In ‘The merchant of Venice’, Shylock’s status as a usurer is never in doubt because his first line in the play defines him as such. Shylock is first seen pondering the amount of a loan to Antonio:
” Three thousand ducats, well” (I, iii, 1).Shylock’s rival, Antonio, hates Shylock because of his business practice which depends on usury and Shylock’s Judaism.
For this part, Antonio both verbally and physically abuses Shylock: “Signior Antonio, many time and oft, In the Rialto you have rated me, About the moneys and my usances. still I have borne it with a patient shrug, For sufferance is the badge of our tribe. You call me a mis-believer, cut-throat dog, And spet on my Jewish gabardine…You that did void your rheu, upon my beard, And foot me as you would spurn a stranger cur, Over your threshold” (I, iii, 106-119).
It is important to note here that Antonio does not deny Shylock’s version of events. Antonio freely owns the abuse he has heaped upon shylock and responds to shylock’s complaints with threats of renewed violence. Antonio swears that:” I am also to call thee so again, To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too.”
Antonio Acknowledges the animosity between him and Shylock, Antonio has saved many of Shylock debtors from defaulting on their loans and thus preventing Shylock from collecting his interest.
Throughout the entirety of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is referred to by name only three times; in the trial scene, the Duke twice identifies Shylock by name, and Portia does so once. In the course of the rest of the play, Shylock is most often referred to simply as “the Jew”. That title of “the Jew” is often modified with colorful and disparaging adjectives, such as “Dog Jew” (II, viii, 14) and “currish Jew” (IV, I, 292).
In many cases, even the simple title "Jew" is stripped away, and Shylock is no longer a man, but an animal: Gratiano curses Shylock with "O, be thou damned, inexecrable dog!" (IV,i,128) whose "currish spirit govern'd a wolf" (IV,i,133-34) and whose "desires are wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous" (IV,i,137-38).When Shylock is not an animal or man, he becomes "a stony adversary, inhuman wretch" (IV,i,4-5).These labels that are applied to Shylock effectively strip him of his humanity, and his religious identity. He becomes reduced to something less than human: something other than human. Given this tendency to see Shylock as something inhumane, it should come as no surprise that he is also clearly demonized in the rhetoric of the play.
This explicit demonization of Shylock cannot but be significant in light of the historical outline of the Jews. The images of Jews as blood-thirsty murderers of Jesus who snatch innocent Christian children for slaughter in bizarre Passover rituals seems to provide a potent back-drop for the demonic appellations that are heaped upon Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’.
It seems clear (to me, at least) that Shakespeare creates Shylock against an historical and cultural backdrop that was intensely hostile towards Jews. Given this social context and historical tradition, it should come as no surprise if some of this hostility against Jews should infiltrate Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare was, after all, a commercial dramatist and many commercial dramatists make their livings by pandering to, rather than working against, conventional social mores.
To make the claim that Shakespeare creates Shylock within an anti-Semitic culture, and therefore invests Shylock with biased anti-Semitic attributes, does not impugn the artistry of the drama. Nor does such a claim implicate Shakespeare himself as a monstrous anti-Semite. All this claim suggests is that Shakespeare, like most of the rest of his society, was hostile toward Jewry for religious and cultural reasons, and that hostility is revealed most clearly in Shylock.
What I have tried to trace is the possible, or perhaps the probable, relationship between what was happening in Shakespeare's day and what is happening in Shakespeare's plays.
Shylock oversteps the boundaries of his Villainous character. The audience cannot and would not have rooted for Shylock during Shakespeare's lifetime, yet, now we do. Shylock is merely a victim of anti-Semitism. Although victorious in his bond, Shylock was raped of his lands, his faith and his pride. Shylock not necessarily the villain, rather the victim in my point of view.
