Shylock as an accidental Sympathetic Villain
Now, Shylock is by no means the most perfect and innocent character in the world. However, in a post holocaust world, we can sympathize with Shylock a little more since he was being discriminated against for his religion.
A sympathetic villain has to have a few things. They need to have an understandable/relatable motive and we need to be able to sympathize with them. They only thing that would make them a villain is how they carry out there actions from there.
Shylock had an understandable motive. Antonio (and the rest of Venice) was being a complete jerk to the guy so he was going to get them back. The pound of flesh thing is what takes it too far and into villainous territory. Shylock was pretty justified in his revenge seeking, but to that extent is a bit too much (I think most of us can agree on that one).
We still live in a world with a lot of tension between Christianity and other religions, but reading this play after the holocaust sure makes you suck air in through your teeth, doesn't it? Anti-semitism isn't (or at least it shouldn't be) tolerated in our time period. So it's inevitable that we sympathize with Shylock at least a little bit. He is a human being and should be treated as such (he does go too far though).
When you compare that to Antonio... I'm just going to say it, Antonio is not all that likable to me. He's (and excuse my language on this) an asshole to Shylock and I'm not going to find any rich character too likable. Even in that sense, Shylock is on thin ice. Antonio thought he could play his little money games with no consequences (and he turned out to be right) and that's just not a very admirable trait.
So when I compare the two, side by side, I see that I like Shylock's complex character a bit more than Antonio's. I do wish I could have read a review of this play at the time to see what they all thought about it but I can imagine it's different from my own. Sometimes an antagonist is just a better character than the protagonist, though. More interesting, at least.
A sympathetic villain has to have a few things. They need to have an understandable/relatable motive and we need to be able to sympathize with them. They only thing that would make them a villain is how they carry out there actions from there.
Shylock had an understandable motive. Antonio (and the rest of Venice) was being a complete jerk to the guy so he was going to get them back. The pound of flesh thing is what takes it too far and into villainous territory. Shylock was pretty justified in his revenge seeking, but to that extent is a bit too much (I think most of us can agree on that one).
We still live in a world with a lot of tension between Christianity and other religions, but reading this play after the holocaust sure makes you suck air in through your teeth, doesn't it? Anti-semitism isn't (or at least it shouldn't be) tolerated in our time period. So it's inevitable that we sympathize with Shylock at least a little bit. He is a human being and should be treated as such (he does go too far though).
When you compare that to Antonio... I'm just going to say it, Antonio is not all that likable to me. He's (and excuse my language on this) an asshole to Shylock and I'm not going to find any rich character too likable. Even in that sense, Shylock is on thin ice. Antonio thought he could play his little money games with no consequences (and he turned out to be right) and that's just not a very admirable trait.
So when I compare the two, side by side, I see that I like Shylock's complex character a bit more than Antonio's. I do wish I could have read a review of this play at the time to see what they all thought about it but I can imagine it's different from my own. Sometimes an antagonist is just a better character than the protagonist, though. More interesting, at least.
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