Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan теrmez state university

Gratiano: "Now by my hood, a gentile and no Jew!"
At the trial, this villain, this embodiment of evil, this polluter, this devil, this Shylock, is unrecognised by the erudite woman of quality, Portia. He stands but a few feet away alongside the pure Christian, Antonio, but she does not even hazard a guess. Should she not be able to know the devil incarnate, the hooked nose excrement eater, the defiler of Christians? She does not and so must ask: "Which is the merchant here and which the Jew?" Let us also recall here what the noble Antonio tells Bassanio when they first meet Shylock in the play: "Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!" Hence it is ludicrous to portray Shylock as an old Jew bent double, dressed in a dirty black gown with a dirty black skullcap. Jonathan Miller's view of him was more correct. He is about 50 years old, unbent, vigorous and dressed as richly as any Italian merchant.
Let us examine the legal points by which Portia won the suit and see again the renunciation of all logic:
"Tarry a little. There is something else. This bond does give you here no jot of blood. The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh.' Take then your bond. Take thou, thy pound of flesh. But in the cutting it, if you should shed one drop of Christian blood, your lands and goods are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate unto the state of Venice.... As for urging justice, be assured you shall have justice more than you desire. Therefore, prepare now to cut off the flesh. Shed you no blood, nor cut you less nor more, but just a pound of flesh. If you take more or less than a just pound - be it but so much as makes it light or heavy in the substance or the division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple - nay, if the scales do turn but in the estimation of a hair, you shall die, and all your goods are confiscate."
With Shylock's demand for a pound of flesh, he makes his audience take a huge leap into absurdity. Shylock, as a practicing Jew, would never - nay, could never - make such a demand. Even Harley Granville-Barker admitted: "There is no more reality in Shylock's bond than in Jack and the Beanstalk." But let us suppose we all can take that leap, then the law must remain on the side of the Jew.
(A) The implied condition upon payment of a pound of flesh is that one gets the sinews, the veins and the blood that must necessarily flow. If one goes to buy a pen, one does not ask if the nib comes with it, or a shirt without buttons. Doesn't meat come untrimmed of fat?
(B) She is quite right in her demand that he take no more than the pound of flesh, but why not less? It is his right to accept less payment. Any court of law, then and now, would have dismissed her silly arguments but Shakespeare makes the court and his audience accept it unquestioningly. For these hundreds of years, people have swallowed this line of thinking in the play, but would reject it out of hand in practice.
When the villain is finally brought to heel, the Christians breathe out nothing but venom and hate. Harry Golden says: "Shakespeare seems to go out of his way to give us a frightening picture of the 'victors.' He has them standing together pouring out a stream of vengeance. We're not through with you yet, Jew. The money we have left you after you have paid all these fines, you must leave to Jessica and your (Christian) son-in-law who robbed you. Shakespeare keeps them hissing their hate." The judge appears lenient next to Portia who wants him stripped of everything. The final irony is that he must perforce become a Christian, a most precious gift smashed upon his head with hatred. The only one with a shred of dignity at this stage is the villain, Shylock, who exits on the lines: "I pray you, give me leave to go from hence. I am not well. Send the deed after me and I will sign it."The extent of the contempt Shakespeare held for Christian mores of his time is summed up with biting irony when Launcelot Gobbo tells Jessica: "This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs. If we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money."Most Christians (and Jews who condemn the play) refuse to take the leap that Shakespeare's text reveals, choose not to recognize the genius of a master satirist at work. When Shylock is first introduced, Shakespeare gives him the line: "I hate him for he is a Christian." Absurd, isn't it? Viscous and cruel! Jonathan Miller was afraid to use it. The archetypal Jew in the minds of the audience! But that is precisely what anti-Semites say of Jews. Shakespeare is saying: "You are as absurd as this caricature of a Jew you want to see." For, following on the heels of that remark, we have Shylock's Rialto speech wherein he shows us what kind of a Christian we are dealing with and the legitimate reasons for Shylock's hate?As long as blindness for Shakespeare's intention remains, so long will his Christians in the play remain good and his Jew a figure of extortion and evil, to laugh at when bested. A great pity for here was Bill at his satiric best, brilliantly concealing a shockingly anti-Christian text in the garb of an anti-Semitic play.The author was born in Calcutta, India, moved to London at the age of 22; then 10 years later to Israel with his wife and daughter; added two 'Sabra' sons and spent the last 4 decades in Israel.