Analogues and Emblems in The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeares merchant of Venice continues to fascinate and also to block its critics. In this accept, Shylock the Jew insists on his legal right, in spot of moneys owed, to Ëœa pound of flesh have intercourse from the breast of the Christian merchant, Antonio so it goes in the financial regulate along the Rialto while in Belmont, the plays other locale, suitors for the hand of the fair, rich people Portia must venture a risky choice among caskets of gold, notes and lead. As the play entangles its flesh-bond with its casket-trial spot both old stories, brought hither to a life at once fantastical and any too real we must ponder uncomfortable conjunctions. What do Venice and Belmont, money and love, outcast and community, rightness and mercy have to do with one another at any rate?\nEverything or nothing; and almost critics, pursuing what Barbara Lewalski once termed the plays Ëœthematic harmonies (p. 44), have sought to fall which. Midway through his probing hundred-p age essay, with which he introduces the Shakespeare Criticism Series accumulation of new essays on the play, fast one W. Mahon considers the limits of such approaches: he asks whether they do not insist on Ëœharmonies which a Ëœconsideration of the characters as staged will undermine (p. 44). In other words: what is attainable on the page may not be possible on the stage. Indeed, a centralise on Shakespeares drama as performed one of the Series avowed goals brings a special force to our secure of the Merchant of Venice. After all, our formulate as viewers of this play is to follow Shylock as, to the eonian bafflement of our sense of the plays anti-Semitism, he sheds the role to which the Quarto schoolbook at times, rather coldly, calls him: Ëœthe Jew.\nIn one of the four essays in this volume to focus on questions of performance history, Jay L. Halio urges actors and directors to resist the heartbeat to Ëœsimplify and, instead, to highlight the Ëœambivalence that touche s mos...