Fascinating ...

... Shylock, My Students, and Me. (Hat tip, Scott Stein.)

The initial notion that my job had become easy, since I no longer had to defend Shylock, began to change as I realized that the all-encompassing, reflexive sympathy my students felt for him was perhaps even more insidiously wrong than the earlier prejudice toward him. In an odd reversal, I, the Jewish teacher, now be­came the only person in the classroom to argue that Shylock was still a villain, despite the abuse he had suffered, and that his stubborn call for a pound of flesh was the emblem of his villainy.

I would note that when Portia says, "...consider this, / That, in the course of justice, none of us / Should see salvation,” she is theologically correct: God's mercy always trumps his justice.