ENGLISH LITERATURE ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC : CHARACTER SKETCH OF SHYLOCK

Submitted By,

Emilda Sara Benjamin

XB
 INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR
William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet,
and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's
greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or
simply "the Bard").

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18,

he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet
and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an
actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later
known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford,
where he died three years later.

WORKS

His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three

long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have
been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of
any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.His early plays were
primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these
genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and
Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the
English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known
as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

MERCHANT OF VENICE

The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a

merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish
moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599.

Although classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with

Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes,
and it is best known for Shylock and his famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech on humanity.
Also notable is Portia's speech about "the quality of mercy".
 SUMMARY OF MERCHANT OF VENICE

A young Venetian, Bassanio, needs a loan of three thousand ducats so that he can woo Portia,
a wealthy Venetian heiress. He approaches his friend Antonio, a merchant. Antonio is short
of money because all his wealth is invested in his fleet, which is currently at sea. He goes to a
Jewish moneylender, Shylock. .Shylock dislikes Antonio but agrees to make the short-term
loan, but, in a moment of dark humour, he makes a condition – the loan must be repaid in
three months or Shylock will exact a pound of flesh from Antonio. Antonio agrees, confident
that his ships will return in time.
Because of the terms of Portia’s father’s will, all suitors must choose from among three
caskets, one of which contains a portrait of her. If he chooses that he may marry Portia, but if
doesn’t he must vow never to marry or court another women. As Bassanio prepares to travel
to Belmont for the test, his friend Lorenzo elopes with Shylock’s daughter, Jessica. Bassanio
chooses the lead casket, which contains her picture, and Portia happily agrees to marry him
immediately.
Meanwhile, two of Antonio’s ships have been wrecked and Antonio’s creditors are
pressuring him for repayment. Word comes to Bassanio about Antonio’s predicament, and he
hurries back to Venice, leaving Portia behind. Portia follows him, accompanied by her maid,
Nerissa. They are disguised as a male lawyer and his clerk. When Bassanio arrives the date
for the repayment to Shylock has passed and Shylock is demanding his pound of flesh. Even
when Bassanio offers much more than the amount in repayment, Shylock, now infuriated by
the loss of his daughter, is intent on seeking revenge on the Christians. The Duke refuses to
intervene.

Portia arrives in her disguise to defend Antonio. Given the authority of judgment by the
Duke, Portia decides that Shylock can have the pound of flesh as long as he doesn’t draw
blood, as it is against the law to shed a Christian’s blood. Since it is obvious that to draw a
pound of flesh would kill Antonio, Shylock is denied his suit. Moreover, for conspiring to
murder a Venetian citizen, Portia orders that he should forfeit all his wealth. Half is to go to
Venice, and half to Antonio.

Antonio gives his half back to Shylock on the condition that Shylock bequeaths it to his
disinherited daughter, Jessica. Shylock must also convert to Christianity. A broken Shylock
accepts. News arrives that Antonio’s remaining ships have returned safely. With the
exception of Shylock, all celebrate a happy ending to the affair.
 CHARACTER SKETCH OF SHYLOCK

Shylock is one of the best-known characters in the entire range of Shakespearean drama. He
is a prominent character who dominates the entire play Merchant of Venice. He is a Jewish
moneylender. He is also a controversial character. Some critics and readers regard him as a
through villain while others believe that, in spite of his villainy, he deserves some sympathy
also. It is necessary for us therefore to assess this man’s character impartially. He certainly
has his hateful traits of character; and he certainly deserves to be called a villain. But we still
feel some sympathy for him because, in our opinion, he is not only a wrong-doer but also a
victim of wrong-doing by others.

Complex character

Shylock is a complex character having contradictory qualities. He arouses interest and a

variety of conflicting criticisms. He is bloodthirsty, cunning, greedy and fanatical, yet he has
been given the human touch of being an oppressed and much hated alien. Shakespeare’s
Shylock is a towering personality, bearing both intellectual strength and strength of purpose.
He is the obstactle hindering the love of the young lovers in the play.

A Devout Jew

Shylock is a devout Jew, having a passion for his race and religion. He is a champion of his
race and speaks eloquently about the injustice suffered by the Jews . He is a devout
Practitioner of his religion. He refers to his people as ‘sacred’ and in his imagination he is
constanly back in Palestine with the folks of Old testament. For him it is always, ‘Our
nation’, ‘Our holy Sabbath’ , ‘ Our Synagogue’, ‘Our holy Abraham’, etc

A Usurer

By profession, Shylock is a money-lender. Money-lending by itself is not something

shameful or discreditable, or degrading, or even objectionable. However, money-lending
becomes something odious and abhorrent if a money-lender becomes an exploiter by
charging excessive rates of interest. Shylock is a money-lender who tries to enrich himself
and to accumulate wealth by exploiting the financial needs of others. One reason why he
hates Antonio is that Antonio lends money to needy persons without charging any interest at
all, and Antonio thus brings down the rate of interest in Venice. Shylock has already hoarded
a lot of wealth by his usury, but his craving for more money is not satisfied. This makes him
a contemptible person in the play. In this respect he is a typical Jew because the Jews have
traditionally been regarded as usurers. It is only in our own times that the Jews have been
able to shed that image. Today the Jews are regarded as a versatile race of people, possessing
many gifts and talents.

