The Shakespeare Book

128

F

ew of Shakespeare’s plays

have caused quite as much

disquiet as The Merchant of

Ven ice. The story is a blend of two

old folk tales—that of the mean

moneylender who demands an

extreme payment, a pound of flesh,

from his creditor, and that of the

young princess who finds her

true love through the test of three

caskets. The Merchant of Venice

has a happy ending for most, with

the young lovers united, and in

Portia, Shakespeare creates an

appealing heroine, humble and

loving yet brilliant and incisive in

the court scene. But the moneylender

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Shylock, whose Jewishness

is so crucial to his portrayal, and for

whom the play does not end well,

continues to arouse deep anxiety

among audiences and performers.

The stereotypical Jew

The anxiety hinges on whether the

play is anti-Semitic. A rapacious,

skinflint moneylender, Shylock

certainly conforms to a negative

IN CONTEXT

THEMES

Prejudice, revenge, justice,

money, love

SETTING

Venice and the fictional

town of Belmont, in Italy

SOURCES

The main elements of the plot,

the flesh-bond and the story

of the caskets, are taken from

folk tales. The character Shylock

is inspired by the following:

14th century Italian Giovanni

Fiorentino’s collection of tales

Il Pecorone (“The Dunce”).

1589 Christopher Marlowe’s

The Jew of Malta.

LEGACY

1605 The play is performed for

James I on Shrove Tuesday.

1959 Tyrone Guthrie directs

a production in Israel, with

Aharon Meskin as Shylock.

The action is moved to the

present day, portraying Shylock

as a capitalist financier.

1970 At the National Theatre,

London, Laurence Olivier

portrays Shylock as a Jew

trying too hard to assimilate,

as the action is moved to

Venice in the 1880s.

1992 In his book Shylock,

critic John Gross feels there is

“a permanent chill in the air”

in the play’s treatment of Jews.

2004 A film adaptation

directed by Michael Radford

casts Al Pacino as Shylock,

Jeremy Irons as Antonio, and

Lynn Collions as Portia.

In the 16th-century, Venetian Jews

were confined to a ghetto, and Shylock

would have been forced to live here. In

this early 17th-century map of Venice,

the ghetto is marked with a star.