The Merchant of Venice speeches: It is difficult to know whether the sympathetic reading of Shylock is entirely due to changing sensibilities among readers—or whether Shakespeare, a writer who created complex, multi-faceted characters, deliberately intended this reading. One of the reasons for this interpretation is that Shylock's painful status in Venetian society is emphasised. To some critics, Shylock's celebrated "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech redeems him and even makes him into something of a tragic figure; in the speech, Shylock argues that he is no different from the Christian characters. Detractors note that Shylock ends the speech with a tone of revenge: "if
The Merchant of Venice (1923 film) German retained Shakespeare’s nomenclature, but in the American they were given new names sourced from the Italian work "Il Pecorone", a 14th-century short story collection attributed to Giovanni Fiorentino, from which Shakespeare is believed to have drawn his idea. The film purports to be a return to the original, as an excuse for its differences from the play. The characters are renamed in the extant English script. The script varies significantly from Shakespeare's original. Mordecai, The Jew of Mestri, has a young daughter, Rachela, whom he has betrothed against her will to Elias, the son of his merchant friend Tubal.