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Shylock   /ʃˈaɪlˌɑk/   Listen
Shylock

noun
1.
Someone who lends money at excessive rates of interest.  Synonyms: loan shark, moneylender, usurer.
2.
A merciless usurer in a play by Shakespeare.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shylock" Quotes from Famous Books



... some sort an intellectual bank, issuing bills of ideas (very often specious, but not always convertible into gold or silver); and now, my precious little boy, recollect that just as long as I have any capital left, you can borrow; and some day I will turn Shylock, and make you pay ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... was in fear and trembling, and with great modesty of spirit, that I entered the Presence. To confess that I was shocked were to do my feelings an injustice. Perhaps the blame may be shouldered upon Shylock, Fagin, and their ilk; but I had conceived an entirely different type of individual. This man—why, he was clean to look at, his eyes were blue, with the tired look of scholarly lucubrations, and his skin had the normal pallor of sedentary existence. He was reading a book, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... pal here we are and its against the rules to tell you where we are at but of course it don't take no Shylock to find out because all you would have to do is look at the post mark that they ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner

... this campo that the merchants anciently met: here, in the district of the Rialto, and not on the bridge itself, as many readers suppose, did Antonio transact his business with one Shylock a Jew. There are plenty of Jews left in Venice; in fact, I have been told that they are gradually getting possession of the city, and judging by their ability in that direction elsewhere, I can readily believe it; but I saw none in the least like ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... remodeled the "Merry Wives of Windsor" as "The Comical Gallant"; Tate, "Richard II." as "The Sicilian Usurper"; and Otway, "Romeo and Juliet," as "Caius Marius." Lord Lansdowne converted "The Merchant of Venice" into "The Jew of Venice," wherein Shylock was played as a comic character down to the time of Macklin and Kean. Durfey tinkered "Cymbeline." Cibber metamorphosed "King John" into "Papal Tyranny," and his version was acted till Macready's time. Cibber's stage version of "Richard III." is played ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... club, even those who did not care to commit themselves on the question of suffrage, ought to appreciate. (Laughter.) Mrs. Jenson was sure that she, for one, would love to be like Portia. The play was about a Jew named Shylock, and he didn't want his daughter to marry a Venice ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... Great Will was extremely youthful, but everybody in the park called him, 'Father William'; and when he wanted to know which way the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory deceives me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a handkerchief for it to be steeped in the blood of the deer; Shylock ordered one pound of the carcase; Hamlet (the fact was impressed on me) offered him a three-legged stool; and a number of kings and knights and ladies lit their torches from Bardolph; and away they flew, distracting the keepers and leaving ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... no touch of tragic greatness. But Iago comes nearer to it, and if Iago had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders to have led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy and wished to die. One reason why the end of the Merchant of Venice fails to satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannot believe in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him. This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, so that he drew a figure with which ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... whispered Henrietta, reproachfully, "don't tease him with our nonsense. Think of asking him to study Shylock's part, when he has all that pile of ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which makes the matter equal, which would madden the rich man if he knew it—make him wince as with a shrewdest twinge of hereditary gout. For insult and degradation are not without their peculiar solaces. You may spit upon Shylock's gaberdine, but the day comes when he demands his pound of flesh; every blow, every insult, not without a certain satisfaction, he adds to the account running up against you in the day-book and ledger of his hate—which at the proper time he will ask you to ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... pursuit he was splendidly successful. From references to Lady Mary in contemporary correspondence, it would appear that she too had no small streak of the miser in her. Pope, after his quarrel with her, referred to Montagu as "Worldly," "Shylock," and "Gripus," and in the fourth Epistle of the Essay on ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... was the first of the great English tragic actors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare's heroes—Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III., Romeo, Brutus, etc. Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of social life, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns and comedians. The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres, and intruded not only between ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... rightly given, leaves us stronger. To appreciate and judge fairly the life and acts of a woman like Mary Lyon, or of a man such as Samuel Armstrong, is to awaken something of their spirit and moral temper in ourselves. Whether in the life of David or of Shylock, or of the people whom they represent, the study of men is primarily a study of morals, of conduct. It is in the personal hardships, struggles, and mutual contact of men that motives and moral impulses are observed and weighed. In such men as John Bunyan, William the Silent, and John ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... riband of velvet, If you would have the effect of its exquisite fineness and beauty. "Isn't it very frail?" I asked of the workman who made it. "Strong enough, if you will, to bind a lover, signora,"— With an expensive smile. 