History YMMV / TheMerchantOfVenice

* MoralEventHorizon: Shylock refuses 3000 ducats (triple the debt that he is owed) in favour of giving Antonio a slow and painful death through mutilation, which will serve as RevengeByProxy on Bassanio. Yes, Shylock's fate is tragic, but he gets off lightly compared to the horrific punishment he had planned for Antonio.

** Lorenzo would go on to become [[{{Film/Stardust}} Tristan Thorn]] and [[Series/Daredevil2015 Matt Murdock]].
** Jessica would become [[Series/OnceUponATimeInWonderland Amara]].
** The Prince of Morocco later becomes [[{{Series/Homeland}} Deputy Director of the CIA]].

* TheScrappy: Portia is one character that has not aged well, due to the ValuesDissonance. Modern interpretations view her as something of an AlphaBitch - especially with her unfortunate line about not wanting to marry the Prince of Morocco because of his skin colour. And once she does marry Basanio, she tricks him into giving up his ring and tries to paint is as him being unfaithful. Productions have to be very careful when it comes to how they present her character.

** The closing scene of the Creator/AlPacino film, with Shylock standing outside the synagogue as his fellow Jews file inside for services, looking on helplessly as the last man enters and closes the doors behind him, leaving Shylock standing alone in the street. Meanwhile Jessica is looking sadly out over the lagoon, fingering the turquoise ring -- apparently it was a different one that she traded for the monkey, and she feels guilty for abandoning Shylock.

** Though to be fair, comedy in Shakespeare's day would probably just have meant that everything turned out alright in the end and no one ends up dead (which is true: the [[DesignatedVillain villain]] is defeated and all the couples get together), rather than the laugh-out-loud definition of comedy we have now.

** On the other hand, Shylock is primarily the {{Foil}} to his heroes and not the protagonist, unlike Creator/ChristopherMarlowe's ''Theatre/TheJewOfMalta'' (also stained with anti-semitism) where the hero is a VillainProtagonist who refuses to convert and instead becomes a mass murderer, with his enemies shown to have none of the nobility Shakespeare's verse attributes to Portia, Antonio and Bassanio. From Shakespeare's perspective, Shylock's speech would be of the same order as that of his other villains, to provide him more shades and make him interesting, but nonetheless still keeping him the villain.

* OlderThanTheyThink: This is not the first English Renaissance play featuring a villainous yet not completely unsympathetic Jew who calls out the hypocrisy of the majority religion; that would be Creator/{{Christopher Marlowe}}'s ''Theatre/TheJewOfMalta''.

* DracoInLeatherPants: For modern audiences, Shylock undoubtedly gets this. This was also the case in earlier eras but more for the prosaic reasons that Shylock gets all the cool lines.

** Harold Bloom, the great Shakespeare critic notes that while he doesn't believe that Shakespeare was personally anti-semitic, he does believe that the play (which was a popular commission after all) is anti-semitic and that the main cause for regret is that Shakespeare ''[[TookTheBadFilmSeriously wrote it too well]]'' and as such ensured that a pantomime antisemitic caricature had longer life in popular imagination as a result of Shakespeare's great verse. It's a lot harder to combat stereotypes after all when they are given depth and good writing by the greatest playwright of all time.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Shylock himself, after a fashion. The protagonist of the piece is Portia, the leading man is Bassanio, and the titular character is Antonio, but is any of them the most famous character in the show? (Or, for that matter, one of the most famous characters in theatre?)

* FairForItsDay: It's truly debatable how to apply this trope even if it was the former TropeNamer.

** The Spanish as well, considering England was in the midst of the Armada. The Prince of Arragon is depicted as a rude, haughty and silly - in contrast to the Prince of Morocco, who seems to be a little more sympathetic.

--> '''Shylock''': "You have among you many a purchased slave,\\

--> "It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys."

--> "may all of his complexion choose me so" [referring to picking the wrong casket]

* MemeticMutation: Shylock's "if you prick us, do we not bleed" speech has often been parodied to give an ItsAllAboutMe angle, notably in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''Serie/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch''.

*** Either that, or she's the ultimate heroine, brains and beauty combined, who bravely disguises herself as a boy to save her husband's best friend. She sympathizes with Shylock, trying to talk him into being merciful on a level they both relate to (as a Christian and a Jew, they both believe in the same God) and only felling him with the letter of the law when ''he'' insists that she follow the bond exactly as it was written. (In the Creator/LaurenceOlivier film, she looks genuinely sad after Shylock leaves the court scene -- and, after all, it wasn't her idea to insist on his conversion.) She tricks her husband out of his ring partly as a joke and partly just to see if she can do it -- and when she realizes that he only gave her the ring because Antonio insisted, she understands and forgives.

