Give the character sketch of Shylock from Merchant Of Venice. How did Shakespeare justify in making him a cruel character
Answers
Explanation:
dear,
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. But the character of Shylock has also been the subject of much critical debate: How are we meant to evaluate the attitude of the Venetians in the play toward him? Or his attitude toward them? Is he a bloodthirsty villain? Or is he a man "more sinned against than sinning"? 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. There was such a figure available from the literature of the time, one man who could fulfill both functions: this man would be a usurer, or moneylender, with a beautiful daughter that he held onto as tightly as he did his ducats. Usury was forbidden to Christians by the church of the Middle Ages, and as a consequence, money lending was controlled by the Jews; as a rule, it was usually the only occupation which the law allowed to them. As a result, a great deal of medieval literature produced the conventional figure of the Jewish moneylender, usually as a minor character, but also too, as a major character.
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Answer:
In his contemporary revision of The Merchant of Venice, Howard Jacobson set out to explore Shylock’s enduring appeal, not make amends for his Jewishness
Explanation:
If Shakespeare is the most revelatory of writers, it is because he has infinite means at his disposal, and can find the poetry of grie or disappointment where the circumstances are least poetical. Take that scene in The Merchant of Venice in which Shylock presses his co-religionist Tubal for news of his daughter Jessica’s elopement, counting the cost of her going in ducats. Tubal intersperses what he knows of Jessica with what he has heard of Antonio’s misfortunes. Carefully, he leaks out supposition and hearsay, measuring their effect. But eventually he must let Shylock know the worst. Jessica has been heard of in Genoa, going through the money she stole from her father, and exchanging a ring, also stolen from him, for a monkey.
“Thou torturest me, Tubal,” Shylock responds. And truly we don’t know whether Tubal intends torture or not. Does Shylock have to be given this agonising information at all? Is Tubal aware of the ring’s provenance? Whether he is or he isn’t, Shylock reveals it to him now, though it feels as much as though it’s to himself he’s talking. “It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.”
Whatever we have been thinking of Shylock so far, the ground seems to open beneath him here, not to swallow him but to grant us rare access into his history, his antecedent affections, the man he was before he became – and maybe why he became – the man he is now. Just the word bachelor is a shock, because although we have seen him with his daughter we have not so far put our minds to his married, let alone his widowed state.
A Jewish patriarch, yes, who makes his home a hell, as patriarchs are inclined to do, for his restless daughter. But a patriarch bringing up a child without a wife to help him – have we thought that one through? There is no word to say his wife is dead, but we hear it unmistakably in that deceptively plain sentence, “I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor.” A thing indivisible from Leah, that gift sounds, an expression of simple closeness that makes Portia’s and Bassanio’s ring banter later in the play look like shallow trumpery. We sense the loss to Shylock, anyway, without his rubbing the itch of it. Feeling is not, to him, that thing of elegantly weary display it is to Antonio and Portia.