This document analyzes Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice and argues that the character of Shylock should be viewed as a tragic hero rather than an antagonist. It begins by establishing the criteria for a Shakespearean tragedy, including having a protagonist with a fatal flaw and an ending involving the protagonist's death. It then analyzes Shylock's character, identifying his fatal flaw as an obsession with justice and law. It argues that though Shylock does not literally die, he is stripped of his identity and becomes a "carcass," fulfilling the requirement of protagonist death. Viewing Shylock as a tragic hero rather than antagonist shifts the play's themes and morality in complex ways.

1. The Merchant of Tragedy:
How Shylock as a Tragic Hero Alters the Morality in The Merchant of Venice
Mikayla Rivera
English 314—Advanced Writing and Research
Section 1
Professor Brugger
15 December 2014

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Shakespeare’s plays have typically been divided into classical types
established by the Greeks: comedy and tragedy, comedies ending with a marriage,
illustrating the happy ends of good characters, while tragedies, on the other hand,
map the rise and fall of a character brought down by a fatal flaw. The Merchant of
Venice has almost consistently been categorized as a comedy without a second
thought since Antonio, one of its main characters, evades death, while his friend
Bassanio celebrates his own marriage by the conclusion. However accurately this
ending appears to fulfill the comedy type, an argument can be made for tragedy
should the viewing lens shift to that of Shylock, typically considered the antagonist.
Selecting Shylock as our protagonist shifts many of the play’s themes of morality
and acknowledges various questions as to why his fall was so fully realized. In
pursuing the moral ambiguity of this play from a new perspective, Shylock may, in
the tradition of major characters such as Macbeth and Hamlet, prove to be a tragic
hero rather than an antagonist.
Shakespearean Tragedies
To set about this theory, The Merchant of Venice, typically considered a
comedy, must first be transformed into a tragedy by establishing the criteria
constituting Shakespearean tragedies. The requirements can be designated into two
main categories: (1) protagonist falls in consequence of a fatal flaw and (2) the play
ends with the protagonist’s death instead of marriage. While these are not the only
requirements for a Shakespearean tragedy, they are most commonly agreed upon,
and will therefore be utilized in application to The Merchant of Venice for purpose of
this theory.
Fatal Flaw
In searching to fulfill the first requirement, the character of Portia elucidates
clues to Shylock’s fatal flaw. During the trial scene, where Portia is dressed up as
Balthazar and holds polite if not occasionally condescending discussion with the
Jew, she reminds him, “the quality of mercy is not strained” (4.1.190). This gentle
philosophy of the soul takes no hold on Shylock but does allow readers to see the
flaw that has firmly fermented by this time in the play: “Shylock’s highest passion,
and therefore his faith, is the law; Portia’s is mercy” (Kuhns 45). Should Portia stand
for mercy in this situation, then by contrast, Shylock’s flaw must then be her
opposite—justice.
The concept of justice and law being Shylock’s greatest passion can be seen
throughout the play, most unmistakably in repetitious statements like “I crave the
law” (4.1.213) and “I stand here for the law” (4.1.144). The law is, therefore,
undoubtedly his greatest priority, and he has championed it above mercy, above his
own good sense, and certainly above human life. This is the stage all tragic heroes
eventually reach, when they obey their fatal flaw’s desires above all else, and it is
this that firmly initiates Shylock as protagonist similar to Shakespeare’s recognized
tragic heroes, since he will “ . . . have what the law allows; and in that he is
passionately uncontrolled . . . In this, Shylock is no stranger to the Shakespearean
cast of character: Lear, Macbeth, and Richard II all are driven by passion” (Kuhns,

