2020-06-10 14:52:58 ¶ ●

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Merchant of Venice: Is it a comedy? What do you think? In my opinion, it leans more on the side of a tragedy.

Yup. The whole play is pretty anti-Semitic and racist, so that’s a bit of an issue. It’s pretty sad how the whole story is “hey I’m gonna borrow some money from this one guy, and for some reason agree to let him take a pound of my flesh if I can’t repay him— oh look, I can’t repay him. Huh. Wow he’s so evil for trying to take a pound of my flesh (after I’ve attacked him over his religion multiple times) - but it’s ok because my best friend’s wife will save me and make him lose all his possessions. Also force him to convert. Nice!”

I mean, if someone would repeatedly attack another person over their religion or race, would you really blame the person who was attacked for maybe wanting to stab the guy who won’t stop attacking them?

We know that there have been multiple incidents of Antonio physically and verbally attacking Shylock, and Antonio outright says he won’t stop. I was partially hoping that Shylock would get to do some stabbing, but nah. The audience at that time wouldn’t be ready for something like that. If he had stabbed him though, it would have been labeled at a tragedy. It would also significantly improve the play.