Merchant of Venice post 3

Personally, I do not think Shylock deserved his punishment at all. Simply denying the sentence is already plenty, destroying his livelihood over attempted revenge against someone who not only was a thorn in his side since his maturation, but also gave him the idea in the first place is a bit much. I am most definitely highly biased, as Shylock is one of my favorite characters in theater, but taking him out of work, making him forfeit his religion, and forcing his forfeit of half his estate does not seem just, let alone merciful. Quite hypocritical considering Portia’s speech was all about mercy, but I suppose that if Shylock gave none, the court might also give none. If I were observing this in the Victorian era, however, I would have thought that he deserved the sentence, and not because of his religion. Assuming that I would have been Christian, the concept of mercy would have been much more valuable to me than it is now. My personality favors justice and retribution over mercy and absolution, but had I been raised rigorously as a Christian, my outlook would have been significantly different. This would mean that seeing Shylock’s cold want for revenge would make the punishment seem sufficient. At first glance, this seems strange, after all, if I had considered mercy important, would I not see it fit to give Shylock mercy as well? Possibly, but it is the contents of the punishment that matter. Making Shylock a Christian, assuming he took the punishment seriously, would mean educating him in the Christian ideal of mercy, something which had I been raised at that time, I would consider important. Of course, as I have not been raised as a Christian, I do not know whether or not I would think this way, but This is my hypothesis.