“But wherefore should I go? 
    I am not bid for love; they flatter me: 
    But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon
    The prodigal Christian.”

But Jessica does not join her father in his hatred of all Christians.  She indeed has given her heart to one of the hated race, and well knowing that her father will never allow her to marry him, she, that night while he is at supper with Bassanio, dresses herself in boy’s clothes and steals away, taking with her a great quantity of jewels and money.

When Shylock discovers his loss he is mad with grief and rage.  He runs about the streets crying for justice.

    “Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! 
    A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
    Of double ducats stol’n from me by my daughter!”

And all the wild boys in Venice follow after him mocking him and crying, “His stones, his daughter and his ducats!”

So finding nowhere love or sympathy but everywhere only mockery and cruel laughter, Shylock vows vengeance.  The world has treated him ill, and he will repay the world with ill, and chiefly against Antonio does his anger grow bitter.

Then Antonio’s friends shake their heads and say, “Let him beware the hatred of the Jew.”  They look gravely at each other, for it is whispered abroad that “Antonio hath a ship of rich lading wreck’d on the narrow seas.”

Then let Antonio beware.

“Thou wilt not take his flesh,” says one of the young merchant’s friends to Shylock.  “What’s that good for?”

“To bait fish withal,” snarls the Jew.  “If it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge.  He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason?  I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?  Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?  If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.  If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?  Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?  Why, revenge.  The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

Then let Antonio beware.

Meantime in Belmont many lovers come to woo fair Portia.  With high hope they come, with anger and disappointment they go away.  None can win the lady’s hand.  For there is a riddle here of which none know the meaning.