William Shakespeare's Intentions Toward His Audience

Shakespeare’s Intentions Toward His Audience
Revenge is a natural emotion for humans when we feel betrayed or angry, but the question is; Does it benefit you? Many people don’t adopt revenge as their last resort and some use revenge like a belief, just like character Shylock in Shakespeare’s book “The Merchant Of Venice”. Shakespeare challenges our emotion and mocks us for our cruel desires through Shylock’s anger and tone. The tone given to the audience is filled with a large quantity of greed and hatred but resembles us when we experience annoyance and want to payback what is owed. Shakespeare mocks one of our flaws that we have the crave for on a daily basis and we Humans cease to see it.

Humans can naturally be evil. Most were made like this from their past and that’s what shakespeare is trying to bring to our attention. Shylock plays as the victim who was once tortured and turned to the torturer. Since he was kicked, beaten, and taunted for what his religious beliefs were by character Antonio, he now seeks revenge. Shylock isn’t wrong for having the need for revenge but why is that the first thing that comes to mind? When someone (for example) takes the last cookie from the jar and then teases you because they got to it first, you feel like

you’ve been mistreated. You feel humiliated and want to do harm to that person for your own personal reasons. Shakespeare brings this to our attention in the story and uses Shylock as a little angry pawn. Through Shylock, Shakespeare judges us for our flaws.

Revenge feels good when you’re the one dealing the damage.

Is revenge even healthy? Psychologically no. In fact, Confucius once said “When anger rises, think of the consequences.”. What people tend to do is get angry and not think of the repercussions. Eventually this leads to many issues that can’t be solved or even someone could end up getting hurt. In the “Merchant Of Venice”, Shylock was owed a pound of flesh and expected that he could get his revenge on Antonio. His “repercussions” though were if he drew a single drop of blood, he could be sentenced to death and lose all of his valuables and owned properties. This shows an example we Humans make on a daily basis, we never think somethings, like revenge,

through.

Shakespeare intentionally makes Shylock look bad, but as we see Shylock as an evil, greedy old man, we don’t understand how much hypocrisy we are making. We all have emotions, some revengeful, some forgiving. “ He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies—and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.” -Shylock (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 47). We have no right to judge other people based on who they’re and for what their reason is. Shakespeare makes this statement in the story multiple time through Shylock's feelings and we can’t judge him for it.

Anger is the source all pain cause to someone, Hate is the most disgusting emotion to have and must be rid of. We Humans cause lots of anger to others on a daily basis, luckily we aren’t the only ones that cause it. Shakespeare proves to us in “The Merchant Of Venice” that we are all equal in anger mentally but should we put our aggressive emotions to good use once it’s about to be used on someone. We shouldn’t use it no matter how satisfied (if it satisfies at all) we feel afterwards.