The play is anti-Semitic because the character Shylock is shown in the play like a greedy person that loves money and the quote I have for this is when his daughter went missing all he cared about was his money,”A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt” this shows that this play is anti-Semitic.The other reason that this play is anti-Semitic is because of how Shakespeare represents Shylock and the Jews,the reason I said this is because all the Jews were disrespected by all the Christians,also they make Shylock lock like a barbaric villain for wanting a flesh of Antonio,but he said that they should not say any thing because they buy flesh every day,”you have among you many purchase slaves which like your asses and your dogs and mules” this shows that even though Shylock was right they still did not want to give him his pound of flesh.

The Merchant of Venice is just too divisive, comes with too much historical baggage, and for many is just too distressing not to have your defence ready to hand. A common line is that it’s not just the spat-upon Jewish moneylender Shylock who gets it in the neck: Shakespeare is equally scathing about its Christian characters; it’s a play about bigotry in all its forms. The prosecution maintains that in the final instance the play judges only Shylock in terms of his race rather than his character. Either way, Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, with its mass of seemingly irreconcilable points of contention, throbs like an implacable trapped nerve within our highly confused, religiously conflicted, 21st-century times.Also this play is ment to be a comedy when the Jews get disrespected.