Who is shylock in the merchant of venice

Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise! I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. The turquoise ring Jessica discarded is important to Shylock because it was a gift from his dead wife, not because it's worth a lot of money.

So here, we can see that Shylock isn't exactly the money-grubbing villain he's been made out to be. Shylock's pained response to Jessica's actions reveals that he is deeply human, a point that he makes at a pivotal moment in the play, when Salerio and Solanio taunt him with Jessica's elopement:. Hath not a Jew eyes? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by 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? If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?

Why, revenge! The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. Here Shylock insists on the fact that Jews and Christians share a common humanity. He also exposes the hypocrisy of the Christian characters who are always talking about love and mercy but then go out of their way to alienate Shylock because he is Jewish and different.

Yet as powerful as this speech is, elsewhere in the play Shylock tends to emphasize the differences between Jews and Christians. Between and , there were more than 50 productions performed there. And theatergoers responded the way the Nazis intended.

When Werner Krauss entered the stage as Shylock, the audience was noticeably repulsed, according to a newspaper account , which John Gross includes in his book Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy. But interpretations began to shift in the 18th century. But just what exactly did Shakespeare see in the character? Was Shakespeare being anti-Semitic, or was he merely exploring anti-Semitism?

Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, says that critics have long debated what motivated Shakespeare to write this play. For them, contemporary audiences only read Shylock sympathetically because reading him any other way, in light of the horrors of the Holocaust, would reflect poorly on the reader.

Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by 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? Shylock is the most vivid and memorable character in The Merchant of Venice, and he is one of Shakespeare's greatest dramatic creations.

On stage, it is Shylock who makes the play, and almost all of the great actors of the English and Continental stage have attempted the role. But the character of Shylock has also been the subject of much critical debate: How are we meant to evaluate the attitude of the Venetians in the play toward him? Or his attitude toward them? Is he a bloodthirsty villain? Or is he a man "more sinned against than sinning"? One of the reasons that such questions arise is that there are really two stage Shylocks in the play: first, there is the stage "villain" who is required for the plot; second, there is the human being who suffers the loss of his daughter, his property, and, very importantly for him, his religion.

Shylock's function in this play is to be the obstacle, the man who stands in the way of the love stories; such a man is a traditional figure in romantic comedies. Something or someone must impede young, romantic love; here, it is Shylock and the many and various ways that he is linked to the three sets of lovers.

The fact that he is a Jew is, in a sense, accidental. Shakespeare wanted to contrast liberality against selfishness — in terms of money and in terms of love. There was such a figure available from the literature of the time, one man who could fulfill both functions: this man would be a usurer, or moneylender, with a beautiful daughter that he held onto as tightly as he did his ducats.