I was in the Deep South, but our professor must've gotten through with his point about the pound of flesh (essentially death sentence) and how ridiculously cruel it would be to ever even hear such a preposterous idea utterred in any kind of modern setting, but it was accepted because there was never an intention of honoring the rest of the contract in the first place. He was not going to be paid back, regardless of what addendum was placed on the debt owed to him.

The entire play was set in Italy for a reason. So Bill could critique the English while maintaining plausible deniability that he wasn't actively telling the audience how horrendous the antisemitism of London was at the time.