Cry of Humanity!

As is protected the birdies are by the mother,

From a fuming force of nature,

Keeping them under its wings,

The feeling of Antonio for Bassanio had been similar.

 

Money, evil for some and bliss for many, started,

The drama both famed and notorious,

The hated Jew had the upper hand,

Lending cash to the needed.   

 

It was the very bond, yes,

That Antonio thought futile,

Since the bringers of fortune,

Kept crawling towards the shore like serpents.

 

Alas! The evil spirits from the ocean,

Surfaced with a bang,

Favouring Shylock, the ruthless one in his right to cut,

A pound of flesh from Antonio’s structure human.

 

Like a seraph from the heaven above,

Portia did carry the message of humanity,

And mercy ending up with an assumed ‘poetic justice’,

That many do appreciate and others disapprove of. 

Author's Note

Shylock deserves punishment; his property is taken away- this is acceptable but his forced conversion cannot be supported [at least by me]. In the title, I have added extra 'not' within brackets to highlight the fact that though Shylock utters "I am content", his heart says silently "I am not content" after losing his property and religion. I have also written a research article on this topic entitled, The Evil Bond in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: The Source of Irrationality: http://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v2-i9/11.pdf