A Plea For Tolerance In The Merchant Of Venice example essay topic

The Merchant of Venice is a romantic play, written around 1597 AD, by William Shakespeare. It is mainly about the beautiful things in life, like love and friendship. However, the play also has a darker side. Firstly, the Venetians in the play are very antisemitical, they hate the Jewish ethnic group. Moreover, they do not only hate the Jews, they hate everybody that is considered different than themselves. Finally, when reading the play it becomes apparent that the Venetians are very hypocritical.

What they accuse others of, they very often do themselves. By inserting these three elements in the play, namely antisemitism, xenophobia and hypocrisy, it becomes obvious that Shakespeare is making a plea for tolerance. The Venetians, the main characters of The Merchant of Venice, are an antisemitical group of people. This is exemplified by the passage in the play in which the Jew Shylock is talking to the Salarino about his daughter Jessica, who has run away with the Christian Lorenzo.

When Shylock refers to Jessica as his own flesh and blood, Salarino replies as follows: "There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish" (3.1. 31-33). The fact that Salarino compares Jessica, a former Jew converted to Christianity, to red wine, and Shylock, a Jew, to Rhenish shows that the hatred is not towards Shylock as a person, but towards Judaism as a religion. This can only be defined as antisemitism. The hatred towards the Jewish religion does not stand alone in the play, on the contrary. The antisemitical part of The Merchant of Venice is a small part of a bigger whole.

It becomes apparent that the Venetians have a fear of, or hatred for, everyone that is different from themselves. This xenophobia is clearly exemplified in the play, when Portia and her waiting-gentlewoman Nerissa discuss previous suitors to Portia. Nerissa: First, there is the Neapolitan prince. Portia: Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself. I am much a feared my lady his mother played false with a smith. Nerissa: Then there is the County Palatine.

Portia: He doth nothing but frown, as who should say, "And you will not have me, choose". He hears merry tales and smiles not; I fear he will prove the sweeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death's head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two! (1.2. 33-44) Out of this conversation between Portia and Nerissa it quickly becomes clear that Portia will never choose a foreign man, simply because he is different.

These are very xenophobic al views. Antisemitism and xenophobia are not the only negative elements in The Merchant of Venice. Hypocrisy is also something that occurs regularly in the play. A clear example of this is when the Prince of Morocco, one of Portia's suitors, has chosen the golden casket, which turns out to be the incorrect one. After Morocco's exit Portia says the following to herself: "A gentle riddance!

Draw the curtains, go. Let all of his complexion choose me so" (2.7. 78-79). Portia condemns Morocco, calling him shallow for choosing the golden casket, while she is being shallow herself for judging him on the colour of his skin. Condemning him for doing something she herself does as well makes her a very hypocritical person. To sum up, William Shakespeare uses these three qualities of character, namely antisemitism, xenophobia and hypocrisy, to express his feelings on these subjects.

His point is that everybody is the same, everybody is human, and that should be respected. It is ignorant and useless to hate or fear someone because he is of a different religion, like antisemitism, or because he is just different, like xenophobia. There is one quote in the play, from Shylock, that embodies Shakespeare's message perfectly. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapon, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? (3.1. 46-52) Shylock's words are, like William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as a whole, a desperate plea for tolerance.