years and years later, you shall still remember my name......................................
everyone who has been cruel, everyone who has been miserly, shall be compared to me. you shall remember me, and you will despise me. for i am SHYLOCK, the infamous moneylender of venice, who you have all read about, and all despised, in Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice'.
So? what do you think of me? a cheat? a coward? a despicable, filthy, Jew? you are not alone. but this is my turn. i will tell my OWN story, in my OWN words. shakespeare has not given me any love, though he created me, so i, like a man forsaken by my god, shall tell my story myself. listen to it, if you will.
My name was shylock, and i was born in one of the poorest alleys of venice. my mother was a jew, i did not know who my father was...
my mother brought me up, turning her money, her possesions, her honour, to dust, just to pay for two square meals a day. you have heard of antonio, the merchant of venice, and you have heard of banquo, the rich man with the wonderful wife. i was not brought up the same way they were. they were born with silverspoons in their mouths, too rich to ever value a poor copper coin, too high in caste to ever feel any harm on their honour.but i had to struggle, from the moment i learned how to walk, to earn a little for our tiny family. i was a beggar on the streets, a servant in another's house, just to earn my daily bread. my mother loved me, and helped me, but she died, soon after i first began to be rich. in venice at that time, all the people were christian, but i was a jew. so outside a very small community of other jews, i had no friends. jews in those days were not allowed to practise any profession except moneylending. so i became a moneylender. i became extremely rich, because i never wasted a single ducat. when people owed money to me, i made sure that they paid me back, i never showed mercy. you may call me cruel for that, i suppose, but tell me, when i was poor, no one had ever cared for me, no one had ever shown me mercy, then why should i help others? as it was, even after my money lending business prospered, many people like antonio still insulted me and despised me. they called me a dog, a miser, a jew. they insulted my caste, my creed, my religion, my gods. they spat on me and my kind in public.
Antonio was very well known in venice. poor people, if they were christian and did not have the money to pay me, went to him to borrow money. he took little interest, and was kind to them, so they worshipped him and hated me. Antonio was full of himself.
he never missed a chance to insult me and show me how wonderful he was. i could not reply. i could not tell him that his money came from trade, and if people did not pay him back it would not harm him.but all my wealth, everything i owned, had been earned from the moneylending business. if it failed, i would have nowhere and noone to turn to.
i hated him, and my hate turned me into a monster. i was quiet, but i would have my revenge......
Antonio had a lover, a best friend. His name was bassanio, and he had been born in one of the richest houses in venice. but he was a waster, he had unmindfully wasted all his money. and now he had come to Antonio to ask for money, to marry a beautiful and rich lady named portia, who was an heiress to a large fortune.[much like PARIS HILTON:)] He had told her that he was very rich, so he needed to impress her with expensive clothes. so he asked Antonio for 30,000 gold ducats. Antonio's ships, in which he had invested all his money,were at sea, so antonio could not pay banquo the money. ANTONIO loved BASSANIO so he came to me to borrow the money.
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money lender of venice