Shylock Antisemitism

Paper # 1- Topic (7) "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, heal'd by the same means/ warm'd and cool'd 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, …

…O, be thou damned, inexecrable dog!"(IV,i,128) Shylock is equated with the devil. In (II,ii,24-28), Launcelot Gobbo identifies Shylock as "a kind of devil", "the devil himself", and "the very devil incarnation". The images of Jews as blood-thirsty murderers of Jesus who snatch innocent Christian children for slaughter in bizarre Passover rituals seems to provide a potent back-drop for the demonic traits heaped upon Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Riverside Shakespeare).