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44-45). It stands to reason, then, that Shylock’s obsession with justice is not only
similar to the leads’ flaws of Shakespeare’s tragedies, but is one, and so he too must
be a tragic hero.
Protagonist Death
Those who have read The Merchant of Venice will undoubtedly stand
scrupulous of the play’s ability to fulfill the last tragic requirement: an ending with
the protagonist’s death. It comes as no surprise that Shylock does not, at least in the
literal sense, “die” at the end of the play, but there are more ways to die than simply
executing the body—a concept Shakespeare himself has often explored. Taking into
account Shylock’s words when the pound of flesh plot turns sour and justice against
him, “ . . . 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” (4.1.390–393) the punishment issued is valued equal to death.
While it is true Antonio returns some amount of money in support of
Shylock’s life, the Jew has been stripped in other ways that leave him, in all ways but
the literal body, a carcass; in return for Antonio’s “mercy,” Shylock is stripped of
both his religion and his race in the eyes of Venice. The very identity that has
condemned and characterized this man has been stripped away, and therefore the
Shylock the audience has known is now dead—the mere empty corpse left behind
after Antonio’s gutting. Though Hamlet was felled by Laertes’ sword, Macbeth by
Macduff’s, and Othello by his own knife, Shylock was felled by Antonio’s ranking and
use of the law. Here Shylock’s death and fatal flaw have combined against him full
circle, as with all tragic heroes, and the law becomes the knife that guts the life he
once had.
Acknowledging these connections above as proof enough that Shylock’s role
in The Merchant of Venice is easily argued as tragic hero, Shylock is not therefore
absolved of the cruelties or monstrosities he enacts during the play, but most
importantly, seemingly virtuous characters such as Antonio no longer are either.
This foundational understanding laid, the shifts in character moralities within this
new perspective are more deeply and aptly analyzed.
Shylock’s Moral Tragedy
In literary theory, Shylock’s character possibilities were largely ignored until
an evolution began with a previously little-known actor, Edmund Kean, and his
startlingly sympathetic interpretation of the Jew in 1814 (Alter). After Kean’s now
legendary reinterpretation of the character, a more modern take on Shylock’s role as
“a tragic figure . . . with whom we sympathize at first and whom we later fear
because of the harshness of his vengeance” (Smith) came about. Since that time,
literary critics have placed more time, analysis, and interest in this one character
than any other in The Merchant of Venice, but those interested are not restricted to
literary critics alone. Even in theatre, “Shylock . . . was the constant lodestar for
actors and audiences: all the great male performers wanted to play him” (Alter).
This fascination with Shylock’s complex character is akin to that of critics’ interest in
Hamlet, yet another tragic hero ripe with moral complexity.

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While Hamlet’s antagonist stood in form of a treacherous uncle and a
conspiracy-ridden castle, Shylock’s oppressive atmosphere derives from Antonio, a
man representative of a Christian society rife with religious superiority, anti-Semitic
feelings, and racial arrogance. Shylock being a Jew, then, is placed by circumstance
under Antonio’s thumb in much the same position as Hamlet beneath the watch of
his murderous uncle. These characters differ in how they react to their situations,
but not so entirely as to be unfamiliar. Whereas Hamlet’s tragic flaw of intellect
without decision becomes apparent in the way he “retires to holes and corners and
the most sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth . . . solitary musings,” (Lamb)
Shylock takes a route more akin to Macbeth, leading him to discover his own tragic
flaw through rapid decision and inevitably being slaughtered by it in the end.
It is fitting that justice is Shylock’s fatal flaw in review of its benign
beginnings. It is the law and the law alone that was able to grant Shylock the safety
and prosperity he needed as a Jew in a troubling Venice. He became friends with the
law, adhering to the only job he could and creating wealth from it despite usury
being “considered to be an unsavory, unworthy practice” (Belliotti), and additionally
living in the ghettos his kind was sectioned into, and reveling in peace away from
unkind Christians through it all. The law could not, however, protect him from
insult—only injury—so when Shylock wandered through territories inhabited by
Christians, even the law provided no way to keep his name unsullied. Inevitably,
existing in a world where “Christians welcomed Jewish money, and often required it,
so long as accepting it did not necessitate welcoming the Jewish moneylender,”
(Picker) would understandably grow tiresome and demoralizing, and even the law
could not change, alter, or protect him from the cultural biases of the time.
Therefore, when Antonio creates an opportunity for Shylock to gain retribution
through the law, thereby avenging the insults of the past, Shylock takes it with a
passion rivaling that of Macbeth’s ambitious pursuit of the throne.
The law’s justice and Shylock’s pursuit of it can be seen as a natural
consequence of both Antonio’s persecution and Shylock’s natural affinity for the
safe-haven it previously provided; as Venetian society seeks to oppress the Jew, his
natural reaction is to “thwart society's attempts to contain him” (Picker). This is
certainly an understandable and sympathetic response. It is unfortunate, then, that
Shylock pollutes his reverence for the law with hatred for Antonio, turning a
virtuous passion instead into a fatalistic flaw (Smith). It is this flaw that leads to the
moral tensions and ambiguities between justice and mercy, cruelty and forgiveness,
as well as Shylock’s eerie transformation into “ . . . [a] ‘dog’ [that] has bared his fangs
. . . no longer a human seeking vengeance but a ‘devil incarnation’” (Smith). Though
he once stood as a very human and understandable man, Shylock allows himself a
negative reaction to the cruelty of a Christian Venice, which in turn eventually
creates a “monster” (Smith), a corruption of what was once good, therefore earning
him the classic downfall of all tragic heroes—death, though the terms be less literal
than in the case of his tragic brothers. This death is, however, metaphorically
compounded with the loss of the human nature he had before. In throwing off his

