William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

'The Merchant of Venice' is a Shakespearean play that is still

preformed to this day. The story to the play is as follows: Antonio, a

rich merchant needs money to lend to friend so he makes a bond with a

wealthy Jew, shylock. Antonio has sent all his money abroad on his

ships and promises to pay back shylock when his ships return, but if

his ships don't come back Shylock can take a pound of his flesh. Later

in the story shylock's daughter runs away with a Christian and takes

all her father's money with her. Shylock is devastated but is happy to

find out that Antonio's ships have sunk and can take his pound of

flesh. They then go to court and have a massive case discussing

whether shylock can take his pound of flesh. In the end it results

that shylock cannot take his pound of flesh and he has to become a

Christian and also Antonio's ships didn't sink so all the Christian's

got what they wanted and live happily ever after.

Our focus for this topic is shylock. When shylock first enters, his

first words portray him to the audience as a greedy money loving Jew.

The very first words Shylock speaks say a lot about him as an

individual. They are about money: 'Three thousand ducats, well'. To

Shylock, ducats seem to be less important than revenge, although they

seem to be as important to him as his daughter Jessica. It may be fair

for him to feel upset and angry with Jessica when she runs off with

Lorenzo, but he behaves as if he cannot decide which loss is more

important. 'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!'

Now in a 21st century audience, even though there was still some

anti-Semitism, the people would be fairly calm but back in

Shakespeare's time the audience would be getting quite rowdy. The way

shylock is portrayed is the way a "typical Jew" of that time would

have been like and the audience would have been booing and throwing