Shylock as a Villian or Victim in - amazonia.fiocruz.br

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Congratulate, this: Shylock as a Villian or Victim in

Satan is motivated not by some abstract evil but by a sense of injustice—of being superseded in a case of nepotistic favoritism—that we can understand and even sympathize with. As this suggests, injured merit can have constructive effects.

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But in its most obvious expression, injured merit encourages the denigration Shylock as a Villian or Victim in not Vi,lian destruction of the individual or group that the injured party feels has usurped his place. The story, as told in Genesis, is brief but heavily weighted with meaning:. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. The idea of losing ground to a younger sibling—for it is central to the story that Cain is the older brother—is quite literal here: Cain had the world to himself before Abel came on the scene; now, he must share it.

The story exemplifies a primal form of injured merit: injury to the sense of entitlement of the first born. Although nowadays we may make light of birth order as a form of precedence, its continued psychological power is undeniable. It is dramatized in almost any family, in the tendency of older children to cling to their sense of precedence long after they are grown. Primogeniture has largely disappeared in civilized societies because the injured merit of younger siblings has been strong enough to compete with that of older ones. At the same time, in a complementary subplot, Shylcok younger brother wrests power and banishes an older brother.

The situation is repeated with variations in The Tempest. In these instances, Shakespeare shows the importance of primogeniture in the maintenance of social order while also critiquing it, Accident Manual forward to a new era in which legal favoritism is no longer tilted toward the oldest male child. Shylock as a Villian or Victim in eventually, military might came to pose a threat to hierarchical succession, as the valorous defender began to suffer a sense of injured merit. Shakespeare, once again, offers an illuminating instance of this in his Henriad tetralogy. In Richard IIRichard, who attains the throne based on the rule of primogeniture, initially lords it over his cousin, Bolingbroke, who, once he acquires a grievance that his cousins, fellow aristocrats, can relate to, uses his superior force to depose Richard and seize the crown for himself.

This is dramatized in Henry IV, Part II and Henry Vin which inherited position and military might are shown to be less important than political cunning and statesmanship. The value system that emerges at the end of the Henriad is one that prevails in a democratic society.

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Here, everyone, Victij, is entitled to compete for precedence but the means of assessing value is more difficult. In the old order, blood and bravery signified worth. In here new one, worth is more subjectively Shylock as a Villian or Victim in, more bound up with elusive, individual qualities.

Injured merit is consequently more pervasive—everyone is entitled to a grievance. Now, however, it is not the older brother or the king, but society itself—that vast fabric of interests and prejudices that fail to give the Vilian his, now also herdue. The idea that the world is corrupt and unfair was the subject of medieval morality plays and sermons. They taught a vast population to reconcile itself to misery and subjugation by promising rewards in the afterlife. But in a democracy, everyone is moderately free and potentially subject to rewards in this life, though few receive the rewards they think they deserve.

Thus, the perspective of the medieval morality play—that the world is hopelessly corrupt—gets deployed to rationalize injured merit. The viewpoint has particular power because it tends to be self-fulfilling. Any subsequent slight or sign of neglect reinforces this view. Eventually, this can lead to the rationalization that social rewards are not worth having.]