Term 3 Week 5 (Blogging Assignment)

You are required to respond to one of the questions in the Anti-Semitism handout. The question is as follows:

What do you think is Shakespeare's intention of creating Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? Support your opinion with examples.

The main reason Shakespeare created Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is because he wanted to bring out the main themes in the merchant of Venice, where the two main themes are Justice and Mercy. With Shylock in the story, the characters in the story are then able to show acts of justice or mercy as Shylock, being the bad person in the story has sued the main character. Shakespeare also made a case that is debatable on who is right. This allowed the characters to fully bring out the themes in the story, thus achieving what he was aiming for when he was writing out this book. He also made Shylock a Jew as he knew that there was anti-semitism then and it made the story more realistic as almost everyone was against Shylock, the Jew. Without the justice, the Jew, Shylock, would definitely lose out badly in the court case, even though Antonio was the one that made the mistake at the start. Thus, Shakespeare has highlighted justice by making the whole court case being held together by justice and highlighted mercy by making Antonio merciful to this Jew that he was prejudiced against. In conclusion, this was only possible with Shylock, who was the one that was being targeted by everyone in the story, thus bringing out the themes of The Merchant of Venice.