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humanity, does Shylock not therefore become a dead creature? He is a husk of what
his character once was, and only under Antonio’s command does his fatal flaw
finally cut off the last breath, burying him in the consequences of his own enraged
pursuit of justice.
While regarding this play as a tragedy and Shylock as a tragic hero, the moral
themes of The Merchant of Venice become cloudy and questionable at best. What
was once considered Antonio’s victory is now Shylock’s tragedy; instead of
Bassanio’s joyous wedding, it is Shylock’s sobering death. The morality has not only
become twisted but reversed entirely. Lauded characters are now demonized, and
the antagonist audiences loved to despise can now only sympathized with and pitied
when he meets his end. “It is hard to think of another comedy that pushes so
powerfully against the boundaries of genre . . .” (Alter) or that twists, hides, and
cheats the audience of a safe understanding of morality as Portia’s chests so did with
her suitors. But then these characters are truly “so much the objects of meditation
rather than . . . curiosity as to their actions, that while we are reading any of
[Shakespeare’s] great criminal characters . . . we think not so much to the crimes
which they commit as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity,
which prompts them to overleap these moral fences,” (Lamb) and perhaps it is the
quandary between justice and mercy, then, that Shylock is meant to fulfill so that the
audience may better take time to ponder the answers—or lack thereof—to this
play’s moral inquiries.
Conclusion
In context of moral criticism, the basis of The Merchant of Venice being either
tragedy or comedy largely depends on who is the protagonist, who the antagonist,
and where the moral responsibility lays. In classical view, Antonio is the protagonist
and Shylock the clear and devilish antagonist as he seeks to take the life of the
Christian. However, “most recent editors of The Merchant of Venice have been rather
sympathetic to the Jew,” casting him as a “tragic figure, an abused human” (Smith)
who in a passionate revolt of his maltreatment misuses justice to enact revenge.
Though both interpretations inevitably acknowledge Shylock as committing
misdeeds, one casts Shylock as a human and even good character who inevitably
succumbs to a fatal flaw in reaction to the true antagonist, Christian cruelty—“If a
Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why,
revenge!” (3.1.68–70)—while the other assumes he was an evil character to begin
with and therefore much deserves his meted end (Smith). While “ . . . the precise
nature of the moral lessons of the play remain contestable,” (Belliotti) the moral
quandary Shakespeare proposesis evident, and at the very least hesitation is
necessary in regarding Shylock as “cur or wolf” (Alter), as the hypocritical and cruel
treatment he incurs precluding the progression of a fatal flaw may qualify him as a
tragic hero rather than an inequitable antagonist.

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Works Cited
Alter, Robert. “Who is Shylock?” Web. 13 December 2014.
Belliotti, Raymond Angelo. Shakespeare and Philosophy: Lust, Love, and
Law. Vol. 256. Rodopi, 2012. Google Scholar. Web. 13 December 2014.
Kuhns, Richard. Tragedy: Contradiction and Repression. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991. Print.
Lamb, Charles. "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered with
Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation." The Works of
Charles and Mary Lamb 1 (1811). Google Scholar. Web. 13 December 2014.
Picker, John. "Shylock and the Struggle for Closure." Judaism 43.170 (1994): 173-
189. Proquest. Web. 13 December 2014.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. New York: Simon and Shuster, 2010.
Print.
Smith, John Hazel. "Shylock: ‘Devil Incarnation’ or ‘Poor Man . . . Wronged’?” The
Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1961): 1-21. JSTOR. Web. 13
December 2014.