.......After receiving Antonio’s pledge to post collateral for a loan, Bassanio meets a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, on a street and asks him for the money, telling him Antonio will guarantee repayment at the end of three months. Shylock has suffered frequent ridicule from Antonio and other Christian Venetians. They despise him not only because he charges exorbitant interest rates but also because he is a Jew. Nevertheless, Shylock agrees to lend Bassanio the money. However, if Antonio does not repay the loan in the designated time, he must forfeit a pound of flesh. Moments later, Antonio arrives and signs a contract binding him to this strange condition, confident that his ships will arrive in time with merchandise to repay the loan. Shylock, of course, secretly hopes Antonio will default on the loan so that he can cut away the pound of flesh (certain death) as revenge against his Christian enemy. 

All that glisters [glitters] is not gold; 
Often have you heard that told: 
Many a man his life hath sold 
But my outside to behold: 
Gilded tombs do worms infold. 
Had you been as wise as bold, 
Young in limbs, in judgment old, 
Your answer had not been inscroll’d: 
Fare you well; your suit is cold. (2. 7. 67) 

My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! 
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! 
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! 
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, 
Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter! 
And jewels! two stones, two rich and precious stones, 
Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! find the girl! 
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats. (2. 8. 17-24) 

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian 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? (3. 1. 23)

I have heard him swear 
To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, 
That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh 
Than twenty times the value of the sum
That he did owe him. (3. 2. 277-281)

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. (4. 1. 180-193) 

Then take thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice. (4. 1. 308-312)

Duke of Venice:Ruler who sits as the judge in the trial of Antonio, the merchant of Venice
Antonio: A merchant of Venice who borrows money from Shylock on behalf of his friend Bassanio. Antonio agrees to pay a pound of flesh if he defaults on the loan.
Shylock: Wealthy Jewish moneylender who seeks revenge for ill treatment by Christians. Because he is a tragic figure–and the most compelling character in the play–the drama takes on overtones of tragedy.
Portia: Wealthy heiress wooed by many suitors. Although often described by Shakespeare interpreters as noble, upright, and benevolent, a close reading of the play reveals her as a racist and a snob.
Bassanio: Friend of Antonio who loves Portia.
Prince of Morocco, Prince of Arragon: Suitors of Portia.
Salanio, Salarino, Gratiano, Salerio: Friends of Antonio and Bassanio.
Jessica: Shylock's daughter.
Lorenzo: Jessica's suitor.
Tubal, Chus: Lorenzo's Jewish friends. Chus has no speaking part.
Launcelot Gobbo: clown and Shylock's servant.
Old Gobbo: Launcelot's father.
Leonardo: Bassanio's servant. 
Balthasar, Stephano: Portia's servants.
Nerissa: Portia's maid.
Minor Characters: Magnificoes of Venice, officers of the Court of Justice, gaoler (jailer), servants of Portia, attendants
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Settings
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The action takes place in Venice, Italy, and Belmont, the site of Portia’s estate. Shakespeare does not identify the precise location of Belmont, but the stage directions refer to it as being “on the Continent” (Europe). Presumably, Belmont is not far from Venice. Venice (Venezia) is in northeastern Italy on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. In late medieval and early Renaissance times, Venice was one of Europe’s greatest centers of commerce.
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Dates, Sources, and Type of Play
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Date Written: About 1596 
Probable Main Sources: Il Pecorone  (1378), by Giovanni Fiorentino; Gesta Romanorum (Latin, 13th Century); oriental tales; the Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Type of Play: Although the play is considered a comedy, it is probably better categorized as a tragicomedy (a play with both comic and tragic elements). As a comedy, the play focuses on Christians whose problems have a happy resolution. As a tragedy, the play focuses on the downfall of a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, who is forced at the end to become a Christian and to forfeit property. He leaves the stage a broken man.
Number of Words in Complete Public-Domain Text: 22,310
Individual Copies for Schools: Folger Shakespeare Library Edition (Low Cost)
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The Merchant of Venice abounds in imagery that centers on deception, vice, and human weakness–and fittingly so. After all, the central characters in the drama are deeply flawed or disturbed, exhibiting prejudice, hatred, greed, desire for revenge, depression, ignorance, and other negative qualities. Supposedly, the play has a happy ending, but the happiness of Bassanio, Portia, and their friends derives from their ruination of the Jewish moneylender, Shylock. Although traditionally classed as a comedy, the play is in reality a tragicomedy, perhaps more tragedy than comedy. Following are examples of imagery supporting the interpretation of The Merchant of Venice as a tragedy, as well as other examples of imagery demonstrating Shakespeare’s command of language.

