The Merchant of Venice

About the book

Antonio borrows money from Shylock to help Bassanio pursue marriage to Portia, accepting a bond whose unusual condition will become central to the action. The play moves between commercial Venice and the courtship rituals of Belmont, connecting affection with contracts, tests, and obligations. Shakespeare gives particular force to the hostility directed at Shylock as a Jewish outsider, while allowing his own anger to complicate appeals to sympathy. A dispute over the bond brings competing accounts of justice and mercy into public confrontation. The comedy of romantic misunderstanding remains entangled with coercion and exclusion. Reading the play closely means hearing both memorable arguments and the unequal circumstances in which they are spoken, without allowing a single celebrated speech to settle its difficult relationships.

• Justice and mercy
• Prejudice
• Bonds and obligations

Why read it

For the unresolved tensions between its language of generosity and the treatment of those excluded from its social harmony.

English text