earticle

영어

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been known as a romantic comedy. But It is not proper to include this play in the category of comedy because we can find many tragic elements in it: Shylock loses the most precious thing in his life, Christians show exclusive and selfish mercy. These factors can be considered incompatible with a genre of a romantic comedy. Also The Merchant of Venice treats themes and subject matters which reflect social problems such as religious conflicts and racial discrimination between Christianity and Judaism as well as the Europeans’ concept about usury. Shakespeare describes these problems on the basis of historic facts and anti-Semitic sentiments of the public. At the same time, he intends to tolerate all social problems through mutual understanding, and makes us have wisdom and vision for desirable society by presenting an assignment we all have to solve. Therefore, this paper focuses on examining a Shylock as an outsider and a problematic character in terms of historical and racial background. Shylock’s ambivalent status as a comic and tragic figure reflects the problematics of the early modern Europeans’ ideas of mercy, usury and anti-Semitism. Into Shylock are projected all the negative aspects of the early period of the primitive accumulation of capital. And Shylock is made a victim of racism and nationalism in a Christian, mercantile society. The Merchant of Venice is a dark problem comedy, not a happy comedy.