Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in "The Merchant of Venice" who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare s most complex and idiosyncratic characters. With his unsettling eloquence andhis varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare s plays? Kenneth Gross posits thatthe figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself....
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in "The Merchant of Venice" who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors...
"You common cry of curs whose breath I hate / As reek o'th'rotten fens, whose loves I prize / As the dead carcasses of unburied men / That do corrupt my air: I banish you " (from Coriolanus)
Kenneth Gross explores Shakespeare's deep fascination with dangerous and disorderly forms of speaking-especially rumor, slander, insult, vituperation, and curse-and through them offers a vision of the work of words in his plays. Coriolanus's taunts or Lear's curses force us to think not just about how Shakespeare's characters speak, but also about how they hear, overhear, and mishear what is...
"You common cry of curs whose breath I hate / As reek o'th'rotten fens, whose loves I prize / As the dead carcasses of unburied men / That do corrupt...