Library Information - Reading: The Merchant of Venice

Script machines to help you explore three key scenes from the play.

Shakespeare occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended national barriers; but no writer’s living reputation can compare to that of Shakespeare, whose plays, written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theatre, are now performed and read more often and in more countries than ever before.

Jews in 16th-century England practised their religion secretly, and many of those raised in the Jewish faith either converted to Christianity or pretended to have done so. James Shapiro considers Elizabethan prejudices and paranoia about Jews, putting Shakespeare's Shylock in context.

From Antonio spitting on Shylock's 'Jewish gabardine' to the moneylender's famous speech, 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?': Dr Aviva Dautch responds to The Merchant of Venice as a Jewish reader.

The casket trial scenes in The Merchant of Venice sometimes provoke laughter in performance and are noted by Shakespearean scholars as an expression of Elizabethan cultural and racial stereotypes. But these scenes also gesture towards one of the most vital concerns in the play: value.

Downloadable Audiobook MP3