Shylock
Chapter Eleven
Syllabus topic 1.1, "The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare"
Pages 57 to 61 of 406
In one line
Shylock is a Jewish moneylender of Venice, hated by the merchants he lends to and hating them back, who turns a bond into a weapon after his daughter robs him, and who is stripped of his money and his religion by the court he asked for justice.
In the wording a student can write in an examination: Shylock is the antagonist of the play, a Jewish usurer whose grievance against Antonio is at once commercial and religious, whose insistence on the letter of his bond makes him the plaintiff in the trial scene, and who is defeated on the construction of his own instrument and ruined under the Venetian statute against aliens.
Where he appears
He is in five scenes only, which surprises most students: Act I Scene iii, Act II Scene v, Act III Scene i, Act III Scene iii and Act IV Scene i. He leaves the stage before the end of Act IV and never returns. That is fewer than four hundred lines, and he dominates the play.
The qualities, each with its proof
He is a working businessman, and a competent one. His first speech is a credit assessment: Antonio is "a good man", meaning sufficient, and Shylock lists the argosies to Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England, and the perils of waters, winds and rocks. He knows where the risk lies before he lends. Nothing in the play shows him lending unwisely.
His grievance is commercial as well as religious, and he says so in that order of weight. In his aside in Act I Scene iii he hates Antonio for being a Christian, "But more for that in low simplicity he lends out money gratis, and brings down the rate of usance here with us in Venice." A candidate who writes only that Shylock hates Christians has missed his own explanation.
He has been abused, and the abuse is admitted by the man who did it. He has been rated on the Rialto, called misbeliever and cut-throat dog, spat upon, and had his gaberdine fouled. Antonio does not deny any of it: "I am as like to call thee so again, to spet on thee again, to spurn thee too."
He is a father, and the loss of his daughter changes him. Before the elopement he wants a hard bargain. After it, he wants a life. The Tubal scene in Act III Scene i is the evidence: he swings between the loss of his ducats and the loss of Jessica in the same breath, and the line that stops him dead is about a ring.
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.
Shylock
He is capable of the best argument in the play. The speech in Act III Scene i is the strongest statement of common humanity that Shakespeare ever gave a character who is not the hero, and its ending is a threat: if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in revenge.
He is exact, and it destroys him. He will not do what is not written in the bond. He refuses a surgeon because a surgeon is not nominated in it. Twenty lines later the same exactness is used against him: flesh but no blood, and a pound to the estimation of a hair.
He is unmovable once fixed. "I'll have my bond, speak not against my bond. I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond." He refuses three thousand, six thousand, and ten times the sum. He gives no reason and claims he needs none: "it is my humour."
He is cruel, and the play does not soften it. He whets his knife in open court on the sole of his shoe, has scales ready to weigh the flesh, and tells the court to pursue sentence when the Christians are talking about their wives. Nothing in a sympathetic reading requires you to pretend otherwise.
Villain or victim: how to argue it
The question is set in some form on almost every paper. Set out both cases and then take a position; an answer that only lists points scores less than one that decides.
The case that he is the villain of a comedy. He plots a man's death for a grudge, refuses money that would make him whole many times over, rejoices at Antonio's losses, tells Tubal to fee an officer a fortnight in advance, wishes his daughter dead at his foot with the jewels in her ear, and comes to court with a knife and a balance. Every other character treats him as the obstacle to happiness, and in the shape of a comedy that is what an antagonist is.
The case that he is the victim of the play's world. He is spat on before he does anything. His trade is licensed and despised at the same time. His daughter robs him and everyone laughs. He is offered a Christian argument for mercy in a court that has called him a dog since he entered. He is destroyed by a statute that could only ever apply to him. And the strongest speech in the play is his.
A position worth taking. Both, and the play is built so that neither cancels the other. Shakespeare inherited a stock figure, the Jewish villain of the Elizabethan stage, and wrote him a case. What makes the play uncomfortable four hundred years later is not that Shylock is sympathetic but that he is sympathetic and still destroyed, and that the people who destroy him are the ones the comedy asks us to leave the theatre with.
Shylock
Two speeches you should be able to use
"Hath not a Jew eyes?" Use it for common humanity, but always quote its ending, because the speech argues that sameness includes revenge and that the Christians taught the lesson. An answer that stops at "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" has taken half the speech.
"You have among you many a purchas'd slave." Use it in the trial scene. It is his answer to the demand for mercy, and it is unanswered: Venice owns human beings by purchase and calls them property, and Shylock claims the pound of flesh on the same principle. Nobody in the court replies.
