SOURCE: Boehrer, Bruce. “Shylock and the Rise of the Household Pet: Thinking Social Exclusion in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Quarterly 50, no. 2 (summer 1999): 152-70.

In the following essay, Boehrer studies the play's bestial language and imagery, contending that Shylock's association with a mongrel or cur informs an understanding of his role in The Merchant of Venice, including his position as an outcast and his attitude toward his social standing.

In 1615, while visiting Cambridge University, King James I attended a public debate between John Preston and Matthew Wren on the question of “whether Dogs could make syllogismes.”¹ Wren took the negative and Preston the affirmative, the latter carrying the day in part with the following argument:

an Ethymeme [sic] (said he), is a lawfull & reall syllogisme, but dogs can make them; he instanced in a Hound, who hath y^e major proposition in his minde, namely, the hare is...