Shylock
Character Profile – At a Glance
- Role: The Venetian Jewish moneylender who lends three thousand ducats to Antonio against a bond of a pound of flesh, is defeated in court, and is forced to convert to Christianity.
- Key Traits: Sharp, watchful, and proud; quick to quote scripture; deeply wronged and unwilling to forget it; and capable, in A3S1, of the most famous plea for shared humanity in all of Shakespeare ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?").
- The Core Conflict: A Jewish moneylender in Christian Venice, despised by the men he does business with, is handed the legal chance to make that Christian world answer for how it has treated him.
- Key Actions: Strikes the bond with Antonio in A1S3; tells Jessica to "lock up my doors" in A2S5; speaks the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech and grieves for Leah's ring in A3S1; refuses to negotiate in A3S3; demands "the penalty and forfeit of my bond" in A4S1; is undone by Portia in disguise; and is sentenced to lose his estate and convert.
- Famous Quote:
"If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
(Act 3, Scene 1) - The Outcome: He leaves the courtroom in A4S1 with the line "I am not well" – beaten, ruined, and stripped of his religion. The play gives him no closing scene; the comedy at Belmont goes on without him.
"I Hate Him For He Is a Christian"
Shylock's first real moment in the play is the A1S3 bond scene, and the aside he speaks inside it tells us exactly where he stands as the action begins.
Original
[Aside] How like a fawning publican he looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,
Even there where merchants most do congregate,
On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift,
Which he calls interest.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
He's like a sycophantic tax-collector!
I hate this man because he is a Christian,
But more than that, he idiotically
Lends money interest-free, thereby reducing
Inflated rates that we can charge in Venice.
If I can catch him out and trip him up,
I'll cure the long-held grudge I hold against him.
He hates our Jewish race, and he badmouths –
Especially to the merchants on the plaza –
About me, of my deals and hard-earned wealth,
Which he demeans as 'interest'.
The speech lays out three separate reasons for the hatred, one after another. The first is religious: "I hate him for he is a Christian." The second is commercial: Antonio lends without interest, which drives down the rate Shylock can charge. The third is personal: Antonio has stood in the public space of the Rialto and "railed on me, my bargains and my well-won thrift." The three reasons stack up. Shylock's hatred is not vague; it is the build-up of years of specific commercial and personal injury. The aside also tells us that the bond he is about to offer is not really the "merry sport" he will call it a minute later – he wants the chance to "feed fat the ancient grudge" he has been carrying. And the grudge is answered openly within the same scene: Antonio tells him "I am as like to call thee so again, to spit on thee again, to spurn thee too." The bond is the legal lever by which Shylock tries to make that conduct count against the man who admits to it – and the play's real question is whether his aim can be read as anything other than revenge.
"Lock Up My Doors"
A2S5 is the most domestic scene Shylock gets. Bassanio has invited him to supper, and he is leaving Jessica in charge of the house.
Original
What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces,
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements:
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter
My sober house.
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
What, they'll be wearing masks? Now, listen, Jessica:
Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And awful screeching from the bent-necked flute,
Don't climb up to the swinging double windows
Nor stick your head outside to see the streets
And watch the foolish Christians wearing masks,
But block the sounds by closing up my windows.
Don't let the sounds of juvenile behaviour
Get in my sombre house.
This is the clearest picture we get of Shylock as the head of a household. He spells out the rule his house runs by: it is "sober"; it keeps out the music and revelry the Christians enjoy; it shuts its windows against the street. The same play later puts Lorenzo on the opposite side of that line – "the man that hath no music in himself... is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils" – and by Lorenzo's own logic the charge lands squarely on the man who bars music from his door. What complicates it is the care in the speech. Shylock is not abandoning Jessica; he is instructing her, in enough detail to show a household he has thought hard about. The "sober house" is, in his own account, a place of dignity and protection from the Christian street. But the care cuts both ways, and the play does not settle it. Jessica has already called the same house "hell," and both readings stand: a father ordering his home for his daughter's safety, and a discipline grown rigid enough to become the cage she runs from.
"Hath Not a Jew Eyes?"
A3S1 holds the most famous speech in the play. Jessica has eloped, Antonio's ships are reported lost, and Salarino and Solanio are baiting Shylock in the Rialto.
