Term 3 Week 5 (Blogging Assignment)

You are required to respond to one of the questions in the Anti-Semitism handout. The question is as follows:

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

I feel that Shakespeare's intention of creating Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is to satisfy his audience desire. During that time, Venice strive with Anti-Semitism and it will not benefit him if he tried to promote non Anti-Semitism. This will also be a financial advantage for Shakespeare as many people would want to know the outcome of Shylock, the bad character of The Merchant of Venice. Also since the audience are Anti-Semitism, they would be interested in Shakespeare's play as it is talking about Anti-Semitism and the audience would be interested in it.

Also, Shakespeare could have just created Shylock to be the bad guy in his play so as to show the conflict between the Christian and the Jews. The play could be telling the audience that the Jews were not that bad and try to solve the conflict between the Jews and the Christians.