No Sympathy for the Devil: How Shakespeare Says We Shouldn’t Feel Bad for Shylock Christa Ryan College

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was written and performed in London at the very end of the sixteenth century. During this time, as during much of history, the Jewish population was not the most popular, especially in London where Shakespeare was operating out of. Throughout The Merchant of Venice, there is a very strong theme of antisemitism based around the character Shylock, a Jewish moneylender in Venice whose relationship with the Christian characters can best be described as hostile, spiteful and vindictive, exemplified in Shylock’s plan for revenge against the merchant Antonio. It is easy for the reader to justify the need Shylock has to enact his plan, because of the way that he is treated throughout the play. While reading The Merchant of Venice in a modern setting, it is also easy to read and identify Shylock as a character Shakespeare attempts to get the audience to sympathize with, but a closer reading of the text and a deeper understanding of the period in which the play was written complicates both our modern understanding of Shylock’s function in the play and our ability to salvage the play from this anti-Semitic theme.

Initially, it is very easy for readers to understand Shylock’s incessant need for...