'Twas bought near the Bridge of Rialto. (Shylock, you know.) In our shopping, Aunt May and Fred do the talking: Fred begins always in French, with the most delicious effront'ry, Only to end in profoundest humiliation and English. Aunt, however, scorns to speak any tongue ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... to mention a name which any advantageous distinction has made eminent, but some latent animosity will burst out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract himself from publick affairs, will never want those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but boards. The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain or instruct, yet suffers persecution ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... had been ten times the Shylock he was, he could not have disregarded the last injunction of Fletcher. The turn in the market enabled him to make advantageous sales of his stocks, and in less than a week he resumed payment. The first thing he did was to pay over to trustees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... age we are all quite sure that piracy is a finer calling than trade, and the pirate a finer fellow than the Shylock who owns the ship—which, indeed, he may well be. But as we grow up (which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is not the best way to establish the ownership of cargoes, any more ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away— The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled were the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various

... of progress! Progress whither? From the savage who knew nothing to the dude who know less. From the barbarian who'd plundered your baggage, to the civilized Shylock who'd steal the very earth from under your feet. From that state wherein American sovereigns however poor, considered themselves the equals of kings and the superiors of princes, to that moral degradation and national decay in which they purchase the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Bible, nor the hymn books, nor the collecting boxes, nor the unpaid bills belonging the chapel, but—the title deeds of the old place! and to this day they have not been returned. This was indeed a sharp thing. How Shylock—how the old Jew with his inexorable pound of flesh-worship, creeps up in every section of human society! Vauxhall-road Chapel, which has passed through more denominational agony than any twenty modern places of worship put ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... of Venice is one of Shakspeare's most perfect works: popular to an extraordinary degree, and calculated to produce the most powerful effect on the stage, and at the same time a wonder of ingenuity and art for the reflecting critic. Shylock, the Jew, is one of the inimitable masterpieces of characterization which are to be found only in Shakspeare. It is easy for both poet and player to exhibit a caricature of national sentiments, modes of speaking, and gestures. Shylock, however, is everything but a common Jew: he possesses ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... selfishly. Had you talked to him for a week you would not have made him understand the scorn and loathing with which the colonel regarded him. Here was a young fellow as keen as the oldest curmudgeon,—a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock." "Barnes Newcome never missed a church," he goes on, "or dressing for dinner. He never kept a tradesman waiting for his money. He seldom drank too much, and never was late for business, or huddled over his toilet, however brief his ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... Lot and then think of a lily of the field! Think of the feverishness of the one and of the serenity of the other, or think of the ugly selfishness of the one, and of the graceful beauty of the other! Look upon avarice at its worst, upon a Shylock, and then gaze upon a lily of the field! How alarming is the contrast! The one is self-made, guided by vicious impulses; the other is the handiwork of God. The one is rooted in self-will; the other is rooted in the power of the Divine grace. God has nothing to do with ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... occasion to point out, the first profitable trade was carried on with strangers; your own kith and kin received assistance from you. You lent out money at interest only to the stranger, as Antonio remarked to Shylock, for from the stranger you could ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... perhaps study the character for my approaching tour in the United States. My other Shakespearian characters, besides those in which I have already appeared in Paris, are Coriolanus, Shylock, and Timon of Athens. Once I began to study Richard III., but chancing to see Bogumil Dawison in that character, I was so delighted with his personation that I gave up all thoughts of performing the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... excellent sheep it was; which one night they forgot outside; and the wolf, visiting the village, sees it tied to the mulberry, howls for joy, and carries it off. And thus Death robs the poor woman of her son; America, of her husband; the Shylock of the village, of her home; and the wolf, of her last head of cattle. And this were enough to age even a Spartan woman. Late in the evening, after she had related at length of her sorrows, three mattresses—all she had—are laid on the straw mat near each other, and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... earnings and belongings, until Clemens, exasperated, had been disposed to turn over to his creditors all remaining properties and let that suffice, once and for all. But this was momentary. He had presently instructed Mr. Rogers to "pay Shylock in full," and to assure any others that he would pay them, too, in the end. But none ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... he said, indicating the end of his speech by dropping the stump of his cigarette into the sand on the floor and softly spitting upon it,—"le Shylock de la rue Carondelet!"