Term 3 Week 5 What do you think is Shakespeare's intention of creating Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? Support your opinion with examples.

Shylock is one of the most important characters in the merchant of Venice. However, nobody is able to confirm whether he is “more sinned against than sinning”. Almost every story must basically consist of a villain and a “good guy”.

At that time, the audiences of Shakespeare’s play hated Jews. Hence Shakespeare made use of this and made Shylock a Jew character. His purpose in the play is to “play a villain” and stand in the way of the good people like Antonio, Bassanio and many others. Without Shylock, there also will not be the court scene, which is actually the most important scene the whole of Merchant of Venice. Hence, Shylock also helps to develop the story and make it more interesting and exciting, making the audience start thinking who will win- The Jew that they all hate, or Antonio.

When Shylock is stripped of all that he has. In every story, the villain will always lose. In this case, Shylock plays the part where the villain loses and does not get a pound of his flesh from Antonio, and even ends up losing his money, pride, and religion.

Hence, we can conclude that Shylock actually plays an extremely important part in the Merchant of Venice as without him, there would not be any plot or climax in the story.