The Air They Breathe
📖 The Air They Breathe
Act 1, Scene 3. The loan has been agreed. As Antonio turns to leave, Shylock calls after him: "You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine."
Notice what Shakespeare has done. The scene does not present prejudice as an aberration — as one villain's cruelty toward one victim. It presents prejudice as the air Venice breathes. Antonio has spat on Shylock. He will do it again if he feels like it. And now he needs Shylock's money. The audience is not watching villainy; they are watching a society examine itself in a mirror it does not recognise.
English Literature glossary
- What is a gaberdine and why does it matter analytically in Act 1 Scene 3?
- A gaberdine is the traditional outer garment worn by Jewish men in Elizabethan Europe — a long, loose cloak associated with Jewish identity in the period. Analytically: when Antonio 'spits upon my Jewish gaberdine' (1.3), the prejudice becomes physical — it targets the visible marker of difference, not the abstract category. Shakespeare writes the body into the insult. The word 'Jewish' modifying 'gaberdine' insists that religious identity is written on the surface of the person; the spitting is an attack on visible Jewishness. This makes the gaberdine a key image for AO2 analysis of prejudice as embodied and habitual.
Shakespeare builds a Venice defined not by what it includes but by what it excludes. Multiple outsiders are established before the main plot's engine turns. Shylock is defined by religion and ethnicity: in 1.3 he lists the humiliations he has endured — spat upon, called a dog, insulted in public — and Antonio confirms
Earn the mark scheme marks
🧠 The Outsider Arc in Three Words
Three stages. One mnemonic. Covers the full theme trajectory:
EXPOSED → HUMANISED → ERASED
Why it works: EXPOSED = Shakespeare establishes prejudice as Venice's structural practice in Acts 1-2 (gaberdine speech, Morocco's apology, "misbeliever, cut-throat dog"). HUMANISED = Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes?" (3.1) — Shakespeare places maximum rhetorical power in the outsider's mouth at the moment of greatest injustice. ERASED = forced conversion (4.1), four words, Act 5's silence — the comedy is purchased through Shylock's dispossession. The three stages trace what prejudice DOES, not what Shylock feels.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
In what year were Jews expelled from England, giving Elizabethan audiences almost no direct knowledge of Jewish people?
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