—and then in English, not to lose the admiration ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... But he had an interest in the question of eternal justice involved, and he was free to say that it was not correct to fry, boil, or in any way cook a Jew as a Jew. Mr. SUMNER then sent to the clerk's desk, and had read the statements of Shylock, which, he observed, were written by the immortal SHAKSPEARE, relative to the endowment of the Israelite with the usual limbs and features of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... baseball illustrations. Yet in both instances the message has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture—it is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the form of dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as "Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time, every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... sometimes, too, his genealogical tree is appended. Such expressions as "no cheating here" or "I cannot deceive," are common, but, in nearly every case, belie the character of the proprietor, who is a living libel on the word honesty. Honesty! old Shylock even ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... not, therefore, said that it rests on slavery! And so you think yourself justified, do you, in your emphatic assertion that 'he has made no such declaration'? You stand impregnable and triumphant—on the words! You stick to what is 'nominated in the bond'—the very Shylock of criticism! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... out to-day, and I would fain shirk and stay at home; never, Shylock-like, had I less will to feasting forth, but I must go or be thought sulky. Lord M. and Lady Abercromby called this morning, and a world of people besides, among others honest Mr. Wilson, late of Wilsontown, who took ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... no falsehood when he said that he felt as though he must marry Angela or go mad. Indeed, it is a striking proof of how necessary he thought that step to be to his happiness, that he had been willing to consent to his cousin's Shylock-like terms about the sale of the property, although they would in their result degrade him from his position as a large landed proprietor, and make a comparatively poor man of him. The danger or suffering that could induce a Caresfoot to half ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... department stores, but they all entered into the pantomime and interpreted the reading with spirit, as they did at another time in some of the Shakespeare scenes, Rosalind, Celia and Touchstone, Hamlet and Ophelia, Bottom and Titania, with attendant fairies, and Shylock and Portia. The Dickens scenes were repeated for a younger club, just trying its dramatic wings in charades, and when May-time came these younger girls of twelve to fifteen gave a very successful representation of an old English May-day with Robin Hood ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... garments the party proceeded to assume; and we were quickly transformed into as picturesque-looking a crowd as any that ever figured at a masquerade ball. As for myself, I made a very tolerable representation of Falstaff; while Richard, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, Shylock, and other gentlemen of Shakespeare's creation, gave variety to the procession. Then there was a clown in full circus costume, accompanied by Harlequin in his glittering shape-dress. We sadly longed for a sprightly Columbine; but then we consoled ourselves ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... able to sympathize so completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into their hearts. He must be able to enter into the soul of Falstaff or Shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than Falstaff or Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; otherwise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust to them; he would turn aside from ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... some months ago. By Jove! I remember now. He told me that this American fellow put them up at his rooms in St. James's Square one night. Smyth didn't know who Dick was until they got to France. He was travelling under the name of Sherlock, or Shylock, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse for being ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... have done a good work, even though they should stop where they are. The work would not, could not stop with them. They have already proved that good, substantial, cleanly, wholesome, tight-roofed, well ventilated dwellings for the Poor are absolutely cheaper than any other, so that Shylock himself might invest his fortune in the construction of such with the moral certainty of receiving a large income therefrom, while at the same time rescuing the needy from wretchedness, disease, brutalization and vice. