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into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so forth°—but I will
16
not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. [What news on the Rialto? ] Who is he
comes here? 17

Enter Antonio

—Bassanio
It is° Signior Antonio. {This is} / Here comes

jBassanio goes over to Antonio and they converse in private.k 18

—Shylock [aside]
+Here comes the royal merchant,—how much more° / closer / keener
Does he resemble° a fawning innkeeper,° 19 / look like / an obsequious servant
+So eager° in serving the needs of others., 20 21 / Seeking / Ready
22
How I despise his Christian haughtiness° / charity

15. Sometimes this line is staged as an ‘aside,’ rather than a direct comment (and insult) to Bassanio. Reference is to
Jesus of Nazareth who conjured a demon out of two men and cast it into a herd of pigs (Matthew 8:28-33); or to the
story where Jesus cast out unclean spirits from a man named Legion into a herd of pigs (Mark 5:1-13). In both
stories the pigs were driven off a cliff into the sea.
16. Shylock could not be asking this of Bassanio since Bassanio has no knowledge of what is happening on the
Rialto. In a staging, Shylock could look up and see a fellow merchant, and instinctively ask him about news on the
Rialto—and then notice Antonio’s arrival. This, however, would require the scene to be staging in the market, with
additional characters moving on stage. Another option would be to delete this line, which is irrelevant to the action,
and which would not make sense if the scene is staged between Shylock and Bassanio (with no additional characters
on stage).
17. swine: / pigs {habitation} > dwelling place so forth: {following}
18. From his opening bombast (in this revised version) we know that Antonio despises usurers and here, though
necessity we find him thrust into a usurer’s domain. Antonio cannot be pleased with the situation—rather he is
dismayed and taken aback—yet, for the love of his friend, he is willing to endure this unfortunate convergence.
(Without understanding Antonio’s hatred of usury—and now seeing him thrust into the liar of one whose practice he
despises—the scene would fail to hold the tension that was intended by the author, a tension surely felt and
understood by an informed Elizabethan audience.)
19. {How like a fawning publican he looks}
/ How like an over-eager servant he looks / How like an eager inn-keeper he looks / How he looks like an
all too eager innkeeper.
fawning: humble, cowering, accommodating, obsequious
publican: innkeeper, ‘pub’-keeper. Sharing similar roots with: pub, and public.
A fawning publican refers to an obsequious and ‘ever-ready-to-serve’ inn- or bar-keeper. The image here is that
of Antonio, the well-respected ‘royal merchant’ who, in this capacity, looks like a lowly innkeeper so ready to
accommodate the needs of his friend. This image is supported by Shylock’s later description of Antonio as one who
acts in ‘low simplicity.’ There is something about this all-too-willing posture which is alien to Shylock and both
offends and threatens his concept of life. A publican could also be a reference to those who served as tax-collectors
for the Romans [Luke 18:9-14]—and in so doing oppressed the Jews—but this is a more remote possibility. [See
Additional Notes, 1.3.38]
20. / +Ever so eager to be of assistance, / +Ever so willing to help out his friends,
21. / —how he looks
More like a fawning slave, +the way he tries to° / lowly servant, +as he tries to
Accommodate the wantings of his friend.,
22. {I hate him for he is a Christian}
/ I hate his Christian kind° of charity / breed / acts / show
/ I hate his Christian meddling, but more so