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose. (1. 3. 80) 
Antonio, referring to Shylock, uses paradox and irony to make his point.

There is no vice so simple but assumes 
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. (3. 2. 75-76)
Bassanio compares vice to a virtuous person in a metaphor and a personification.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore 
To a most dangerous sea. . . . (3. 2. 91-92) 
Bassanio compares the golden casket to a seacoast in a metaphor that reinforces the theme of deception. 

Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; 
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs. (3. 3. 9-10)
Shylock tells Antonio that he had used a metaphor comparing Shylock to a dog.

     The weakest kind of fruit 
Drops earliest to the ground. (4. 1. 120-121)
In this metaphor, Antonio compares himself to a fruit.

I never knew so young a body with so old a head. (4. 1. 157)
A court clerk reads a letter from Bellario commending Portia, disguised as Balthasar, at the trial. This line contains these figures of speech: synecdoche (substituting body for person and head for brain), metaphor (comparing the old head to wisdom), alliteration (never, knew; so, so), and paradox (young body and old head).

 They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. (1. 2. 4)
 In a paradox, Nerissa says that overfed people are as sick as starving people. The line also contains alliteration (they, that; they, that; sick, surfeit, starve; with, with).

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? (1. 1. 89-90)
In a simile, Gratiano compares a man to a statue. The words why, warm, and within constitute alliteration. Whose does not alliterate with these words because it begins with an h sound.

Antonio’s complacency about the welfare of his shipping enterprises and his spiteful defiance of Shylock are as much responsible for his courtroom predicament as Shylock’s desire for revenge. First, after Salanio and Salarino inquire whether Antonio’s depression is due to worry about his shipping interests, Antonio replies that

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. (1. 1. 45-48)

Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys? (108-111)

I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty. (1. 3. 112-119)

Climax
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The climax of a play or another narrative work, such as a short story or a novel, can be defined as (1) the turning point at which the conflict begins to resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and most exciting event in a series of events. According to both definitions, the climax occurs during the trial in Act IV, Scene I, when Portia thwarts Shylock's attempt to gain revenge against Antonio. 

Anti-Semitism in England

Prejudice against Jews increased in England around 1190 after non-Jews borrowed heavily from Jewish moneylenders, becoming deeply indebted to them. In York, about 150 Jews committed suicide to avoid being captured by an angry mob. King Richard I (reign: 1189-1199) put a stop to Jewish persecution, but it returned in the following century during King Edward I's reign from 1272 to 1307. The government required Jews to wear strips of yellow cloth as identification, taxed them heavily, and forbade them to mingle with Christians. Finally, in 1290 Edward banished them from England. Only a few Jews remained behind, either because they had converted to Christianity or because they enjoyed special protection for the services they provided. In Shakespeare's time 300 years later, anti-Semitism remained in force and almost no Jews lived in England. Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote a play entitled The Jew of Malta, which depicted a Jew named Barabas as a savage murderer. Shakespeare, while depicting the Jewish moneylender Shylock according to denigrating stereotypes, infuses Shylock with humanity and arouses sympathy for the plight of the Jews.