Passion for Money

Shylock’s passion for money is intensive. He loves money more than his own Daughter.
When Jessica, his daughter elopes with a Christian, taking along his money and jewels, he is
worried more about the loss of his money than about his daughter . He wishes that his
daughter were dead at his feet and his ducats in her coffin. He lends money to people at
exorbitant interest. For Shylock, the creation of money is creative. However , in Antonio’s
case, his passion for revenge overrides his passion for money. He refuses even ten times over
the borrowed money offered by Bassanio, to spare Antonio’s life.

His Suspicious Nature

Shylock has a suspicious nature and does not trust anyone. He cannot trust either his servant
or his daughter. Although his suspicious nature is no merit in him, yet we must admit that he
is fully justified in his suspicions. His servant detests him, and so does his daughter. While
the servant merely leaves his service, his daughter goes to the extent of running away from
home with a Christian and stealing a considerable amount of his money and his jewels.

His Deceitful and Crafty Dealings

Shylock is a deceitful and crafty man. At first he expresses his unwillingness to give a loan to
Antonio on the ground that Antonio had been ill-treating him. However, an altogether
different idea takes shape in his mind. The condition that he lays down for giving loan to
Antonio shows his cunning nature. He lures Antonio into signing the bond saying that the
clause relating to the ‘ pound of flesh’ is meant only as a joke because, for him, a pound of
human flesh will serve no purpose at all.
His Revengeful and Blood thirst Nature

Shylock is a revengeful and bloodthirsty man. From the very start, he is shown as planning to
take his revenge upon Antonio for the latter’s ill-treatment of him. Antonio’s need for a loan
serves him as a great opportunity to wreak his vengeance upon him. Subsequently no appeals
from the Duke and the magnificence move him to pity. Even Portia’s eloquent plea for mercy
tails to have any effect upon him. He feels jubilant when it seems that the verdict of the court
would go in his favour; and he begins to exult over Portia’s pronouncement in the beginning
that he has a very strong case. He bluntly tells the judge that there is no power in the tongue
of man to alter his resolve to take a pound of flesh, “My deeds upon my head” he says. He
simply invokes the law which entitles him to the penalty and the forfeit of his bond, and he
clings to the position he has taken.

Sub-human nature

Shylock’s inhumanity and revengefulness is seen in all its fury in the trial scene. His passion
for revenge is so intensive that it overcomes his love for money. No appeals from the Duke
and Portia move him to pity. Further, the manner in which he sharpens his knife in the trial
scene , his irritation at delays in the court preventing him from extracting a pound of flesh- all
indicate his sub-human nature.

His redeeming qualities

Even though Shylock is a villain, he does have a couple of redeeming qualities. He is a

champion of his race. He speaks eloquently and convincingly about the injustice which the
Jews have always suffered at the hands of the Christians. He offers a forceful plea on behalf
of the Jews in his speech beginning: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions?” Then there is his sentiment for his dead wife, Leah.
On learning that his daughter had given away a particular jewel in exchange for a monkey, he
says that this jewel had been given to him by Leah when he was still a bachelor; and he goes
on to say: “1 would not have given it (the jewel) for a wilderness of moneys.” Besides, his
character is distinguished by an intellectual force and vigour which are praiseworthy. It is in
view of these good qualities in him that he wins our sympathy when he is cruelly treated at
the end. At the same time we must not forget that he is essentially an evil man.
 CONCLUSION

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.
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.

In contrast, many have seen the creation of Shylock as an attack on this kind of intolerance.
But Shakespeare, they forget, was a dramatist. He was not concerned with either anti- nor
pro-Semitism, except in the way it shaped individual characters in his plays to produce the
necessary drama that he was attempting to create. The play is thus emphatically not anti-
Semitic; rather, because of the nature of Shylock's involvement in the love plots, it
is about anti-Semitism. Shakespeare never seriously defined or condemned a group through
the presentation of an individual; he only did this for the purposes of comedy by creating
caricatures in miniature for our amusement. Shakespeare's manipulation of our emotions
regarding Shylock is a testament to his genius as a creator of character.

In the last scene he is a defeated man yet we cannot feel deep sympathy for him — some,
perhaps, but not much. Shakespeare's intention was not to make Shylock a tragic figure;
instead, Shylock was meant to function as a man who could be vividly realized as the
epitome of selfishness; he must be defeated in this romantic comedy. In a sense, it is
Shakespeare's own brilliance which led him to create Shylock as almost too human. Shylock
is powerfully drawn, perhaps too powerfully for this comedy, but his superb dignity is
admirable, despite the fact that we must finally condemn him