Shylock's characterisation is composed of stereotypes, for instance greediness and vengefulness, although there were no legally practising Jews who lived in England during Shakespeare's time.

The Shylocks of sixteenth-century London included "goldsmiths, mercers, and, most visibly of all, scriveners",[2] according to prominent scholar Stephen Orgel, a Stanford professor who serves (with A. R. Braunmuller) as general editor of The Pelican Shakespeare series from Penguin.

This decision is fuelled by his sense of revenge, for Antonio had previously insulted, physically assaulted and spat on him in the Rialto (stock exchange of Venice) dozens of times, defiled the "sacred" Jewish religion and had also inflicted massive financial losses on him.

First, Shylock has to sign an agreement bequeathing all his remaining property to Lorenzo and Jessica, which is to become effective after his demise, and second, he is to immediately convert to Christianity.

[5] Jacob Adler and others report that the tradition of playing Shylock sympathetically began in the first half of the 19th century with Edmund Kean.

Henry Irving's portrayal of an aristocratic, proud Shylock (first seen at the Lyceum in 1879, with Portia played by Ellen Terry) has been called "the summit of his career".

In a 1902 interview with Theater magazine, Adler pointed out that Shylock is a wealthy man, "rich enough to forgo the interest on three thousand ducats" and that Antonio is "far from the chivalrous gentleman he is made to appear.

Shylock's fatal flaw is to depend on the law, but "would he not walk out of that courtroom head erect, the very apotheosis of defiant hatred and scorn?

One of the last shots of the film also highlights that, as a convert, Shylock would have been cast out of the Jewish community in Venice, no longer allowed to live in the ghetto.

Another interpretation of Shylock and a vision of how "must he be acted" appears at the conclusion of the autobiography of Alexander Granach, a noted Jewish stage and film actor in Weimar Germany (and later in Hollywood and on Broadway).

All of the marriages that ended The Merchant of Venice are unhappy, Antonio is an obsessive bore reminiscing about his escape from death, but Shylock, freed from religious prejudice, is richer than before and a close friend and confidant of the Doge.

Composed in one 80-minute act, it premiered at Bard on the Beach on 5 August 1996, where it was directed by John Juliani and starred popular Canadian radio host, David Berner.

Its American debut was in 1998 at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre where it was directed by Deborah Block, starred William Leach and was "Barrymore Recommended".

Under Nazi rule in 1943, the Vienna Burgtheater presented a notoriously extreme production of The Merchant of Venice with Werner Krauss as an evil Shylock.

[16]: 147 Since Shakespeare's time, the character's name has become a synonym for loan shark, and as a verb to shylock means to lend money at exorbitant rates.

[17] It was not until the twelfth century that in northern Europe (England, Germany, and France), a region until then peripheral but at this point expanding fast, a form of Judeophobia developed that was considerably more violent because of a new dimension of imagined behaviors, including accusations that Jews engaged in ritual murder, profanation of the host, and the poisoning of wells.

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, Jews were often presented on the Elizabethan stage in hideous caricature, with hooked noses and bright red wigs.

They were usually depicted as avaricious usurers; an example is Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, which features a comically wicked Jewish villain called Barabas.

[citation needed] During the 1600s, in Venice and in other regions, Jews were required to wear a red hat at all times in public to ensure that they were easily identified.

[citation needed] Many modern readers and audiences have read the play as a plea for tolerance, with Shylock as a sympathetic character.

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?

Jewish characters in English literature were frequently depicted as "monied, cruel, lecherous, avaricious [outsiders] tolerated only because of [their] golden hoard".