Original
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, 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? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
He has disgraced me, and owes me half a million gold coins. He's laughed at my losses, mocked me when I've done well, scorned my nation, derailed my deals, damaged my friendships, incited my enemies. And what is his reason? Because I am a Jew. Does a Jew not have eyes? Does a Jew not have hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Is a Jew not fed with the same food, hurt by the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same medicines, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, just like a Christian is? If you cut us, don't we still bleed? If you tickle us, don't we still laugh? If you poison us, don't we still die? And if you do us wrong, can't we take revenge? If we are like you in everything else, we will behave like you.
Salarino has just asked what a pound of Antonio's flesh could possibly be good for, and Shylock turns the sneer into a sustained argument about Jewish humanity. The catalogue of body parts – "eyes... hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions" – does the work: the Jewish body runs on the same machinery as the Christian one, so any moral gap between them cannot rest on the body. The four-part question that follows builds the same way. Each clause names a shared human response – bleeding, laughing, dying – and then the last one, "shall we not revenge?", drops revenge into the same list, as if it were simply one more thing bodies do. That is the turn that makes the speech so unsettling. Shylock is not pleading for peace between Christian and Jew; he is arguing that the revenge he plans is the natural result of their likeness: "If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge." The same argument that proves their common humanity is used to justify the cruelty common humanity might have prevented. It is one of Shakespeare's most carefully built speeches precisely because it is two things at once: the play's strongest case for Jewish humanity, and the play's strongest statement of the revenge that case is being made to serve.
"My Turquoise"
The same scene gives Shylock one of his most exposed moments – his grief at losing the turquoise ring Leah gave him before they married.
Original
Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Damn her! You're torturing me, Tubal. It was my turquoise ring that Leah gave me when I was a bachelor. I would not have swapped it for all the monkeys in the world!
Tubal has just told Shylock that Jessica, in Genoa, has traded the turquoise for a monkey. The ring came from Leah, his late wife, when he was courting her – the one thing in the house that still tied him to the woman he loved and to the life he had before Jessica was born. His grief at losing it is some of the most raw feeling Shakespeare gives any character. What makes the moment matter so much is what comes just before it: the report (in A2S8) of Shylock running through the streets crying out for his daughter and his ducats in the same breath, which hostile readers take as proof that he cannot tell the two apart. The turquoise answers that charge directly. The money can be replaced; the ring cannot. He would not have traded it "for a wilderness of monkeys" – and that single line is the play's clearest evidence that Shylock's grief runs deeper than his accounts. The decision to hand him this moment is one of Shakespeare's most pointed choices in the whole part.
"I Crave the Law"
A4S1 is Shylock's biggest scene, and the writing here works at the highest level the part reaches.
Original
What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
…
My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
What should I fear when I've done nothing wrong?
…
I choose how I will act! I want the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.
In the courtroom Shylock does not argue for revenge; he argues for the law. The bond is valid on its own terms, the court has not questioned its validity, and he is simply asking for the verdict the bond requires. The logic is exact and hard to answer. If Venice will not enforce the bond against him, then Venice cannot be trusted to enforce any bond against anyone – and the whole commercial system the city's wealth rests on starts to come apart. "I crave the law" is his entire position. He is not asking for kindness or charity; he is asking that a contract the Christian merchant signed, in full knowledge of its terms, be honoured. It is the strongest position anyone holds in the scene, and it cannot be beaten on its own ground: Portia wins not by out-arguing him but by the pound-of-flesh, no-drop-of-blood trick, which sidesteps the real question rather than answering it. The verdict then goes further than defeat. Shylock must forfeit half his estate, hand the other half in trust to Jessica and Lorenzo, and convert to Christianity – the last condition added by Portia and backed by Antonio. The court ends up performing on Shylock something close to the religious and personal violence he had planned for Antonio – and the gap between the "quality of mercy" speech and the sentence that follows it could hardly be more exposed.
"I Am Not Well"
Shylock's last line in the play is one of Shakespeare's most carefully judged exits, and the comedy that follows never brings its chief antagonist back.
Original
I pray you, give me leave to go from hence;
I am not well: send the deed after me,
And I will sign it.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I ask you set me free to leave from here;
I am not well. Send the deed after me
And I will sign it.
Shylock leaves the play at the lowest point he reaches – ruined, stripped of his religion, cut off from his daughter, his own bond turned against him – and the comedy carries on to Belmont without giving him another line. That silence is deliberate. Comedy of this kind usually either folds the antagonist back into the happy ending or removes him cleanly enough that the play can move on without his shadow. Shylock gets neither. He leaves broken but alive; he is not at the closing scene; and Belmont never once mentions that he is missing. "I am not well" carries the whole weight of it. He is worn out, beaten, and aware that what has been done to him is enough to drive him from the room. He walks out on his own legs, but as a man whose part in the play has been made impossible to continue. The closing music at Belmont – warm, lyrical, full of marriage – cannot quite be heard clean once you know who is not there to hear it.
