<P> Interest on loans, and the contrasting views on the morality of that practice held by Jews and Christians, is central to the plot of Shakespeare's play "The Merchant of Venice". Antonio is the merchant of the title, a Christian, who is forced by circumstance to borrow money from "Shylock", a Jew . Shylock customarily charges interest on loans, seeing it as good business, while Antonio does not, viewing it as morally wrong . When Antonio defaults on his loan, Shylock famously demands the agreed upon penalty - a measured quantity of muscle from Antonio's chest . This is the source of the phrase "a pound of flesh" often used to describe the dear price of a loan or business transaction . Shakespeare's play is a vivid portrait of the competing views of loans and use of interest, as well as the cultural strife between Jews and Christians that overlaps it . </P> <P> By the 18th century, usury was more often treated as a metaphor than a crime in itself, so Jeremy Bentham's Defense of Usury was not as shocking as it would have appeared two centuries earlier . </P> <P> In Honoré de Balzac's 1830 novel Gobseck, the title character, who is a usurer, is described as both "petty and great--a miser and a philosopher ..." The character Daniel Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens is a usurer . </P> <P> In the early 20th century Ezra Pound's anti-usury poetry was not primarily based on the moral injustice of interest payments but on the fact that excess capital was no longer devoted to artistic patronage, as it could now be used for capitalist business investment . </P>

A charge for lending money to a bank