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... he replied, brightening. "Remember I shall be a Shylock with this bond." But he was irritated, nevertheless, and went out on the piazza to try the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... daytime Mr. Norman was an innocent bookseller, but after seven he retired to the cellar and became as genuine a pawnbroker as could be found in London. Touching books he was easy enough to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper who knew little about literature; but in the underground establishment he was spoken of, by those who came to pawn, as a usurer of the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of Zagazig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to "malinger" with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever pleaded poverty, had made some L300 by lending a napoleon, say, on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to speak of the presents and "benevolences" which the debtor would be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... cannot refund it on a certain day, the lender shall have the right of cutting a pound of flesh from his body. All the evil which the people said and thought of the Jews during the Middle Ages seems concentrated in the Shylock of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... given me," he cried, "the most beautiful thing that has come into my life, and on a night like this I had to speak. I had to thank you. On such a night as this," Roddy cried breathlessly, "Jessica stole from Shylock's house to meet her lover. On such a night as this Leander swam the Hellespont. And on this night I had to tell you that to me you are the most wonderful and ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... the 14th of February, 1741, Macklin established his fame as an actor in the character of Shylock, in the "Merchant of Venice." . . . Macklin's performance of this character so forcibly struck a gentleman in the pit that he, as it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... black, and white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... latter's financial straits, and his purpose of wooing Portia. The second scene displays the character of Portia, and informs us of her father's device with regard to her marriage; but this information is conveyed in three or four lines. Not till the third scene do we see or hear of Shylock, and not until very near the end of the act is there any foreshadowing of what is to be the main crisis of the play. Not a single antecedent event has to be narrated to us; for the mere fact that Antonio has been uncivil to Shylock, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... motives, the strongest passions, and the most delicate graces of romantic poetry. In some of the plays it has a prevailing lightness and gayety, as in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. In others, like Measure for Measure, it is barely saved from becoming tragedy by the happy close. Shylock certainly remains a tragic figure, even to the end, and a play like Winter's Tale, in which the painful situation is prolonged for years, is only technically a comedy. Such dramas, indeed, were called, on many of the title-pages of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... contra." I find it pleasant for members of a proud aristocracy to condescend from their high estate to fawn, feign, flatter; to affect even mirthful familiarity in order to gain my good-will. I am no Shylock. No client can accuse me of desiring either his flesh or his blood. Sentimental vengeance is no item in my stock in trade. Gold and bank-notes satisfy my "rage;" or, if need be, a good mortgage. Far from seeking revenge, the worst defaulter I ever had dealings with cannot deny that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... laudable end:— The general has his star; Shylock his four per cent; The contractor's wife a costly gem To enhance her vulgar charms; The mother a harvest of tears; The wife a broken heart; The unborn babe a prenatal curse; While I have my surfeit ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... typical case, which sums up the whole of this absurd fashion. There was a controversy in the columns of an important daily paper, some time ago, on the subject of the character of Shylock in Shakespeare. Actors and authors of distinction, including some of the most brilliant of living Jews, argued the matter from the most varied points of view. Some said that Shakespeare was prevented by the prejudices of his time from having a complete sympathy ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... is one of strength and depth. Even now no Jew in fiction is ever a weakling or a trifler. In whatever light he is presented, a Shylock of Shakespeare, an Isaac of Scott, a Nathan of Lessing, a Sidonia of Disraeli—revengeful, avaricious, bigoted, benevolent, magnificent, talented—he is always a character of striking power and intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... Flesh is perfectly consistent with itself in its original popular form. It is inconsistent with the form of elaborate drama, and with the lives of people who have souls of their own, like Portia or Shylock. Hence in the drama which uses the popular story as its ground-plan, the story is never entirely reduced into conformity with the spirit of the chief characters. The caskets and the pound of flesh, in despite of all the author's pains with them, are imperfectly harmonised; the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... victorious. The same forms of expression, lacking this spirit, would have lacked the triumph. All of them, indeed, are not equally fine. Mr. Irving's 'Mathias' and 'Louis XI,' are higher performances than his 'Shylock' and 'Dorincourt,' higher in imaginative tone and in adequacy of feeling and treatment. But, throughout all these forms, the drift of his spirit, setting boldly away from conventions and formalities, has been manifested with delightful results. He ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... American coolly. "Count Antonio