Shakespeare's Intentions

What were Shakespeare’s intentions?

Honestly, this play sucks. There is not a single character in this play that we can actually like wholeheartedly throughout the play. This play has some major elements of the discrimination of race as well as religion, something that not only makes the plot hard to read at times but also controversial in many different occurrences. While the play may try to have a happy ending, the only people who are genuinely “happy” are the Christians and Shylock ultimately gets screwed over. But why would Shakespeare write a play like this?

When writing this play, was Shakespeare trying to promote his opinion and stereotypes of the Jewish community? In England, Jews were expelled in the 1290s but were then accepted back into society in the 17^th century. This play, though, was written in about 1597. Therefore, Shakespeare lived in a Christianity-dominated period where Jews were never truly accepted in society and were outcasts. During this time period, Jews were more often than not discriminated against by being treated as second class citizens and were not protected by the law whatsoever. Christianity was the dominating religion, while Jews were in the minority.

In a post-Holocaust society, we see this play as unethical and politically incorrect and parts of the play have been changed to make it more acceptable in modern society. At the time this drama was written, the prejudice inflicted on the Jewish community was completely normal. Maybe this play was meant to expose how unfairly Jews were treated, most likely not though. For example, when we read the trial scene in modern times, Shylock is screwed over, not protected by the law, and in the end, being forced to convert to a religion that he despised. As readers, we see a clear bias toward Christians consistently.

Personally, I believe Shakespeare wrote this because he knew he could get away with writing it. While back in this time period, the discrimination of the Jewish community was common and accepted amongst the majority of the population, it still bashed on a group of people. The Jewish community was probably not thrilled about this play, but I don’t think Shakespeare really cared, he was still going to make money off of it. At the time, no one would have stood up and said this was wrong and I think Shakespeare was aware that there would be no major backlash. But now, even after everything that has happened in our history involving the Jewish community, we still read this play and talk about the significance of the performance.