Character Analysis of Shylock in William Shakespeare´s...

The presentation of a character may affect the amount of sympathy the character gains from the audience. Shakespeare presents the character of Shylock as a flesh eating, greedy and obsessive character in his play ‘merchant of Venice’; by doing this Shakespeare manipulates the response Shylock gets from the audience in Act 4 Scene 1. Our response is manipulated by S. so most of the audience, by the end of the play, feel none or very little sympathy towards the character of Shylock. The audience see the side of Shylock, who is driven by the desire for revenge. At the start of the play Shylock says in his soliloquy ‘If I can catch him once upon the hip’ this shows his crave to catch Antonio out, it also shows that all Shylock wants is the upper hand; to have power over Antonio. In that same speech he also says ‘feed fat the ancient grudge’ indicating that he will feed fat of Antonio as a way of revenge and this will be the only thing that satisfies him to the full. Shakespeare uses alliteration in this speech, which makes it more memorable for the audience so they can remember the thoughts of Shylock. S. also associates Shylock with cannibalism, it gives the audience a clear indication that Shylock’s aim is to Kill Antonio. Therefore when Shylock is stripped from his chance of rev enge, the audience may not feel sympathy for him as they know that is intention was to kill Antonio, and he had a clear motive for it. Shylock’s motive may actually be the fact that he is losing