** Harold Bloom, the great Shakespeare critic notes that while he doesn't believe that Shakespeare was personally anti-semitic, he does believe that the play (which was a popular commission after all) is anti-semitic and that the main cause for regret is that Shakespeare ''[[TookTheBadFilmSeriously wrote it too well]]'' and as such ensured that a pantomime antisemitic caricature had longer life in popular imagination as a result of Shakespeare's great verse. It's a lot harder to combat stereotypes after all when they are given depth and good writing by the greatest writer of all time.

* OlderThanTheyThink: This is not the first English Renaissance play featuring a villainous yet not completely unsympathetic Jew who calls out the hypocrisy of the majority religion; that would be Creator/{{Christopher Marlowe}}s ''Theatre/TheJewOfMalta''.

* IAmNotShazam: The eponymous Merchant is Antonio, not Shylock. But you are forgiven for the confusion because the play itself spends more time on Shylock than on Antonio.

* HoYay: Antonio and Bassanio. It was explicitly mentioned early on in the play that Bassanio is [[KissingCousins Antonio's cousin]].

** Though to be fair, comedy in Shakespeare's day would probably just have meant that everything turned out alright in the end and no one ends up dead (which is true: the [[ValuesDissonance villain]] is defeated and all the couples get together), rather than the laugh-out-loud definition of comedy we have now.

** The character of Shylock is open to lots of it, largely because he's not drawn as unambiguously evil as other Jewish characters of the same time (Marlowe's ''Theatre/TheJewOfMalta'' comes to mind.) Is he a greedy bastard who cares for nothing but money? Is he a hard-nosed businessman who knows that his only protection from those who would like to see him ruined is his reputation as a bastard? Is he the victim of repeated bullying and abuse who finally gets what he believes is a chance to take revenge on the person who has abused him the most -- and do it legally? Is his famous soliloquy meant to reinforce his humanity, or to reveal that his non-Christian faith prevents him from fully grasping what it means to be human (since he only mention physical traits like eyes and hands and blood, instead of metaphysical concepts like [[OurSoulsAreDifferent the immortal soul]])?

* DesignatedVillain:
** The [[http://pursuedbyabear.net/pbab/448/ 1980 TV Movie]] by the BBC exerts quite a bit of effort to portray Shylock as an unsympathetic version of this.
* DracoInLeatherPants: For modern audiences, Shylock undoubtedly gets this. This was also the case in earlier eras but more for the prosaic reasons that Shylock gets all the cool lines.

* JerkassWoobie: One interpretation of Shylock, especially if you see him as a victim of abuse who's taking revenge on his abuser, and loses everything as a result.

* RootingForTheEmpire: [[ValuesDissonance Thanks to the anti-Semitism of the day,]] Shylock was likely written to be received as a straight-up menacing bad guy. In modern times, he is almost universally seen (and portrayed) as a sympathetic and tragic antagonist.

“The slaves are ours.” So do I answer you.''\\

* DesignatedVillain: The [[http://pursuedbyabear.net/pbab/448/ 1980 TV Movie]] by the BBC exerts quite a bit of effort to portray Shylock as an unsympathetic version of this.

* IAmNotShazam: The eponymous Merchant is Antonio, not Shylock.

* AcceptableTargets: Jews were this in Shakespeare's day. Indeed, it's believed that this play was inspired by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderigo_Lopez Roderigo Lopez]], the Portuguese New Christian (converted Jew) who served Elizabeth's court and became the only Royal Physician executed by the Crown.

** The closing scene of the AlPacino film, with Shylock standing outside the synagogue as his fellow Jews file inside for services, looking on helplessly as the last man enters and closes the doors behind him, leaving Shylock standing alone in the street. Meanwhile Jessica is looking sadly out over the lagoon, fingering the turquoise ring -- apparently it was a different one that she traded for the monkey, and she feels guilty for abandoning Shylock.

* GenreSavvy: Does Bassanio really choose the lead casket because of "something, something, all that glitters is not gold, beauty is only skin deep, etc, etc", or is it because he's grown up on fairy/folk tales like ours and thus knows that the treasure is always hidden in the guise of ugliness?
* HoYay / KissingCousins: Antonio and Bassanio. It was explicitly mentioned early on in the play that Bassanio is Antonio's cousin.