Term 3 Week 4 Assignment Shylock

  In my opinion, the purpose of Shakespeare creating Shylock was to add more drama into his play, and to make it more realistic. In the era where Shakespeare created this play, anti-semitism was almost at its peak. By creating characters to portray the different aspects of people we see today, it is adding to the realistic aspect of the whole play. At that era, christianity was the most common religion there was, and as being a Jew was said to be anti-christian and to be cruxifiying Jesus, the Christians hated the Jews, and the Jews were portrayed by the Christians to be the 'bad guys'. As such, by introducing the character Shylock into the play, Shakespeare is actually trying to make his play more popular as at that time, there were a lot more Christians than Jews, this makes it such that a play which is anti-jew would be more popular than a play that showed regular people having problems around factors of money, love, life and death.
  Also, we cannot rule out the fact that Shakespeare may have created this play to show his feelings towards the Jews. Shakespeare is an accomplished play maker and maybe, by creating Shylock, he is trying to show the world that he actually agrees with what most Christians say and that Jews are evil. He may just be expressing his points of view through his play. Or maybe, the play may actually be trying to show how the Jews are not so different from the Christians and we are all normal people, and that he is trying to impart a value to the world, which is to not be treat people with different people with different religions differently, as they are as normal as you. “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? … 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? The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” Jews are people, they have feelings too. So, is Shakespeare pro Jew, or anti Jew, that is the question.