"Shylock is a good hater; 'a man no less sinned against than sinning.'"
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1817
Key Quotes by Shylock
Quote 1
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I hate this man because he is a Christian,
But more than that, he idiotically
Lends money interest-free, thereby reducing
Inflated rates that we can charge in Venice.
If I can catch him out and trip him up,
I'll cure the long-held grudge I hold against him.
Quote Analysis: Shylock's key aside in A1S3, and the clearest sign of how his hatred works. The three reasons – religious, commercial, personal – come one after another, which shows the hatred is not abstract but built up over time. The "ancient grudge" he wants to "feed fat" is not the result of one insult; it is the result of years of specific treatment. He hates, but the play keeps reminding us that the men he hates have earned a good deal of it.
Quote 2
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If you cut us, don't we still bleed?
If you tickle us, don't we still laugh?
If you poison us, don't we still die?
And if you do us wrong, can't we take revenge?
Quote Analysis: One of the most quoted passages in all of Shakespeare, and the play's strongest argument for shared humanity. The four-part question works by listing: each clause names a response everyone shares, and the last one slips revenge into the same list as bleeding, laughing, and dying. That is the clever, troubling part. Shylock uses the case for common humanity to justify the revenge common humanity might have stopped – and the play never actually disproves his logic.
Quote 3
It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It was my turquoise ring that Leah gave me when I was a bachelor. I would not have swapped it for all the monkeys in the world!
Quote Analysis: Shylock's most exposed moment of grief, and the clearest window into his inner life. The turquoise was Leah's courtship gift, and the "wilderness of monkeys" line carries the loss without any decoration. It is the play's main answer to the idea that Shylock is just a miser: the money can be replaced, the ring cannot, and he knows the difference.
Quote 4
My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I choose how I will act! I want the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.
Quote Analysis: Shylock's signature line in the courtroom. He is not asking for revenge; he is asking for the law. The bond is valid, the court has not said otherwise, and he wants only the verdict it requires. It is the strongest position in the scene, and the Christians cannot argue it down without undercutting the very commercial system their own wealth depends on.
Key Takeaways
- The Play's Other Lead: Anna Jameson's 1832 reading set Shylock and Portia side by side as the play's two real protagonists – "a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by the side of a gorgeous Rembrandt" – and the trial scene bears this out.
- The Good Hater: Hazlitt's 1817 verdict – "Shylock is a good hater; a man no less sinned against than sinning" – has shaped two hundred years of criticism, and the "sinned against" half is backed by conduct Antonio openly admits to.
- The Case for Shared Humanity: "Hath not a Jew eyes? ... If you prick us, do we not bleed?" is one of the most quoted passages in Shakespeare, and the play's strongest argument that Jew and Christian stand on equal ground.
- Defeat and Conversion: Shylock exits in A4S1 with "I am not well" – ruined, forced to convert, and absent from the happy ending at Belmont. The play gives him no closure, and that silence is its own quiet admission of what the comedy has cost.
Study Questions and Analysis
Is Shylock a villain or a victim?
The play refuses a clean answer, and that refusal has been the central puzzle of its reception for two centuries. The case for villainy is straightforward: Shylock proposes the pound-of-flesh bond as the price of the loan, refuses to negotiate when Antonio's ships are lost, sharpens his knife in the courtroom, and turns down every appeal to mercy. The conduct is not in dispute. The case for victimhood is equally concrete, and Shylock states it himself in A1S3, cataloguing the years of public abuse he has absorbed:
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Signior Antonio, there've been many times
That you've lambasted me at the Rialto
About my money and my rates-of-interest.
Each time I've patiently just shrugged it off,
Because us Jews are used to suffering.
The bond answers years of specific injury – Antonio has, in Shylock's words, called him "misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine," conduct Antonio confirms outright in A1S3; his daughter has eloped with a Christian, taking his money, his jewels, and Leah's ring; his fortune is half-lost by the time of the trial; his treatment in court, especially by Gratiano, is openly contemptuous; and the verdict strips him of his estate and his religion. William Hazlitt's 1817 Characters of Shakespeare's Plays caught the difficulty in a phrase: Shylock is "a good hater; a man no less sinned against than sinning." It does not let him off – he hates, and the hatred drives him – but it sets that hatred inside the world his Christian neighbours have built. Most criticism since the late nineteenth century has followed Hazlitt's lead. The real question, then, is not whether Shylock is villain or victim but what happens to the comedy once both are visible at once. The answer the play allows is that the comedy runs on terms it cannot finally justify – and that Shylock's absence from the closing scene is its own quiet acknowledgement of the fact.
