Weekly ELA Blog #15

I recently read Act 3 of The Merchant of Venice. In it, Shylock gave a short speech to prove Jews are equal to Christians. This seems odd, seeing as there was such strong anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's time. It seems, though, that this is not Shakespeare trying to make a case in defense of Jews. Rather, it seems he just meant to give the villain a good argument. I think he still meant for Shylock to be portrayed as the bad guy. However, he gave Shylock a strong argument because he didn't want one-dimensional characters. When charactets are "good" and "bad" with no motives, the story is often boring.