Weekly ELA Blog Post #16

In the Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock recieves a harsh punishment for conspiring to murder a Venician citizen. As a modern reader, I find it hard to say his punishment, having to give away half his money to Antonio and promise the rest of it to his daughter upon death, should have been harsher or lighter. I'd say instead it seems it should have been different entirely. Ignoring the absurdity of the court deciding not to take its cut of his money and not to consider the death penalty, I just don't think the punishment was right. As bad as it all seems, Shylock really didn't do anything wrong in his eyes. Surely Antonio could have put something other than his own flesh up as collateral.  Also, its clear the court was very biased against Shylock as a Jew. The way I see it, Elizabethian readers who happened to be anti-Semitic would say his punishment should have been harsher, but those who didn't hate Jewish people probably would have agreed the results of this court case were absurd. After all, this book was written to grab reader's attention and be interesting, not detail a real court case that the author thought was fair. I'd think that as a good author, he probably made the case in the story controversial because that would spark discussion about the book.