Ferrari—that was the name; a hoary old sinner with a pedigree that nearly reached to Adam, and as rich and miserly as Shylock. He bid high for the girl, I can tell you that, but I believe our friend Saul had a tough job to get her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... but the doubtful look on Ezram's face checked him. "Oh, I don't know," the old man replied, in the discouraging tones of a born tradesman. In reality the old Shylock's heart was leaping gayly in his breast. This was almost too good to be true: a purchaser for the boat in the first hour. "Yet we might," he went on. "We was countin' on goin' back in ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... which it would be neither of interest nor politic to detail poured in during the following weeks. Among them was the counterfeit case unearthed by some Shylock Holmes on the Panamanian force, that called for a long perspiring hunt for the "plant" in odd corners of the Zone. Then there was—, an ex-Z. P. who lost his three years' savings on the train, for which reason I shadowed a well-known ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... again I feel that the two authors who have helped me most in this study of human character are Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Mr. Clay had received a new whetting through the events of the year or two just past; and the natural acerbity of his nature was soured into bitter malignity. He believed every word of the story of Creemer, and harped upon it with the pertinacity of the Venetian upon the daughter of Shylock. He was scarcely ever upon the floor that some offensive allusion was not made to this subject. It was immaterial to him what the subject-matter was under discussion: he found a means to have a throw at the Administration, and of consequence, at Clay; and bargain and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... triumph of Vanity Fair—the great triumph of modern fiction—is Becky Sharp: a character which will ever stand in the very foremost rank of English literature, if not with Falstaff and Shylock, then with Squire Western, Uncle Toby, Mr. Primrose, Jonathan Oldbuck, and Sam Weller. There is no character in the whole range of literature which has been worked out with more elaborate completeness. She is drawn from girlhood ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... bankrupt, a prodigal] There is no need of alteration. There could be, in Shylock's opinion, no prodigality more culpable than such liberality as that by which a man exposes himself to ruin ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... finder, has been confused with Trower, for Thrower, a name connected with weaving. Even the jester has come down to us as Patch, a name given regularly to this member of the household in allusion to his motley attire. Shylock applies ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... banker by name, but in reality dealt in usurious loans, Shylock-like wringing the pound of flesh from the victims of his avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove into the streets, followed ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... aliis" put in John Effingham, again, by way of arresting the torrent of names. "Eve saw many of these, and, as Tubal told Shylock, 'we often came where we did hear' of the rest. But you say nothing, friend Tom, of Goethe, and Tieck, and Schlegel, and La Martine, Chateaubriant, Hugo, Delavigne, Mickiewicz, Nota, Manzoni, Niccolini, &c. &c. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... much exaggeration, relying on striking statements for increased effect. Shakespeare possibly intended to present an exaggerated type of the Jew in the character of Shylock. Shall the student recognize exaggeration as such? Or shall he take all statements literally? Or shall he avoid doing either, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... place at once. On the other hand personal credit was guaranteed in the most summary, not to say extravagant fashion; for the lawgiver entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent debtor like a thief, and granted to him in entire legislative earnest what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy, guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to the cutting off too much more carefully than did the Jew. The law could not have more clearly expressed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... started with a flush to the Judge's eyes, to have this ostracised and hooted Shylock intimate that their relations could be more than a prince's to a pawnbroker. But the Judge was a politician, with an adaptable mind ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Venice. He was a usurer who had amassed an immense fortune by lending money at great interest to Christian merchants. Shylock, being a hard-hearted man, exacted the payment of the money he lent with such severity that he was much disliked by all good men, and particularly by Antonio, a young merchant of Venice; and Shylock as much hated ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like I'll let you have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he can out of you I'll stand a show of getting something. He's a regular Shylock, he is.' ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... that night played "Shylock," and Mr. Perry secured a box for Miss Vance. Frances went with the others. Before the curtain rose there was a startled movement among them, a whisper, and then Clara turned ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... the veriest miser I ever met with. You are worse than Shylock, or,—Good gracious! what is this?" exclaimed she, interrupting herself, and taking up the draft he had laid before her; "and have you the conscience to think, Mr. Pawnbroker, that I will offer this ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... his affairs for the followin' three years, and the only time I lost in acceptin' it was caused by the ink runnin' out of my fountain pen when I was signin' the contract. In them days I had a rep for bein' able to get the money for my athletes that would make Shylock look like a free spender. Every time one of my boys performed for the edification of the mob, we got a elegant deposit before we put a pen to the articles and we got the balance of the dough before we pulled on a glove. I never left nothin' ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... Il Pecorone (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is also told in the Gesta Romanorum. Other incidents in the play are taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought by some that the character of Shylock was suggested by the case of the Spanish Jew, Lopez, who was hanged, perhaps unjustly, for plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth, in 1594. The main source of the dramatic fable is ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... Look at that tall, sallow-faced Greek: he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's swine-pens. Look at that low-browed Scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird. Look at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew: he has been a Shylock, cutting his pound of flesh from the gilded ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... one to whom dress mattered so little," Aunt Marcia said, as she folded up her silk knitting. "But Mrs. Edgar insists upon her four fittings like any Shylock haggling for his pound of flesh; it ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... it makes room for a pathetic situation, and greatly enhances the dramatic interest of the closing scene. Here we have the antique Oriental version of the story in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, where Shylock takes the same kind of security from Antonio, upon whose person he subsequently demands execution of his bond of blood; nor does the law refuse it to him. But the Hindu custom is so far milder than the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... presumably set in a ring, was given to Shylock by Leah before their marriage, perhaps at their betrothal, is all that Shakespeare has found occasion to write of this pretty stone, one of the earliest used for adornment in the world's history, as the great ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... God, a God of wrath, a tyrant force To mete to helpless souls eternal doom; A Juggernaut, a hard unsentient power,— But yet less potent than the yellow gold Those crooked talons clutch, and for the which The miser Shylock fain would sell ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... contrary, the rearing of cats would indeed have been a lucrative occupation. A time-honoured error is thus commemorated in a word, the origin of which must be ascribed to want of thought. If the number of cats requisite for the string manufacture be considered for a moment, it is easy to see that Shylock's "harmless necessary" domestics are under no contribution in this matter. Strings are made from the intestines of the sheep and goat, chiefly of the former. The best qualities are made from the intestines of the lamb, the strength of which ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... years ago, when they did not have homes of their own, they rented of a man, who, like Shylock, would hold them close to their bargain. One year the "destroyer" came, and crops were short everywhere. When the day was at hand for the landlord to come with his wagons for his share of the crop, they were greatly distressed. Acting upon the advice of a Christian woman, who ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various

... never saw a king—outside of a pinochle deck. If I lost one of those rubies the Maiden Lane Shylock who owns them would tear enough curled hair out of his beard to fill a mattress. You never really believed that King stuff, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... manana siguiente a la huerta, hallo que, durante la noche, le habian robado las cuarenta calabazas....—Para ahorrarme de razones,[70-6] dire que, como el judio de Shakespeare, llego al mas sublime paroxismo tragico, repitiendo freneticamente aquellas terribles palabras 15 de Shylock, en que tan admirable dicen que ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... good deal of experience of Nigerian Courts of various kinds, but have never met one which better deserves to be termed a Court of Justice than that over which she presided. The litigants emphatically got justice—sometimes, perhaps, like Shylock, "more than they desired"—and it was essential justice unhampered by legal technicalities. One decision I recall—I have often subsequently wished that I could follow it as a precedent. A sued B for a small debt. B ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... the wedding-day, had it been Antonio that was to espouse the fair Portia. Even he would have allowed three days of grace before demanding the specific performance of his bond. Now Mr. Schulemberg was very far from being a Shylock, and he was also a constant attendant upon the opera, and a devoted admirer of the lovely G——. So he could not wonder that a man on the eve of marriage with that divine creature should forget every other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... his sin, he has suffered enough [I felt glad of this final opinion]; but a bargain was made. He, on his part, for a consideration of one pound sterling, was to tell thee who wrote certain words. He has paid thee and thou hast taken interest out of his skin. Indeed, Friend Shylock, I think he weighs less by a pound. Thou wilt give him his pound, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... danger of taking cold, that the naked with his