Free Merchant of Venice Essays: The Villainous Shylock

Many people are villainous in the way they act, and their villainous acts may be rooted in the desire to destroy others, or in the hopes of elevating themselves. Many people may only act "villainous" in reaction to the way they have been treated in the past. Shylock the Jew is the villain or antagonist in the play The Merchant of Venice. Shylock mistreats Antonio the Christian, his daughter, Jessica and Launcelot.

The first person Shylock mistreats, is Launcelot. He mistreats this servant by complaining behind Launcelot's back of his laziness. Shylock says,

"The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder,

Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day

More than the wildcat. Drones hive not with me..

..His borrowed purse." 1

Shylock also acts villainous towards Launcelot by acting belligerent towards him."Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call." 2 Shylock mistreats this man because of his poverty, and because Launcelot is socially beneath him. You also start to wonder about how fair Shylock is, when Launcelot is deciding whether or not to leave him.

Shylock also mistreats his own daughter, Jessica. He mistreats her by keeping her as a captive in her own house, not letting her out, and not letting her hear the Christian music around her. He orders her to:

"Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum...

..But stop my house's ears-I mean casements.

Let not the sound of shallow fopp'ry enter

My sober house." 3

Jessica considers her home to be hell, and she calls Launcelot, a "merry little devil". She even states that her father is Satan. Shylock also mistreats his own daughter, by not loving her enough, even to the point where he complains about all of the money he's spending in a search to find her.

"Why, there, there, there, there! A diamond gone

cost me two thousand ducats in Frankford! The

curse..

..ill luck stirring but what lights o' my shoulders;

no sighs but o' my breathing; no tears but o' my

shedding."4

Salerio makes the audience wonder about Shylock, when he raves about when Shylock was calling out, "Oh my ducats, my daughter, my ducats, my daughter.