The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice has been performed more often than any other comedy by Shakespeare. Molly Mahood pays special attention to the expectations of the play’s first audience, and to our modern experience of seeing and hearing the play. In a substantial new addition to the Introduction, Charles Edelman focuses on the play’s sexual politics and recent scholarship devoted to the position of Jews in Shakespeare’s time. He surveys the international scope and diversity of theatrical interpretations of The Merchant in the 1980s and 1990s and their different ways of tackling the troubling figure of Shylock.

• Updated edition of a text which has been highly popular in the series since 1987 • Substantial additional section to the Introduction by Charles Edelman, editor of our Shakespeare in Production edition of the play • Two new production photographs and a revised Reading List

Introduction, with new section on recent critical and stage interpretations by Charles Edelman; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Supplementary note; Textual analysis; Appendix: Shakespeare’s use of the Bible in The Merchant of Venice; Reading list.

‘The introduction and commentary reveal an author with a lively awareness of the importance of perceiving the play as a theatrical document, one which comes to life, which is completed only in performance.’ The Review of English Studies