What is the significance of "Hath not a Jew eyes?"
It is one of the most quoted passages in Shakespeare, and its meaning has shifted across centuries of reading. Inside the play, the speech is an argument: Shylock is defending the bond by appeal to shared humanity. The list of body parts ("eyes... hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions") sets Jew and Christian on the same biological footing; the four-part question that follows ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?") puts their shared responses on the same basis; and the closing "shall we not revenge?" uses that shared humanity to justify the revenge shared humanity might have prevented. What complicates the speech is the distance between the argument Shylock is making and the use later readers have made of it. From the nineteenth century onward, "Hath not a Jew eyes?" has been quoted on its own as a defence of Jewish humanity – a piece of universal rhetoric that Shakespeare quietly hands to a Jewish character at the height of his grievance. That universal reading is fair to the text: the enumeration is accurate, the appeal to common humanity is serious, and the principle is the ground on which any later argument against religious or ethnic prejudice stands. The play's own use of the speech is darker. Shylock deploys the principle to justify revenge; no other character is given a comparable chance to defend himself on the same terms; and the A4S1 verdict will deny Shylock the very protections his appeal has implicitly claimed. So the speech does double duty: it is the play's most rigorous argument for the equality of Jew and Christian, and its most carefully built piece of evidence for how that argument is received and refused in the world the play shows.
Why does Shylock demand the pound of flesh?
The evidence supports several motives at once. The first, which Shylock states himself in A3S1, is revenge: he has been disgraced, hindered, mocked, and scorned by Antonio for years, and the bond is the legal means of settling the account. He frames that revenge, pointedly, as something the Christians themselves have taught him:
The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The evil things you teach me, I will do in return, but more intensely than you have taught me.
The second motive, set out in A1S3, is the wider quarrel between Antonio's interest-free lending, which drives down Venetian rates, and Shylock's own trade; Antonio has threatened his livelihood as well as insulted his religion. The third, running under the play's whole structure, is the loss of Jessica: her elopement with the Christian Lorenzo in A2S6, and then the report in A3S1 that she has traded Leah's ring for a monkey, turn a general grievance into a sharp personal loss for which the Christian community is, in his eyes, to blame. The fourth, more abstract, is the legal principle he states in A4S1: if Venice will not enforce the bond against him, it cannot be relied on to enforce any bond against anyone, and the commercial order the city depends on collapses. The motives work together. None of them alone explains the demand; all of them together do. The play's quiet position is that the demand is over-determined – produced by the conditions converging on Shylock in A3S1 and A4S1, conditions no single motive would have produced on its own – which is exactly why it is both understandable and unstoppable.
What does Shylock's forced conversion mean?
The conversion is the play's most discussed single piece of legal violence, and it works on several levels. In terms of plot, it is a condition tacked onto the verdict in A4S1 – first proposed by Antonio ("He presently become a Christian") and backed by Portia and the Duke – which Shylock must accept as the price of his life. The stripping that precedes it is what makes the moment land; Shylock himself names the verdict as a kind of killing:
Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that:
You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
No, take my life and all; I don't want pity.
You take my house removing what I use
To pay the upkeep of my house; you kill me
When you remove my means to make a living.
In terms of theology, the conversion is deeply problematic. Christian thinking of the period held that conversion required genuine inward assent; a forced conversion was, on most readings, no conversion at all, but violence done to the body of someone whose conscience could not be free under that pressure. The play's Christians impose it anyway. In terms of comedy, the conversion finishes off the redistribution of Shylock's wealth and identity to the Christian community: his estate is split between Venice and Antonio (who holds his half in trust for Lorenzo and Jessica), his daughter has already been taken into that community, and now his religion is formally erased. The conversion completes what the elopement, the ring, and the verdict began – the absorption of Shylock's household, fortune, and faith into the Christian world of Belmont. The court has demanded mercy from him while denying it to him, and the conversion is the clearest sign that the "quality of mercy" speech and the sentence that follows it do not run on the same principle. Productions handle the moment differently: some give Shylock a visible collapse as he accepts, while others have him speak "I am content" flat and empty, registering the outward compliance and the inward refusal the text leaves room for.