clothes on will also take cold or must stay in his bedroom. Hold to it eternally that the clad man is still naked if it amuse you,—'tis designated in the bond; but the so-called contradiction is a sterile boon. Like Shylock's pound of flesh, it leads to no consequences. It does not entitle you to one drop of his Christian blood either in the way of catarrh, social exclusion, or what further results pure ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... Charles Macklin, alias M'Laughlin, good in such characters as Shylock, &c.; no tragedian; a lecturer ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... French's affair, being perfectly satisfied myself, I have not ceased, nor shall I 'cease, endeavoring to satisfy others, that your conduct has been that of an honest and honorable debtor, and theirs the counterpart of Shylock in the play. I enclose you a letter containing my testimony on your general conduct, which I have written to relieve a debt of justice pressing on my mind, well knowing at the same time, you will not stand in need of it in America. Your conduct is too well known to Congress, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... offered to instruct Caruso four years, only demanding 25 per cent. of his pupil's receipts for his first five years in opera. Caruso signed such a contract willingly, although he realized afterward that he was the victim of a veritable Shylock. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... the great national earthquake, when it causes an upheaval from the depths of the pocket? If Uncle Sam's sentiments are, as they are supposed to be, only a concentration of those of the majority, isn't his lamentation over his run-away South, who has changed her name without his consent, that of Shylock: 'My daughter! Oh! my ducats!'? Though not exactly connected with this branch of selfishness, I may as well, while speaking of our national difficulties, mention what struck me very forcibly: It is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "Shylock!" Sylvie proclaimed. "No, I beg your pardon!" she hastily corrected herself, "King Lear! I hadn't noticed the crown." (Bruno had very cleverly provided one, which fitted him exactly, by cutting out the centre of a dandelion to make room ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... system of streams, as also by all the links of a community of more than a thousand years; to cut off our right hand, Transylvania, and to give it up to the neighbouring Wallachia, to cut out like Shylock one pound of our very breast—the Banat—and the rich country between the Danube and Theiss—to augment by it Turkish Serbia and so forth. It is the new ambition of conquest, but an easy conquest not ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... will find his difficulty solved by Johnson's Dictionary (a work to which he himself refers), if he compares the following quotation with Portia's reply to Shylock:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... Portugal, an actor who should represent a depraved character finely, instead of calling down the applauses of the audience, is hissed and pelted without mercy. It would be the same in England, if we, for one moment, thought that Shylock or Iago was standing before us. While the dramatic art was in its infancy at Athens, it produced similar effects on the ardent and imaginative spectators. It is said that they blamed Aeschylus for frightening them into fits with his Furies. Herodotus tells us that, when Phyrnichus ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by ... what you call ... Shylock's bridge deg. with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: deg.8 I was never out of England—it's as if I saw ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... Week 1921. The week in which during all the years of many and long ages benighted people sacrificed their Christs to Shylock gods. If Jesus lived and was a Christ, unhappily He was neither the first nor the last, for there were many both before and after Him. Were they who superstitiously led these victims to their Golgothas greater ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... stage, the evil influence gained sad ascendency, and his finest renditions grew "out of tune and harsh." In depicting the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and Kean, when at their best, can surpass all rivals; and the grotesque, darkly-powerful ideals of Richard and Shylock are precisely those in which they will startle us to the last, gathering new, though fitful, expressions of hate and scorn, as their own natures sink from ethereal to grosser atmospheres. The mouth catches most surely the growing tendency ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... of Venice, as Rowe remarks, the character of Shylock is made comick, and we are prompted to laughter, instead ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... the great English tragic actor whom Hazlitt was instrumental in discovering for the London public. Shylock and Othello were his most successful roles. For accounts of his various performances, see "A View of the English Stage" (Works, VIII). Most of the points in this essay are reproduced from the notice of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... eyes bright and cunning, a hooked nose, a short yellow beard, unkempt hair, huge feet, and long bony hands, he presented all the typical characteristics of the German Jew, the heartless, wily usurer, the hardened miser and skinflint. As iron is attracted by the magnet, so was this Shylock attracted by the sight of gold, nor would he have hesitated to draw the life-blood of his creditors, if by such means ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... frankness did not offend Henry, because it was illuminating. A blind man had changed his Shylock; a little child changed his Vicar. When the first night came, he gave a simple, lovable performance. Many people now understood and liked him as they had never done before. One of the things I most admired in it was his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... no use in proclaiming your aspirations to be a Portia or a Shylock until you are sure that your dramatic talent is going to be appreciated. