Merchant of Venice: Shylock gets what he deserves

The first 200 words of this essay...

In this coursework I will be answering the question "Shylock gets what he deserves" by taking into account how William Shakespeare makes the audience despise of Shylock or sympathise Shylock.

Shylock is a Jew, and he is not welcome in Venice, he has especially got hatred for Antonio. He wanted revenge so Shylock put on a bond with Antonio; the punishment being for Antonio is that if he doesn't pay back the money, which Shylock lent him, in 3 months time Shylock has the right to cut off a pound of his flesh.

The ridicule and mistreatment that Shylock gets makes the audience sympathise with him because he can't do anything about it. Shakespeare has made the audience sympathise with Shylock by making the Christians such as Antonio call him a "dog" and refer to him as a "Jew" giving the audience a sense that Shylock didn't get what he deserves from the courtroom scene. This would only apply to modern audiences though, when Shakespeare wrote his plays Jews were hated by the people that lived then and therefore didn't have the same opinion as modern day audiences would.

The running away of Shylock's daughter (with some