Merchant of Venice Review

Review of Merchant of Venice

By: William Shakespeare

            Bassanio wants to marry his beloved Portia, but to do this he must pass a test.  Her suitors are presented three caskets: a gold one, a silver one, and a lead one and they must choose the one with her portrait in it, and if they don’t pick the right one, they cannot marry anyone else.  Bassanio also must help his friend Antonio make a deal with the moneylender Shylock, but Shylock doesn’t trust Antonio, because he is a Christian, while Shylock is a Jew.  Antonio also wants to elope with Shylock’s daughter, Jessica.

This play isn’t as popular and talked about like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.  One of the reasons I’m guessing has to do with Shakespeare villainizing a Jewish character, showing the ignorance of Christians towards Jews.  Ironically, I think this makes you more sympathetic towards Shylock.  He gets the short end of the stick and treated unfairly by the rest of characters, who are Christians and due to lack of knowledge of the religion are prejudice towards him.  Back when the play came out it would have hit differently with audiences and Shakespeare probably didn’t intend for this with Shylock.  Like a lot of Shakespeare’s plays, this focuses on love and marriage and how the characters get to that point, but there is also a commentary on religion.  Shylock is a Jew and while the other characters are Christians, who don’t trust him, and see him as greedy, vile, and cruel.  He is determined to get the money he is owed from Antonio and Bassanio, but the young male also takes his daughter away from Shylock making him want to have his head.  His feelings towards the Christians aren’t entirely unjustified because they assume the worse not knowing Shylock as a person.  Antonio also ran away with his daughter to elope, and he never was given the chance to give his blessing or even to say goodbye.  It’s as if she has turned her back on her religion.  Shylock is villainized, but he’s just a man trying to live his life.  My favorite quote from him is “if you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.  If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?  Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” (Act 3 Sc. 1).  The A plot involves a character having to prove he knows what really matters in love.  Portia needs to find out if Bassanio or her other suitors truly love her, or do they just love what they get with marrying her, a rich heiress.  They must choose between riches and her.  Most of the humor comes from the character Lancelet and Shakespeare using Malapropism, a deliberate misuse of language, which went over my head, but some of the humor was also came off as distasteful to a modern reader.  Lancelet mocks his blind father, and the other characters mock Shylock. The play also includes one of my favorite Shakespeare tropes, cross dressing characters.