Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

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Recommended: Race discrimination in the merchants of venice

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

In the following essay I will portray my opinion of whether or not

Shylock was treated unfairly. To do this I will go through the main

scenes concerning Shylock and express my opinion for that particular

scene. This is because it would be impossible to sympathise with

Shylock on a whole because throughout the play he shows completely

different sides to his character. Shakespeare has a great ability to

twist complex characters therefore in one scene Shylock is considered

the villain and in the next he would be considered the victim. In some

scenes he shows his power hungry, manipulative side and in other

scenes he shows himself as a broken man, demoralised by the racist,

predominately Christian, society of Venice. At the time the play was

written, there was great opposition between Christians and Jews.

Shakespeare took a big risk in this play as he portrayed the

inhumanity showed to Jews and could have lost his life, if he

portrayed Jews so well that offended the queen or if the audience

disliked it and took offence.

The first scene I'm going to look at is Act one, Scene three; this is

where Shylock is introduced in the play. In this scene I do not

sympathise with Shylock at first because Shakespeare portrays his

first appearance as smug, patronizing, confident and in control. He

shows this by repeating the amount of money and the details of the

bond consecutively in a belittling manor. In the production I saw

(Channel four- The Merchant of Venice), the way Shylock was positioned

suggested he was the dominant one and very happy about the situation

and also seemed pleasured by Antonio and Bassanio's obvious feeling of

discomfort. Shylock quickly explains why his attitude is so smug, it's

because he hates Antonio (who is usually in control) who now needs his

help. Shylock goes on to say why he hates Antonio, "I hate him for he

is Christian", and because "he lends out money gratis and brings down

the rate of usance here with us in Venice", (Antonio lends out money

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