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, but the girl who said at a campus dinner-table, "If I am Portia, who is there tall enough for Bassanio?" became a college proverb in favor of keeping your hopes to yourself, ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... lookers; the talked-of of all talkers; was the guest of Geo. A. Nurse, the U.S. Attorney, dined with the Governor, and was praised by the press. I was dubbed the "Fanny Kemble of America," and reminded critics of the then greatest Shylock of the stage. A judge from Ohio said there was "not a man in the State who could have presented that case (Woman's Legal Disabilities) so well." Indeed, I was almost as popular as if I were about to ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... being the author. Jacob was in fact accused of having egged on his unfortunate brother to his doom in order that he might turn a little money out of the transaction between newspaper reports and police fees. It apparently mattered little to this modern Shylock whence came his pound of flesh or what blood ran or congealed in ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... their plenteous quantity,—seizing Algiers,—looking wistfully at the Red Sea,—overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,—striking madly out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,—playing Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile, to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary Commercial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... Hugo's writings, after a life of suffering and brave endurance, goes into incarceration and death, they clap the book shut and say, "Good for him!" They stamp their feet with indignation and say just the opposite of "Save the working-classes." They have all their sympathies with Shylock, and not with Antonio and Portia. They are plutocrats, and their feelings are infernal. They are filled with irritation and irascibility on this subject. To stop this awful imbroglio between capital and labor they will lift not so much as the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... of Venice," and who can tell the thrills that tingled through Phoebe's frame as, with dry lips and a beating heart, she gazed down upon Shylock. Behind that great false beard was the face of England's mightiest poet. That wig concealed the noble forehead so revered by high and low in the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... they were good Christian beggars, dressed up and daubed, for the purpose of looking as frightful, and as like the traditionary representations and vulgar notions of a malicious, revengeful, ominous looking Shylock as ever whetted his knife. The figures were well got up; the tone, accent, and action, suited to the parts to be played; the stage effect perfect, favoured as it was by the distance at which I saw and wished ever to keep such ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... of Venice allowed property in human beings; and upon this ground Shylock demanded his pound of flesh, cut nearest to the heart. Those who advertise mothers to be sold separately from their children, likewise claim a right to human flesh; and they too cut it ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... mankind. This experiment would, to say the least of it, be a very singular one in diplomacy. It may be possible, though I think not very probable, that the allies would have borne such an address with patience; that they would have retorted only with the 'whispering humbleness' of Shylock ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... just uttered words which remind me of Antonio saying to the Jew in 'The Merchant of Venice': 'Thy ducats in exchange for a pound of my flesh.' Madame Desvarennes loves her daughter with a more formidable love than Shylock had for his gold. The Prince will do well to be exact in his payments of the happiness which ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... every story are told, Henry VIII. may establish an alibi or two, Shylock and the public-school system meet over and melt that too, too solid pound of flesh, and Xantippe, herself the sturdier man than Socrates, give ready, lie to what is called the shrew in her. Landladies, whole black-bombazine ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... one occasion, how, after making my hearers cry over the natural and permanent tragedy of Shylock, I asked the fatuous question, addressing it, as one does, to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... addition, because the difference in the "futures" indemnifies him. But if he has no "futures", what then? to part with valuable cotton for nothing, and pay good money as well, would exceed the demands of Shylock. ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer

... a few months ago Mr. Parnell denounced as representing to him and his friends 'imprisonment, chains and death,' now came to offer him a scheme of Irish nationality, and Shylock, recognizing the wisdom of the sham Balthazar, was not more appreciative: 'A Daniel come to judgment, yea a Daniel,' but, like Shylock, Mr. Parnell relied upon his bond. Whilst he accepted the offering with the effusion of a successful speculator, he took care to remind his hearers that he was not ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various



Words linked to "Shylock" :   shark, lender, character, fictional character, fictitious character, moneylender, loaner



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