“Why, there, there, there, there! A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt! The curse never fell upon our nation til now. I never felt it til now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels! I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear; would she were hears’d at my foot and the ducats in her coffin. No news of them? Why so? And i know not what’s spent in the search! Why, thou loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, and so much to find the theif, and no satisfaction, no revenge, nor no ill luck stirring but what lights a’ my shoulders, no sighs but a’ my breathing, no tears but a’ my shedding.”
When reading this scene aloud in class, many different thoughts and characteristics were being put in one passage of Shylock. This passage came right out and said the entire truth about how he was coping with his daughter, a thief, a runaway, and soon to-be a Christian with Lorenzo. But when I read this, all my sympathy for Shylock was gone in an instant. I had felt sort of bad for him early on in the different acts when he was called a dog, and spit on by different people, but after act three my opinion has made me to believe Shylock as a cruel man to all. You see, in this passage in scene I, it begins with Salarino and Solanio talking to him about how he is doing with his daughters flight. But right away Shylock begins to tell the men that he is still amazed his own blood and flesh rose up against him, and even surer that this was just another bad bargain to him with the loss or money and a daughter. Which is why I believe that this passage in act III scene I is the exact proof and evidence to show the cruelty of Shylock and the way he feels about his daughters disapearance and the use of the stolen money. Shylock (3.1.69-80)
With all the emotions going on between Shylock and his daughter’s flight, Do you think the two of them will ever meet again? If so, will they accept each other into their lives again or push each other away forever?