OB & DPO". The medal originates with the 1809 Price Riots which saw the theater of Covent Garden (which closed following a fire in 1808) reopen in September 1809, but charging higher prices: its manager, the actor John Philip Kemble, who portrayed the Jewish character of Shylock in past performances and was known to be receiving a high salary, became the target of popular discontent leading to nightly disturbances on the scale of riots at the theater. Kemble turned to some of his friends, well known Jewish boxers, and gave them free admission in exchange for their muscular protection against the riotors, and this engendered an anti-Semitic tone, with the Kemble and Jews perceived as enemies of the working class - and Kemble himself perceived as a "jew" (in the pejorative sense). Here he is depicted as such on the medal in mock Shakespearean prose, which attacks the price rise and demands "OP OB" - "old prices and open boxes" and "no private boxes". The initials "VP" on the obverse mean "Vox Populi" - "the voice of the public". Exhibits lovely detail on the scale & luster though affected by surface scratches & corrosion; JM-22/25 and 121.