Shylock

Play

The Merchant of Venice

Summary

Shylock is the Jewish moneylender of Venice, the play's most complex and troubling figure — simultaneously its villain and its most compelling voice. He lends Antonio money and, in a "merry bond," demands a pound of Antonio's flesh as forfeit. When his daughter Jessica elopes and takes his ducats, his grief and fury become entangled inextricably. In the trial scene Portia's legalism defeats him utterly, and he is stripped of his wealth and forced to convert to Christianity. His "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech — a stunning plea for common humanity — makes his villainy and his victimhood equally real, and no production can avoid the question of who, finally, is the monster.

Notable Quotations

"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 diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?" *(III.i)*

"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?" *(III.i)*

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?" *(III.i)*

"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." *(III.i)*

Cross-references

• The Merchant of Venice — the play
• Comedies — genre
• character_antonio_mov — his debtor and adversary, who has publicly humiliated him
• character_portia — the disguised lawyer who defeats him in court
• character_bassanio — the borrower whose friend's bond he holds
• character_lorenzo — the Christian who elopes with his daughter and his ducats