Is The Merchant of Venice antisemitic?
This has been one of the most debated questions in twentieth-century Shakespeare criticism, and the honest answer is specific rather than simple. The play offers no Jewish character who is morally exemplary; it casts Shylock as the antagonist of the comic action; it uses the religious and ethnic vocabulary of its period throughout ("the Jew," "infidel," "cur"); and it forces its Jewish lead to convert as the price of his life. By any modern measure, the surface of the play is antisemitic. The complication is that the same play gives Shylock the strongest argument for shared humanity in all of Shakespeare; lets him describe his Christian opponents' conduct in terms they themselves confirm; shows his grief over his daughter and his late wife's ring with a depth no one else in the play receives; and exposes the gap between the Christians' professed ethics and their actual treatment of him. The surface is antisemitic; the structure underneath turns that antisemitism into the play's subject. William Hazlitt, writing in 1817, put it sharply: Shylock's treatment by his Christian "judges" is hardly what their own professed principles would require, and "the appeal to the Jew's mercy, as if there were any common principle of right and wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy, or the blindest prejudice." His words "hypocrisy" and "prejudice" name what the play diagnoses. The most useful answer, then, is that the play is antisemitic in its surface conventions and sharply critical of antisemitism in its underlying structure. Since the post-Holocaust period, most productions have leaned into the critique rather than the conventions: the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and nearly every major staging of the past sixty years have played Shylock not as a comic villain but as the figure whose wrongs expose the limits of the comic ending – a reading the text amply supports.
How does Shylock compare to Marlowe's Barabas?
The comparison matters, because Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (c. 1589, much performed through the 1590s) is the most direct precedent for Shakespeare's portrait, and Shakespeare was almost certainly working with it in mind. The differences are sharp. Barabas is, by Marlowe's design, a piece of theatrical villainy in the older medieval Vice tradition: he poisons a nunnery, betrays his daughter's lover, plots with the Turks against the Christians, and dies in a boiling cauldron of his own making. His Jewishness is mostly a label for his villainy rather than a real inner identity, and the play never gives him the interior life Shakespeare gives Shylock. Shylock, by contrast, has a substantial inner life. He grieves over Leah's ring; he makes the case for shared humanity; he refuses interest-free lending on professional principle as well as personal grievance; and he leaves the play not in operatic death but in plain exhaustion ("I am not well"). The contrast shows what Shakespeare was doing. Where Marlowe wrote villainy that confirmed the audience's prejudices, Shakespeare wrote complexity that disturbed them. There is no "Hath not a Jew eyes?" in Barabas, no turquoise-ring scene, and no pointed absence from the closing comedy. The comparison runs the other way on reception, too: Barabas was the more popular figure in the period, and The Jew of Malta was staged far more often than Merchant in the 1590s and 1600s. Shakespeare's more complicated portrait was the harder sell in its own time, and the play's lasting interest has rested ever since on what makes it different from Marlowe, not on what makes it similar.
Why does the play not give Shylock a final scene?
The absence is one of the most pointed choices in Shakespeare's mature work, and it has several layers. By convention, Renaissance marriage-comedy did not require the antagonist to appear in the closing scene: Don John in Much Ado About Nothing is named there but not present, Malvolio in Twelfth Night leaves before the close, and Duke Frederick in As You Like It is reported converted offstage and never seen. The comic resolution works on the survivors, not the displaced. With Shylock, though, the absence carries unusual weight. By A4S1 he has held more dramatic centrality than any other antagonist in Shakespeare's comedies; his exit ("I am not well") is one of the most exposed moments in the play; so giving him no further appearance is more pointed than convention alone would explain. Critics read the silence in different ways. Nevill Coghill and C. L. Barber argued that the comedy cannot absorb what it cannot reconcile – Shylock's wrongs are too real, so the absence is the comic form being honest about its own limits. Harold Bloom, in his 1998 Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Stephen Greenblatt read it instead as the play's quiet admission that the happy ending has been bought at a cost it cannot pretend not to know about. A third line, developed in modern political criticism, treats the absence as a deliberate refusal to resolve: the play never tells us what to think about Shylock's fate, it only shows what was done to him, sends him off in exhaustion, and moves on to an ending that cannot hold him. What the audience is left with, then, is not what the comedy resolved but what it left open – and Shylock's empty place in the final scene is the play's clearest measure of what the comedy has cost.
