The Good and the Bad

For the sake of this post, I am going to focus mainly on the beginning of the first scene of act four, where the viewer sees Shylock preparing to take the pound of flesh from Antonio, despite the fact that Bassanio has double what Antonio owes him for Shylock. It seems that the principle is the thing here for Shylock, and it also makes it appear as if the man wanted to take a pound of flesh from Antonio all along. It makes Shylock out to be the villain, being that he refuses to shake the bond and grant any form of mercy to Antonio despite the fact that he had lost everything before. Graziano says of Shylock after watching him sharpen his blade on his shoe: “Not on thy sole but on thy soul, harsh Jew,/Thou mak’st thy knife keen. But no metal can…/half the keenness/Of thy sharp envy [malice]” 4.1.123-135. The contrast to Shylock’s soul and his malice is interesting, because isn’t the soul what is equated to religion? It is possible that here they are equating his wickedness to the fact that he is a Jew.

Shylock’s wickedness continues as the scene goes on and a disguised Portia enters the scene, pretending to be a judge in attempts to get Antonio free of this bond he is currently caught up in. She speaks to him, trying to convince him to cut the bond, but he does not give in to her reasoning, which is often quite clever indeed. Portia asks whether or not he has a surgeon to stop Antonio’s bleeding, and he says he does not which leads Portia to ask him if he do it for charity, Shylock answers: “I cannot find it. ‘Tis not in the bond.” 4.1.257. This shows Shylock as a person who cares only for the bond and the deals that he makes, rather than focusing on the actual person before him who has lost everything due to his ships sinking.

Meanwhile, Antonio manages to, though Shylock was about to kill him by taking a pound of his flesh, get the fine he would have suffered reduced and get half of it in a trust for Jessica and Lorenzo for after Shylock’s death. This paints out Antonio to be the hero. Shylock must basically get rid of all of his fortune—which the viewer  has seen to be very important to him—due to the fact that the bond has been broken after he was seeking to take Antonio’s life. Antonio, though he was nearly killed moments ago by Shylock before Portia’s reasoning saves him, is the kind and caring man who only wants to help reduce the fine, because that is what he must do, even if there is a bit of a second motive in it being that he helps get half of it secured for his friend who has married Jessica.

Though earlier in this play, Shylock seems to be the victim to Antonio, it appears as if Shakespeare has turned the tables on this sympathy that the viewer might have been gaining for Shylock. In the beginning, Shylock accuses Antonio of calling him a dog and spitting on him, to which Antonio does not deny and in fact states he would do again, and yet now he is reducing a fine on Shylock’s welfare even after Shylock attempted to take his life. Shakespeare seems to really want to kill any feelings the viewer may have garnered for Shylock in order to paint  Antonio as the hero here, and really get the point across that, as discussed in class on Friday, the Christians in this play are the generous ones, that would give up all for another man.

Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice really puts into perspective how Elizabethan England viewed the Jewish people. The very presence of a Jew within the play is clearly meant to be distinctive, made obvious by the fact that the alternate title for the play is The Jew of Venice. The character of Shylock is immediately introduced in clear, uncompromising terms that obviously adhere to a pre-set stereotype commonly associated with Jews at the time. He is presented as a miser, a surly and suspicious money-pinching man obsessed with material goods and wealth—a damning view on the part of Christians, who view this as being tied down to the sins of the material world, forsaking spiritual well-being and heavenly redemption in favor of the vices of sinful, worldly pleasures. Shylock is also represented as being eternally sullen and resentful of all the Christians he comes across, regardless of history or demeanor, accusing them of judging him as a filthy, un-Godly man due to his success in trade and personal interest in maintaining his security and wealth; he maintains that they are continually looking down upon his people unless they require money, at which point they fall upon him and his like wolves. All the while, however, his arguments and resentment directed towards the Christian characters only serve to present them as those in the right and moral end of the arrangement, being accused of ill-manners and depravity despite their utmost efforts at good manners and polite behavior, thus reducing Shylock’s complaints to rank hypocrisy. All this serves to present a striking contrast between those in the “right”—the Christian people of Venice and, by extension, the audience as well—and those in the “wrong”—the Jewish people as seen around the world, thus further ingraining the impressions of the English people.

The all-around character of Shylock is obviously exaggerated, feeding into widely-held stereotypes and prejudices to create a character purely designed to be the play’s ‘fool.’ His hugely exaggerated and apparently typical reactions and behaviors are a clear invitation to comedy, a wide-scale parody inviting the mockery of the audience at large; and his greedy, materialistic values are foreshadowed as being threatening towards Antonio, the main sympathetic character of the play. This makes him an exceedingly easy and satisfying character for the audience to rail against, free of any redeeming qualities that might otherwise provoke some kind of sympathy on behalf of the spectators. In short, he is a true caricature that Shakespeare utilizes in full, to add an element of prejudiced comedy as well as a villain who, rather being presented as dangerous and dastardly, is far too easy to mock.