By: emilie

emilie — Mon, 16 May 2022 19:00:23 +0000

In “the merchant of Venice” Jessica, the Jewish daughter of Shylock, falls deeply in love and elopes with Lorenzo, a Christian. As soon as Shylock leaves their house to attend a dinner event, Lorenzo arrives to flee with Jessica. Jessica disguises herself as a man in order to prevent revealing her identity. At first, she dislikes her disguise and proves to be self-conscious and somewhat ashamed thinking that Lorenzo will disapprove. She is relieved that it is dark outside. Despite her embarrassment, she comes to the realization that Lorenzo is in love her and hardly seems to notice her disguise. She thus proclaims that “love is blind”. Lorenzo doesn’t love Jessica for her physical appearance but rather for her personality, intellect and other nonvisible qualities. By this, Shakespeare means that two true lovers, both blindfolded, could fall in love anyways, no matter what.

By: kevin upson

kevin upson — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 01:16:47 +0000

i see the play as a tragedy the resulting from systemic antisemitism in the same vein as Romero & Juliet is to blood feuds. The only difference is Romero & Juliet were pure victims. Shylock & Antonio are both victims and collaborators. To much is made of Shylock’s conversion given the close proximity in time to the Inquisition where Jews had the choice of death or conversion (real or as a public performance). Antonio had no choice about accepting the judgement and thus for the first time felt the impact of the systems injustice without Christian privilege. His act of mercy is a resulted from his first hand lesson of an injustice system, not the greater mercy of Christianity. Had Antonio not insisted on Shylock’s conversion added to the pardon then the end would be the same lesson against systemic antisemitism as Romero & Juliet’s end with both families reconciling of blood feuds. However by insisted on Shylock’s conversion Shylock had no chance to identify with Christian privilege being a pariah to everybody.
This reflects the nature of cognitive intelligence’s learning via pattern matching. Romero & Juliet’s families can reconcile because they see no difference in appearance between them other then name. When there are distinct differences intellect cannot overcome bias that pattern matching has ingrained. These differences can be physical (race) or dress as military uses uniforms for. Jews in Vienna dressed differently and were mandated to were a red cap.

Comments on: Shylock, The Merchant Of Venice

By: emilie

By: kevin upson