Use of Disguises
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Time and again, Shakespeare disguises women as men to further a plot. For example, In All's Well That Ends Well, Helena wears the attire of a pilgrim to get close to Bertram. In Cymbeline, Imogen becomes a page boy to win back Posthumous. Julia also becomes a page boy in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as does Viola in Twelfth Night. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises herself as a male judge to save the friend of her lover in a court of law. Rosalind, in As You Like It, dons the garb of a man to become a shepherd as she seeks out her love, Orlando. In each of these plays, the women disguised as men eventually reveal their true female identities All of this could have been quite confusing to playgoers in Shakespeare's day, for only men played women's roles. Thus, in the above-mentioned plays, men played women disguised as men who at some point doffed their male identities to reveal themselves as females.
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.......Not a few modern Shakespeare scholars and critics maintain that one of the most admirable leading women in Shakespeare’s plays is Portia, the wealthy heiress in The Merchant of Venice. She is intelligent, self-assured, enterprising, bold; her reason controls her emotions. To many modern interpreters of Shakespeare, she is the ideal woman–a woman ahead of her times. 
.......However, close examination of the play reveals her as deeply flawed and even detestable. Especially reprehensible is her racial bigotry. It first manifests itself before her encounter with one of her suitors, the Prince of Morocco, a black Moor, in Act I, Scene II. She tells her maid, Nerissa, “If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me [hear her confession, as if he were a priest] than wive me” (1. 2. 33). When the prince arrives, he appears to detect her prejudice, saying, “Mislike me not for my complexion / The shadow’s livery of the burnish’d sun” (2. 1. 3-4).  In a hypocritical reply, Portia assures him he is as fair “as any comer I have look’d on yet / For my affection” (2. 1. 23-24). After he chooses the wrong casket, disqualifying him for Portia’s hand in marriage, he leaves Belmont disappointed. Portia, though, rejoices, saying, “A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. / Let all of his complexion choose me so” (2. 7. 72-73).
.......Later, while defending Antonio against the Jewish moneylender Shylock, this same bigoted Portia–in another display of hypocrisy–delivers an eloquent speech saying mercy should temper justice. Then, after winning the case against Shylock, Portia and her friends humiliate him, ruin him financially, and force him to accept Christianity. In effect, they abort Shylock and flush him into oblivion. Afterward, without the slightest prick of conscience, Portia and company hie off to her exclusive estate, Belmont, to partake in the pleasures of the idle highborn and wealthy. 
.......But their pleasures result only in boredom and dissipation. Like children who eat too much cake and become nauseated, the Portia crowd consumes too much of the good life and becomes listless. Antonio is first to manifest symptoms of dissipation. In the opening lines of the play, he says, 

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. Was Shakespeare an anti-Semite? Or was he using Shylock to arouse opposition to anti-Semitism?
2. The Merchant of Venice is classified as a comedy. Do you agree that it should instead by called a tragicomedy? 
3. Why is the play entitled The Merchant of Venice? Who is the merchant? 
4. In medieval and Renaissance times, why was Venice such an ideal city for a merchant to conduct business? Write an informative ....essay answering this question.
5. Why does Portia, a woman of astute intellect, abide by her father’s plan to have her marry a man selected by chance? Does Portia do ....anything to help her favorite suitor choose the right casket? 
6. Write an essay that tells what Portia would have done if the wrong man had selected the right casket. 
7. In Act II, Scene VII, the Prince of Morocco chooses the gold casket and discovers a message therein that opens with this famous line: ...."All that glisters [glitters] is not gold." What does this line mean?   
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........What Shakespeare thought about Jews is profoundly important to writers, teachers, actors, historians, social scientists, members of the clergy–indeed to every thinking human being–because of the extraordinary influence his literary legacy exerts on human thought and endeavor. The popularity of Shakespeare films in recent times further aggrandizes his reputation while instilling uneasiness in those who believe he harbored prejudices that inflame anti-Semitism.

I never heard a passion so confus’d,
So strange, outrageous, and so variable,
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets:
‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! (2. 8. 14-21)

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! (1. 3. 80-84)

Whatever is held sacred by the Romans, with the Jews is profane: and what in other nations is unlawful and impure, with them is permitted. . . . They eat and lodge with one another only; and though a people of unbridled lust, they admit no intercourse with women from other nations. Among themselves no restraints are imposed. . . . The first thing instilled in their proselytes is to despise the gods, to abjure their country, to set at naught parents, children, brothers. (321-322)

[Shylock in The Merchant of Venice] is one individual who, happening to be a Jew, is . . . a most meager man, a wretch no more and no less than others in Shakespeare who happen to be, as they are individual men, Irish, Welsh, French, Italian, English. One can judge the play an indictment of all Jews, and grossly anti-Semitic, if one cares to. Certainly in an age like ours, with our  humanitarianism and simultaneously the monstrous persecution and destruction of the Jews, it is difficult not to. But the play, in my understanding of it, involves no such indictment. What it does say is: see what happens to a man altogether committed, with a passion well nigh religious, to materialism; how it has destroyed him even as it would through him destroy others. . . . (127)

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto¹ you have rated² me
About my moneys and my usances³:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
“Shylock, we would have moneys”: you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur. (1. 3. 88-100)

Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadow’s livery of the burnish’d sun,
To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.
Bring me the fairest creature northward born,
Where Phoebus’ fire⁴ scarce thaws the icicles,
And let us make incision for your love,
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine
Hath fear’d the valiant: by my love I swear
The best-regarded virgins of our clime
Have loved it too: I would not change this hue,
Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. (2. 1. 3-14)

What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them: shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be season’d with such viands? You will answer
‘The slaves are ours’: so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it. (4. 1. 93-104)

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian 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 villany [villainy] you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (3. 1. 23)

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