should his sufferance be by Christian
example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute; and
it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

I have spoken of the mixture of national and individual traits in
Shylock. It should be observed further, that these several elements of
character are so attempered and fused together, that we cannot
distinguish their respective influence. Even his avarice has a smack
of patriotism. Money is the only defence of his brethren as well as of
himself, and he craves it for their sake as well as his own; feels
indeed that wrongs are offered to them in him, and to him in them.
Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains,
insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a
Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer;
hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian,
one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's
heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his
precious, precious jewels? Thus his religion, his patriotism, his
avarice, his affection, all concur to stimulate his enmity; and his
personal hate thus reinforced overcomes for once his greed, and he
grows generous in the prosecution of his aim. The only reason he will
vouchsafe for taking the pound of flesh is, "if it will feed nothing
else, it will feed my revenge"; a reason all the more satisfactory to
him, forasmuch as those to whom he gives it can neither allow it nor
refute it: and until they can rail the seal from off his bond, all
their railings are but a foretaste of the revenge he seeks. In his
eagerness to taste that morsel sweeter to him than all the luxuries of
Italy, his recent afflictions, the loss of his daughter, his ducats,
his jewels, and even the precious ring given him by his departed wife,
all fade from his mind. In his inexorable and imperturbable hardness
at the trial there is something that makes the blood to tingle. It is
the sublimity of malice. We feel that the yearnings of revenge have
silenced all other cares and all other thoughts. In his rapture of
hate the man has grown superhuman, and his eyes seem all aglow with
preternatural malignity. Fearful, however, as is his passion, he comes
not off without moving our pity. In the very act whereby he thinks to
avenge his own and his brethren's wrongs, the national curse overtakes
him. In standing up for the letter of th