Shylock had a daughter named Jessica. His wife had died long before, and the two of them were alone in the house. Every time he went out he told her to lock the door and shut the windows.
Jessica called that house a hell. Not so much because she hated her father as because nothing in it was hers to choose. She told a servant she was ashamed to be her father’s child.
By then she had been exchanging letters with a young man named Lorenzo. He was a friend of Bassanio’s, and a Christian. The two of them agreed to run, and fixed a night.