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Question
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
Duke: What, is Antonio here?
Antonio: Ready, so please your grace.
Duke: I am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
Incapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy.
(i) What are the terms of the bond that Antonio has signed?
(ii) Why does the Duke call Shylock ‘inhuman’? What does the Duke expect Shylock to do?
(iii) What reason does Shylock give for choosing rotten flesh over money? What are the things hated by some people?
(iv) State three examples Antonio gives to illustrate Shylock’s stubborn attitude.
(v) How is Shylock’s property distributed at the end by Antonio? Do you think Shylock deserves the punishment given to him? Give a reason to justify your answer.
Solution
(i) The term of the bond is if Antonio is unable to pay the three thousand ducats specified on the paper on a certain date, in an agreed place, the forfeit to be paid, will be an exact pound of Antonio’s flesh which Shylock will be at liberty to take from any part of his body which pleases him.
(ii) Shylock is called inhuman by Duke because he demanded the pound of flesh from Antonio’s body and did not have a single grain to pity in his heart.
The Duke expects Shylock to show mercy on Antonio as Antonio has suffered heavy losses. Shylock will forgive him a part of the principal amount to be paid by Antonio along with forgiving their penalty.
(iii) Shylock says he will not give any particular reason except that it is his fancy and whim. He gives the example that if his house is infested with rats it is fancy to spend ten thousand ducats To have them poisoned. Further, he says that there are some people who cannot tolerate the sight of an open-mouthed roasted pig, others the sight of a cat and some get angry to hear the scream of the bagpipe. It is just a matter of personal taste. What we like or dislike is determined by our whim or mood.
(iv) Antonio tells that if Bassanio is hoping to soften Shylock’s heart he might as well stand on the seashore and ask the tide not to rise so high as usual. Secondly, he may as well ask the wolf why he has made the mother sheep mourn for the lamb he has devoured. Thirdly he may as well expect the tall pines on the hillside not to wave their f high tops and not to make a noise when they are disturbed by the strong winds. He may soften anything which is hard rather than softens the hard heart of Shylock.
(v) One half of Shylock’s property will go to the person against whom Shylock plotted to take his life and the rest will be handed over to the private treasury of the state.
Shylock’s life depended on the Duke’s mercy. Yes, Shylock deserves the punishment, as you sow so shall you reap. He had dug a ditch for Antonio but it seems he himself fell into it.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Discuss these question in class with your teacher and then write down your answer
in two or three paragraphs .
Kezia decides that there are “different kinds of fathers”. What kind of father was Mr
Macdonald, and how was he different from Kezia’s father?
The Narrative Present
Notice the incomplete sentences in the following paragraphs. Here the writer is using incomplete sentences in the narration to make the incident more dramatic or immediate. Can you rewrite the paragraph in complete sentences?
(You can begin: The vet and I made a dash back to the car. Bruno was still floundering…)
(i) A dash back to car. Bruno still floundering about on his stumps, but clearly weakening rapidly; some vomiting, heavy breathing, with heaving flanks and gaping mouth. Hold him everybody! In goes the hypodermic – Bruno squeals – 10 c.c. of the antidote enters his system without a drop being wasted. Then minutes later: condition unchanged! Another 10 c.c. injected! Ten minutes later: breathing less stertorous – Bruno can move his arms and legs a little although he cannot stand yet. Thirty minutes later: Bruno gets up and has a great feed! He looks at us disdainfully, as much as to say, ‘What’s barium carbonate to a big black bear like me?’ Bruno is still eating.
(ii) In the paragraphs above from the story the verbs are in the present tense (eg. hold, goes, etc.). This gives the reader an impression of immediacy. The present tense is often used when we give a commentary on a game (cricket, football, etc.), or tell a story as if it is happening now. It is, therefore, called the narrative present. You will read more about the present tense in Unit 10
An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why did the old man continue to sit without moving with the other villagers?
It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridge head 3 beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there.’’Where do you come from?” I asked him.
“From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled.
That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled.
“I was taking care of animals,” he explained.
“Oh,” I said, not quite understanding.
“Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.”
He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?”
“Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What was the name of the old man’s native town?
Sibia sprang.
From boulder to boulder she came leaping like a rock goat. Sometimes it had seemed difficult to cross these stones, especially the big gap in the middle where the river coursed through like a bulge of glass. But now she came on wings, choosing her footing in midair without even thinking about it, and in one moment she was beside the shrieking woman. In the boiling bloody water, the face of the crocodile, fastened round her leg, was tugging to and fro, and smiling. His eyes rolled on to Sibia. One slap of the tail could kill her. He struck. Up shot the water, twenty feet, and fell like a silver chain. Again! The rock jumped under the blow. But in the daily heroism of the jungle, as common as a thorn tree, Sibia did not hesitate. She aimed at the reptile’s eyes. With all the force of her little body, she drove the hayfork at the eyes, and one prong went in—right in— while its pair scratched past on the horny cheek. The crocodile reared up in convulsion, till half his lizard body was out of the river, the tail and nose nearly meeting over his stony back. Then he crashed back, exploding the water, and in an uproar of bloody foam he disappeared. He would die. Not yet, but presently, though his death would not be known for days; not till his stomach, blown with gas, floated him. Then perhaps he would be found upside down among the logs at the timber boom, with pus in his eye. Sibia got arms round the fainting woman, and somehow dragged her from the water.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What would happen to the crocodile?
How was Mahmoud, the cook, attached to the tiger cub?
What was the Dog’s experience with the Lion?
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Describe Kalpana Chawla’s first mission in space.
Bring out the relevance/significance of the banyan tree in the title of Ruskin Bond’s story.
What strategy does Cassius suggest that the conspirators follow?
