"
It is as a prince of friends and most courteous gentleman that Antonio
acts his part from the beginning to the end of the play with one notable
exception to which I shall return in a moment. It is astonishing to find
this sadness, this courtesy, this lavish generosity and contempt of
money, this love of love and friendship and affection in any man in
early manhood; but these qualities were Shakespeare's from youth to old
age.
I say that Antonio was most courteous to all with one notable exception,
and that exception was Shylock.
It has become the custom on the English stage for the actor to try to
turn Shylock into a hero; but that was assuredly not Shakespeare's
intention. True, he makes Shylock appeal to the common humanity of both
Jew and Christian.
"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?"
But if Shakespeare was far in advance of his age in this intellectual
appreciation of the brotherhood of man; yet as an artist and thinker and
poet he is particularly contemptuous of the usurer and trader in other
men's necessities, and therefore, when Antonio meets Shylock, though he
wants a favour from him, he cannot be even decently polite to him.
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