Antonio

Antonio is obviously one of the key characters in this play. He seems to be the character that needs the most help. He is the character who likes to act selfishly and doesn’t seem to care if his views are wrong, he is still going to stick by them. He also seems to have a lot of self-pity. He is always is portrayed as very sad and possibly even depressed. In the first Act we can see that this depression may be due to love and Antonio’s unsuccessfulness with it. Even though Antonio wants to deny this, it does seem to be the root of his depression. I know that in present times the majority of our society would not accept the bias views that Antonio has towards Jewish people in particular Shylock. However, since in Shakespeare’s time there was a large population of Christians, and I would think that back then Christians had no problem blaming Jews for the death of Christ. So it makes me wonder what Shakespeare really wants us to think about these prejudiced views. Perhaps even Shakespeare had no problem with these views? I just wonder whether these views of Jews were actually commonly accepted back in this time period.