Shylock

This article has many issues. Please help fix them or discuss these issues on the article's talk page. This page or section needs to be cleaned up. Please help clean the page if you can. For tips on making this article better, read "How to edit a page" and "How to write Simple English pages". (June 2026) This article needs more links to other articles. You can help make this article better by adding links that are relevant to the context. (June 2026) This article does not have any sources. You can help Wikipedia by finding good sources, and adding them. (June 2026) This article needs to be wikified. Please do this by following our layout guide. (June 2026)

Shylock
Shylock after the trial
Created by	William Shakespeare
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Moneylender
Children	Jessica
Religion	Judaism

Shylock is a key character and the antagonist in Shakespeare's 1596 or 1597 play The Merchant of Venice. He is a Jewish moneylender.

Shylock agrees to a bond (contract) with Antonio, the merchant of Venice. This bond requires Antonio to give a pound of his flesh next to his heart (perhaps meaning his arm, specifically the left) should the money not be repaid on a certain date. When Antonio fails, Shylock goes to court to get the pound of flesh. In shakespearian times, the left things were more often called evil, or related to the devil. This would be Shylock taking that (connection to Satan) for himself, and the play often talks about evil deeds. Antonio had previously insulted and spat on him in the Rialto (the commercial centre of Venice). While the two were having an argument, during the negotiation of the bond, Shylock says he would be Antonio's friend, but Antonio declined. These interactions helps to explain why Shylock demanded his pound of flesh.

Meanwhile, Shylock's daughter Jessica falls in love with Antonio's friend Lorenzo and converts to Christianity. This adds to Shylock's rage.

Shylock even tries to go to another land to trick people into giving him the reward for the bond. He did this by going another person and pretending to be Antonio, claiming that he did not have the money to pay, and that he would get punished without their help. The people offer him the repayment so that the punishment for not paying it did not happen, but he declined as he will do again later. He probably wanted to take the money at first so that he could have both the payment and revenge, but was tempted by something as he was as well later. This is called a callback in the arts. Shylock might not have wanted the money so that he could have technically paid for the pound of flesh, and this makes it his, or maybe because it is a monetary transaction (for his time and effort). Making the bond with Antonio with the intention of taking back the money would be profiting (of a sale), and while not taking interest at all is the same as paying the money, rather than lending, proves a financial transaction. That transaction would be paying for the flesh rather than taking risk and profiting from interest or losing money. It is a transaction for the flesh, or person, which causes the person to become property, or an item, alongside branding. This being to give up money (pay for) to get the same thing as he would if he had taken back the money and lost out on interest. This makes it losing something that he likes to spite someone he does not, which maybe he was offering if he was not lying with his "out" of the two being friends. This is to make it significant, both to the play and the Shylock character, draw attention to property, and Shylock's possession of it, hinting at future events in the play as well as building character, and making the plot more personal as well as believable. Within the play, Shylock makes many calls to humanity (of the Jews), in which Shakespeare equates the Jews to being people with parts where Shylock says "hath a Jew not eyes", calling him people, and "if you prick me, do we not bleed?" (relating to the blood coming with the pound of flesh, coming with the fact that Shylock does not see Antonio as a person, and saying that Shylock claims that Jews bleed like other people). In another, the play writes in the script a quote, "The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction", about the evil (left things, or left part of the body in this case) as well as Shakespeare saying Jews bleed (get upset) too, coming with other things laid out in the play related to "eye for an eye" for the plot (such as property for attempted property or what other things "come with" other things), and that the pain Jews inflict upon people is like the pain they would feel if they saw his play.

Even if Shylock took the money for the bond from elsewhere and taken the money from Antonio then he would have had double (if not more) the amount. There was probably no intention of honouring the bond from the start. In the play, this may be due to the pound of flesh being worth more (than money) to him, and taking multiple amounts of it is not different. This is the same as Shylock not asking for more money than he did, Antonios merchant company doing well. It could be him making sure that Antonio took the deal. If Shylock took the bond and honoured it, he could be doing so to prove that he would be Antonio's friend (with a reasonable value to it). However this would mean that Shylock wanted to be Antonio's friend all along, and not that he cares less, and he says that the amount he wanted in return (or multiples amount of it) was nothing to him. In this case he would still be taking the money.

In the plot, Antonio was technically still a human (not cattle) when Shylock offered a peace deal. This is related to the trick that Shylock pulled, later revealed as him not taking money back in the play (in potential outcomes for the play) and lore inside it (when the judge was offering the money back, judging Shylock's intent). She did this because humans are not property. He did this because if Antonio did want to be neutral or friends then Shylock would have lost money, or that his total income from everything else would have been negative instead of 0. What the play did reveal, possibly, is the trick that he used to get around it, if he was not intent on taking the money back. If this was the case then Shylock was making one deal with Antonio with what was really traded being different, being a living thing, which a human (as he would currently be) could not agree to because they are sentient.

Shylock fails in court because a pound of flesh would come with some of Antonio's blood. Antonio is released from the bond and Shylock is charged with attempted murder. The purpose of the flesh being on his chest was to brand him (else he could could off a finger with no blood supply, or cut the finger and make him suck out the blood as blood supply is cut off). This is relevant because Jewish people typically think non-jews are animals (cattle), and this would be Shylock trying to brand cattle aka property. Shylock was forced to give half of his properties to the country and the other half to Antonio and to convert to Christianity; his wife also had to have sex with other men also, and she left Shylock. If a branding iron was used on Antonio then no blood would be spilled, getting around the charge but being a different crime and branding people for not paying back money. The property exchange in forfeit is a mirror to the attempted trickery of Shylock trying to call humans property, which he half got away with too.

Shylock has a famous speech beginning "Hath not a Jew eyes?" Famous actors who have played Shylock include Laurence Olivier. This is also setup and foreshadowing for the exchange between Shylock and the blind man where he tricks the old, blind man. This famous quote is also supposedly about the Jews being evil in it's underlying meaning. Solani also says "O my ducats! O my daughter!" which is saying the Jews prioritise money over family. This is related to the divorce between Shylock and his wife also. In the Jewish laws or "Hammurabi's" it says that if a master destroys his slaves tooth, or his eye, which was mentioned in the play, that the slave has to be given immediate freedom. It also says that if even a non-Hebrew slave is killed by their master (Shylock in this case) then the master faces the same punishment. Although Shylock was only charged with attempted murder, he does mention before this charge and after he made a deal with Antonio about eyes. In other stories, Shakespeare used teeth as a metaphor for how evil the Jews are.^[source?]

In Shakespeare's time, no Jews had been legally present in England for several hundred years (since Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290). But the idea of Jews as money lenders remained from the Middle Ages.

Historically, money lending had been a fairly common occupation among Jews rather than Christians. Because Christians were not allowed to practise usury (charging interest on loans), the church, or knights Templar, used to help people loan money by a complex system of charity-based loans secured by the church, and other Christian people did not do it. In the book of Leviticus 25:44–46, it says that money must be transferred for ownership of a slave, like there was in the story. This would make Antonio a slave. However, even though stealing the blood of Antonio, voiding the contract, and tricking or testing the character of Shylock, would cause the murder of Antonio (without the intervention of Christian law) and allow him to be punished the same way according to laws of Hammurabi, he did not. He also might not have been a slave, or in some way the story has nullified that with the characters actions, here or elsewhere. In this case it would be, again, branding a human being. This is again pointing out evil on one hand, and reciprocation but in greater effect on the other, as well as the hypocrisy of them.