The merchant of Venice - what's your take?

[BlackCat]

What is your thought on the characters? Are they flat, round, dynamic, static? Who do you think is the true protagonist, antagonist. Do you think Shylock deserves the hate other characters give? I for instance think that Shylock could be a vengeful and despicable character. He's greedy, malicious, an usurer, he's the demon that all should beware, even his daughter. Yet I feel such empathy for Shylock. He is a victim just as the rest of them. He is angry and vengeful because he was treated with contempt almost all his life. He is pushed to be an usurer because society gives him no other choices. The hatred and the malice that Shylock bore is not his own, but also something society projected. This reflected by the infamous monologue:

"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. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Also what interpretation do you think Shakespeare intended? Anti-Semitic or Sympathetic?

[jyossarian]

We studied it in school last year, and I felt genuine pity for Shylock at the end. He was just a stubborn, proud individual persecuted for what he believed in :/
Antonio was the real enemy in my eyes, if you could call him that.
You've got to remember that this was written c.1590 so there's a chance Billy S. may have harbored some anti-Semitic attitudes almost by default since he grew up in that era, but I personally think he was pretty neutral in his treatment of the character.

[My2cents]

Compared to Barabas, Shylock is an angel. Still, I think there's little doubt that Shakespeare intended Shylock to be more despised than pitied.

Personally, I agree with both your comments that Shylock is deserving of pity, and that whatever Shakespeare might have intended there are in Shylock's resignation at the end something truly heartbreaking re Shylock.

[PeterL]

I believe that there are two sides to the answer. Shylock was treated shabbily, but he was willing to lend with a pound of flesh as surety. If Shylock hadn't had an evil side, then he would have either refused to lend at all, which would have been a sound business decision, or he could have accepted a co-signer. I believe that helping to find a co-signer would have been the best business decision.

[Charles Darnay]

I have often wondered why the pound of flesh. The conclusion I came to was this was one aspect of the original character from Il Pecorone that Shakespeare kept in tact. And the Jew in Il Pecorone was pure Barabas levels of evil - the whole "I go around poisoning wells" bit with none of the human qualities that Shakespeare gave to Shylock.

I have written my take on Shylock elsewhere on this forum and don't want to be too repetitive. But note that it really isn't until post-WWII that we start to see sympathetic Shylocks. He is a comic villain who is a perversion of "Christian morality" - especially in the oft misquoted "hath not a Jew eyes" speech.

The one part of Shylock that inspires a moment of pity comes in his first monologue in 1.3. This is the one time we see the motive behind his acts towards Antonio - separating him from someone like Iago, the motiveless villain. Yes he is shunned by society and hated, and this ought to inspire pity, but at the same time - despite what Shylock claims in 1.3 and 3.1, Antonio's hatred of him is on account of his usury not his Jewishness: of course to muddle it up a bit, usury was one of the few occupations Jews could get at the time/place.

So I don't completely reject the idea that a piteous Shylock could be played - but in a lot of ways, it reads against the text.

[Coco]

While I can see why we might pity Shylock for the way the Christians treat him, I do not believe he is an entirely pitiable character. He makes his money by usury, which in Shakespeare's day was terribly immoral. One of the reasons he hates Antonio is that Antonio lends for free, which hurts Shylock's business, and Antonio has lent to Shylock's debtors so they won't have to pay penalties, and that cuts into Shylock's profits. In addition, when Jessica runs away, Shylock mourns the loss of his money more than the loss of his daughter. Finally, he insists on the pound of flesh even when he is offered three times the debt owed by Antonio. He blames Antonio (and all Christians) for his daughter's elopement; he is no longer interested in money but in revenge. We can feel bad about the way the Christians spit on him and call him names, and we can feel that the Christians fail to show the mercy that Portia speaks so eloquently about, but I don't think we do the story justice to see the entire play as a pity-the-Jew story.