The
usurer hangs the cozener' (King Lear 4.6.148-50, 159).
This latter point raises the fifth question (whether, when one heir of a
usurer cannot make proper restitution, his obligation falls to another heir).
Shylock, a main character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, is portrayed as a greedy
usurer who lends money at high interest rates, with no compassion for those in financial trouble.
Of course, that amounts to getting a loan from a money-lender, or
usurer. Consequently, Bassanio goes to the Jew Shylock to try to arrange for a loan in Antonio's name (money-lenders, or
usurers, in Shakespeare's time were often, but not always, Jews, and were despised for their profession as well as for their religion.
Mauricius's misshapen torso sports a wee penis as a tail and a bulbous frontage of crenelated flesh, and the sardonic
usurer takes his greatest pleasure in puerile desecration, shirting in a church or lustily kissing the statue of a saint until his jaw aches.
While this could be an ironic way of assuring that a ruthless
usurer gets his comeuppance (any money placed in the bank was almost certain to be lost), it is still a mystifyingly irrational act on the part of such a successful businessman.
The
usurer wants more than he can decently use, and to get it, he 'stoppeth' other people's use of things.
The Quraan Ch.2 Verse 276 "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an
usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury."
To this end, they fondly refer to the
usurer's sympathetic remarks, like "If you prick us do we not bleed?
Though usury was "a trade brought in by the Jews, now perfectly practiced almost by every Christian and so commonly that he is accounted but for a fool that doth lend his money for nothing," (7) the irrational equivalence of moneylender and Jew was indestructible: as Danson explains, "since in theory the business of making barren metal breed more metal was inimical to the right-minded Christian, then ipso facto the
usurer must, despite the attest of eyes and ears, be Jewish," (8) literally and/or figuratively.