•Date & Text•Synopsis•Characters •Performance •Themes•Links

DATE AND TEXTDATE AND TEXT1596-1598

Date of composition of the play

1598

The play entered in the Register of the Stationers Company by James Roberts

1600

Roberts transferred his right to the play to the stationer

Thomas Hayes 1619

William Jaggard printed a pirated edition called False Folio

2004

Film adaptation

SYNOPSYSMoneylander Shylock

Loan to Bassanio

Payment: amount of money or a pound of Antonio's flesh closest to his heart Failure to

payForum

Portia’s speech

Shilock’s loss and forced religious conversion

Loan to Bassanio

Payment: amount of money or a pound of Antonio's flesh closest to his heart

Most important charcaters

• Antonio: merchant Generosity and Loyalty• Bassanio: Spendthrift and popular with the ladies• Shylock: old Jewish moneylander, vindictive• Portia:beautiful and rich woman fell in love with

Bassanio

PERFORMANCE: Shylock on stage• Edmund Kean

• Henry Irving

• Jacob Adler

• Michael Radford

THEMESShylock and the anti-Semitism debate : - The anti-semitic reading - The sympatetic readingThe religious interpretations - A Catholic readingSexuality in the play : -Antonio, Bassanio and homosexuality - Bassanio, Portia and fidelity

The anti-semitic reading

Elizabethan Age

Anti-semitic society

Venice, 1600

Jews had to wear red hat in public

Interpretation of the play

Contrast between the mercy of Christian characters and the vengefulness of a Jew

Shylock forced conversion as a “happy ending”

The sympathetic reading

Play as a plea for tolerance

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.—Act III, scene I

SYMPATETIC READING

It is difficult to know whether the sympathetic reading of Shylock is entirely due to changing sensibilities among readers, or whether Shakespeare intended this reading.

THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

Understanding of the difference between the concept of forgiveness

of sins in Judaism and Christianity

Shylock results the most morally upright character

“The merchant of Venice” is sometimes identify as not an anti-Jew play, but as an anti-Christian play.

A catholic reading

Clare Asquith’s opinion

Shakespeare was a recusant Catholic

“Dramatis personae” of the play mask actual persons in the politics of England of 16th century

Portia: Queen Elizabeth Shylock: patriarch of the Puritan merchant classes

Antonio, Bassanio and homosexualityShakespeare often depicted strong male bonds of varying homosociality

ANTONIO: Commend me to your honorable wife: Tell her the process of Antonio's end, Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death; And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love. BASSANIO: But life itself, my wife, and all the world Are not with me esteemed above thy life; I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil, to deliver you. (IV,i)

Devotion is a form of idolatry Antonio's frustrated

Bassanio, Portia and fidelity

The ring is a symbol of marital fidelity

Elizabethan wer obsessed with wifly fidelity

LINKSLINKS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/mirror/classics.mit.edu/Shakespeare/merchant/full.html

http://www.bbc.com

Aliquò Natalia

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Di Vincenzo Valentina