With close reference to the language and dramatic action of Act 3, Scene 1, comment on the way an audience might react to Shylock’s character.

In this scene, Salarino and Salanio mock Shylock. Though Shylock is hard on his daughter, who has eloped with a Christian and stolen some of his money, the audience may sympathize with him in the face of such taunts. The men have no sympathy for him: “There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory.” When they ask Shylock about Antonio, Shylock repeats, “let him look to his bond.” This repetition is like a mantra, conveying to the audience Shylock’s desire for vengeance and possibly his instability.

In a powerful speech, Shylock describes why revenge against Antonio is justified. He lists the ways in which Antonio has hurt him, effectively gaining the audience’s pity: “He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies.” Shylock says this is all because he is Jewish.

He systematically notes how similar Jews and Christians are, comparing their ability to bleed, to get sick, and to laugh. His logical conclusion is that Jewish people have every right to revenge themselves as Christians do: “If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.” The monologue is extremely convincing if not wholly sincere: Antonio appears to hate Shylock’s moneylending more than his status as a Jew. Still, the limited opportunities of Jews in Venice at the time make it so Shylock’s occupation and his religious and ethnic identity are directly intertwined.

Shylock loses some sympathy by stating, “I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear!” However, his grief over Jessica’s stealing and trading of his wife’s ring depicts Shylock as a character with genuine pain. It is difficult to know how people would have reacted when the play was first performed, but now, especially after the Holocaust, audiences tend to feel sorry for the dynamic, wronged Shylock who fights against the antisemitic society in which he lives.