Term 3 Week 5 Blog Post

What is Shakespeare's intention of creating Shylock?

In my opinion, Shakespeare’s intention of creating the character Shylock is to portray Jews in a negative light, as was common in his time. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare strongly emphasised the antagonistic and sympathetic sides of this supposed villain. While he appears to be a bloodthirsty, menacing and merciless Jew, at the same time the poor man's plight leads the reader to feel a small shred of sympathy when reading about his isolation and the prejudice against his race from the Christian majority of Venice. Ultimately, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice (Act 4 Scene 1) serves to highlight the power of the Christians over the scorned Jews and shows the helplessness of the lowly Jew against the exalted Christian.Firstly, Shakespeare describes Shylock as the merciless, cruel and utterly ruthless antagonist of the book. This is brought out through the revealing of the contents of the bond and Shylock's behaviour and his bloodthirsty and unreasonable manner in the trial scene. As a method of effectively intimidating Antonio into returning the money and also in a bid to exact revenge on Antonio for his previous acts of scorn against Shylock for being a Jew, he requested for “an equal pound of (his) fair flesh” and swore to take Antonio’s life if he failed to keep his promise. Also, in the trial scene, he did not take heed of the pleas for mercy coming from the various people present and stood firm on his right that he get his pound of flesh from Antonio as justice, even saying, “What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?” This just goes to show how heartless a person Shylock is. Secondly, Shakespeare brings out his loneliness and isolation very clearly. Almost every Christian character in the play has insulted or humiliated him in one way or another at some point in the story. For example, Gratiano once called him a “currish Jew”, comparing Shylock to a dog in Act 4 Scene 1. Bassanio also called him an “unfeeling man”, saying that Shylock did not have any compassion or mercy. This discrimination against Jews, manifested at its worst, along with the elopement of Jessica, his daughter, and her subsequent conversion to Christianity, further emphasises his isolation from the rest of the characters in the book.While it is possible for one to argue that due to Shakespeare's revelation of the poor, miserable side to Shylock, which has the effect of portraying him as an isolated and misunderstood individual, Shakespeare may have wanted to show the strong discrimination against Jews during that period and evoke some sympathy over his plight. However, the presence of Shylock’s sentence at the end of Act 4 Scene 1 appears to convey the message to the reader that Jews are always inferior to Christians. Shylock stood alone in court, while Antonio had many friends on his side, which is an obvious indication of the Jews’ lowly status in that period. Due to Portia's manipulation of the wordings of the bond, and the resulting court verdict, each and every of his assets were confiscated by the state, with half going to Antonio, and it was no wonder that Shylock felt cheated. Furthermore, Antonio using the chance to force Shylock to convert to Christianity had caused Shylock to lose all his dignity and pride, with the end result appearing to tell the reader that Christians will always be superior to Jews, and that whether in the right or wrong, Jews will never be able to win a Christian in any way. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that Shakespeare’s intent behind creating Shylock is to provide an antagonist that makes the play far more interesting, and at the same time, cast Jews in a negative light to affect the reader's impression of them.