The Merchant Of Venice Critical Analysis

914 Words4 Pages

In this paper, it focuses on the reading of tutorial four, entitled “The Merchant of Venice”. It was a journal article under the category of literary studies, written by Jay L. Halio in 1998. This reading is classified as a secondary source, because the author Halio was not a participant of the topic. But he studied the original edition by William Shakespeare written in 16th century. Halio the author did research on it and interpreted the original edition into today’s language for people’s better understanding.

To briefly sum up, it was about a Jewish lender named Shylock who charge excessive interest to the Christian merchant Antonio. The scene starts when Antonio, a Venice merchant who need 3000 ducats to help his friend. He then turns to a Jewish lender named Shylock, who usually earn interest from lending. Shylock views the Jewish as naïve to lend money freely without charging interest, and he against this practice. Therefore, he at first refuse to lend it freely. However, through Antonio’s argument against usury, that it is immoral and against nature to make gold generative. Finally, Shylock agrees to lend with no interest, but with a specific condition – forfeit of repay requires taking of Antonio’s flesh.

To put Shakespeare’s play into its historical context, which was written in the background of 16th century. At that time, usury has been a debatable issue in England, and major pamphlets about it were passed. On the one hand, usury was commonly adopted by the popes

Open Document