Nathan the Wise: An 18th-century German counterpoint to Shakespeare’s Shylock
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Author
Michele Osherow
"Nathan the Wise" and "The Merchant of Venice" are very different works, though religious tension is a subject in each, as is the potential for love and loss, wealth and poverty, bloodshed and peace. But it is the character of the Jew featured in each text that most causes scholars to focus on the plays' differences.
Katharine Cleland examines Jessica and Lorenzo's clandestine marriage in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" in this excerpt from her book "Irregular Unions."
Historical connections: The Black page in Henry Irving’s Victorian production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’
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Author
Hassana Moosa
Victorian director Henry Irving’s use of a Black page in his production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ shows how forms of race-thinking had been sustained and intensified in the English theatrical imagination.
Strange Shakespeare: The anti-Shylock in the boxing ring
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Author
Daniel O’Quinn
Actor Edmund Kean’s more sympathetic portrayal of Shylock onstage in the early 19th century connected with the Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza’s merciful defeat of an English champion.
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 138 You probably know where Shakespeare got the ideas for his plays. His Histories come from Holinshed’s Chronicles. Caesar and other Roman plays depend on Plutarch’s Lives. The Comedy of Errors is based on Plautus’s Menaechmi. But what…
What are the connections between traditional folktales and Shakespeare’s plays? Charlotte Artese, an English professor at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, sets out to explore these folktale sources in a new anthology of stories, Shakespeare and the Folktale, published October…
Paul Glenshaw draws "The Merchant of Venice" bas-relief from the series by sculptor John Gregory at the Folger Shakespeare Library -- and finds depictions of the same scene with some similar elements in the Folger collection.
Usury and 'The Merchant of Venice': An excerpt from 'London's Triumph' by Stephen Alford
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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond
This excerpt from "London's Triumph" by Stephen Alford looks at the Elizabethan understanding of usury, seen through Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice."
Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice': Perpetuating stereotypes or sparking much-needed conversations?
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Author
Esther French
Matthew Boston (Shylock) in District Merchants, a variation on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Folger Theatre, 2016. Photo by Teresa Wood. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice ends badly for Shylock, with the court ruling against him and his claim on Antonio’s…