A model character sketch, in the form an examiner wants
Opening. Shylock is the Jewish moneylender of Venice on whose bond the plot of The Merchant of Venice turns, and he is the only character in the play with both a real grievance and a real crime.
Quality one, with proof. He is a careful man of business. His first act is to assess Antonio's credit, ship by ship, and to conclude that he is sufficient. His trade is lending at interest, which Venetian law permits and Venetian society despises.
Quality two, with proof. His hatred of Antonio has two roots, and he ranks them himself: Antonio is a Christian, and, more, Antonio lends money without interest and lowers the rate of usance in Venice. The insults he has borne, being called cut-throat dog and spat upon, are admitted by Antonio in the same scene.
Quality three, with proof. He is a father before he is a villain. The Tubal scene shows him swinging between the theft of his ducats and the loss of his daughter, and it is not the diamond worth two thousand ducats that silences him but his dead wife's turquoise, traded for a monkey.
Quality four, with proof. He is literal to the point of self-destruction. He refuses to provide a surgeon because it is not in the bond, and the same strictness is then applied to him: the bond gives flesh and not blood.
Turn. Against all of that stands what he actually does: he refuses many times the debt, prepares his knife and scales, and presses for a sentence he knows will kill a man.
Conclusion. He is neither a monster nor an innocent. He is a man whose city has treated him as an enemy and who becomes one, and the play's most unsettling achievement is that it lets you see both and does not let you rest in either.
Shylock
What beginners get wrong
They summarise the plot. A sketch is an argument about a person supported by incidents, not the incidents in order.
They say he hates Antonio only because he is a Christian. He himself ranks the business reason higher.
They forget he is offered the money. The refusal, three times over, is what makes his conduct criminal in the court's eyes and is essential to any judgment of his character.
They call the trial his defeat by mercy. He is defeated by construction and by a statute, having refused mercy and been shown none.
A worked answer
Question. "Write a character sketch of Shylock."
The opening sentence. Shylock is the Jewish moneylender of Venice on whose bond the plot turns, and he is the only person in the play who has both a real grievance and a real crime.
A worked paragraph, showing how a quality is proved. He is a careful man of business before he is anything else. His first act in the play is to assess Antonio's credit ship by ship, listing the argosy to Tripolis, another to the Indies, a third at Mexico and a fourth for England, and the perils of waters, winds and rocks, and to conclude that the man is nevertheless sufficient. That is not the speech of a monster; it is the speech of a lender doing his work, and it also warns the audience, in the third scene of the play, that ships are lost.
How the sketch closes. With a judgment rather than a summary: that Shylock is neither villain nor innocent but a man whose city treated him as an enemy until he became one, and that the play's real achievement is that it will not let the reader settle into either view.
Quick revision
Five scenes only: I.iii, II.v, III.i, III.iii, IV.i.
Grievance: Christian, and more, lends gratis and lowers the rate of usance.
Abuse: rated on the Rialto, called misbeliever and cut-throat dog, spat upon, gaberdine fouled, all admitted by Antonio.
Turning point: Jessica's flight, and the Tubal scene, with the turquoise had of Leah.
Great speech: "Hath not a Jew eyes", ending in revenge.
Best argument: purchased slaves are yours because you bought them; the pound of flesh is mine because I bought it.
Fatal habit: nothing counts that is not in the bond.
End: half his goods to Antonio in trust, half to the state, forced conversion, a deed of gift to Lorenzo and Jessica, and "I am content".
Test yourself
1. In how many scenes does Shylock appear, and which are they? Five: Act I Scene iii, Act II Scene v, Act III Scene i, Act III Scene iii and Act IV Scene i.
Shylock
2. Give his own ranking of his reasons for hating Antonio. That Antonio is a Christian, and more strongly, that he lends money without interest and so brings down the rate of usance in Venice.
3. What is the dramatic function of the Tubal scene? It is the only scene in which Shylock speaks to somebody who is not an enemy, and it shows his grief and his greed alternating in the same conversation. It also supplies the turquoise ring, which is the single strongest piece of evidence that his losses are not only financial.
4. Why is "Hath not a Jew eyes" not a plea for tolerance? Because its argument runs the other way: since a Jew is the same as a Christian in every respect, he will also be the same in taking revenge, and the villainy he executes was taught him by Christian example.
5. Take a position on villain or victim and defend it in three sentences. He is both, by design. The play gives him a real grievance, the strongest speech in it, and a daughter who robs him, and then shows him refusing many times his money in order to cut a man's heart out. What survives the reading is not sympathy or condemnation but discomfort, and that discomfort is the play's point.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.