The Merchant of Venice was written in the Elizabethan era. This period was rather anti-semitic, with English Jews having been expelled from the country in 1290 by Oliver Cromwell.

Jews in Shakespeare’s England were a marginalized group, and Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have been very familiar with portrayals of Jews as villains and objects of mockery.

Shakespeare presents Shylock, a Jew, as the antagonist of the play. The character of Shylock is an exaggeration of Jewish stereotypes from this time. One interpretation of the play's structure is that Shakespeare meant to contrast the mercy of the main Christian characters with the vengeful Shylock, who lacks the religious grace to comprehend mercy.