This act opens with Salanio and Salarino again functioning as a chorus, informing the audience of the development of events against which the action of the scene will take place. The suggestion made earlier that Antonio's mercantile ventures at sea might founder is now made specific. One of Antonio's ships lies "wracked on the narrow seas . . . where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried." The news of the danger to Antonio also prepares us for the entrance of Shylock, the embodiment of that danger, who has by now discovered Jessica's elopement.
The moneylender enters, and both we and Salanio know perfectly well what news concerns Shylock; Salanio's sardonic greeting, with its pretense of wanting to know "the news," is calculated to infuriate Shylock, for even though we have not seen Shylock since the elopement of his daughter, we know that his anger will have been fueled by the fact that Lorenzo — and, by implication, the whole Christian community — has dealt him a blow. One should be fully aware that Shylock is ever conscious of his Jewishness in a Christian community. Then at the mention of Antonio, Shylock says ominously, "Let him look to his bond." Without question, the bond is "merry" no longer — but Salanio has not comprehended this yet. His half-serious question "Thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for?" is answered savagely: "If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge," Shylock declares.
The malicious digs of Salanio and Salarino produce one of Shylock's most dramatic speeches in the play. It is written in prose, but it is a good example of the superb intensity to which Shakespeare can raise mere prose. Shylock's series of accusing, rhetorical questions which form the central portion of the speech, from "Hath not a Jew eyes?" to "If you poison us, do we not die?" completely silences Shylock's tormentors. In fact, this speech silences us. We ourselves have to ponder it. It is one of the greatest pleas for human tolerance in the whole of dramatic literature. But it is also something more, and we must not lose sight of its dramatic importance: It is a prelude to Shylock's final decision concerning how he will deal with Antonio.
