Free Merchant of Venice Essays: The Role of Shylock :: Merchant Venice Essays

Perhaps The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespe atomic number 18, is neither pro-Jewish, nor pro-Christian, since the illustrations which show neither the Jew nor the Christian to be perfect are countless.  After having suffered through The Merchant of Venice, and seeing how unjustly poor loan shark was treated by his Christian contemporaries, I cant help but curio if Shakespeare was actually trying to show the world how hypocritical members of any religious belief could be, be it Jewish, Christian, or anything else.  For, although these buggers disliked each other based in general on differences of religious doctrine, they had more(prenominal) in common than bleeding when pricked, express emotion when tickled, or dying when poisoned.             As stated in the book of herds grass (vi, 10), The love of money is the showtime of all evil.  Its not money that is the root of all evil but the  love of it that is pu re evil and causes so many problems.  The principal characters do love their money, dont they? From Portia to Bassanio,  Antonio to Shylock, Martin to Lewis.              Shylock, in particular, keeps babbling on and on about those precious ducats of his, as if they could actually be more important than his own flesh and blood (and, considering his daughters deviation, they probably were).  As for that guy Antonio, he was one who loved money, but, in a different panache than Shylock, for he seemed to get more of a buzz out of lending/giving it to others than out of hoarding it, but, nevertheless, he certainly felt an unremitting need to soak up it, as demonstrated by his appeal to proceed with the cunning Shylock.              Unfortunately, Shylocks cunning didnt match up to his greed, as he was bested by a woman, of all things.  Yes, folks, that pesky Portia, w ho was hot for Bassanios bod (lust, after all, is a type of greed, is it not?), used her wily ways to help stamp out the Jews empire.  Bummer.  Of course, Shylock really didnt lose it all, since Antonio allowed him to keep the half he was to have been allotted, provided Shylock give it to his unworthy daughter upon his passing from this plane.  What a sweetheart.