Commentary

• Brothers and Others

  - W. H. Auden, “Brothers and Others,” in The Dyer’s Hand, 218–37
  Excerpt: In The Merchant of Venice and Othello Shakespeare depicts a very different kind of society. Venice does not produce anything itself, either raw materials or manufactured goods. Its existence depends upon the financial profits which can be made by… More

• Shakespeare’s Politics By Allan Bloom

  - Bloom, Allan. Shakespeare’s Politics. With an essay by Harry V. Jaffa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
  From the publisher: Taking the classical view that the political shapes man’s consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist. He aims to recover Shakespeare’s ideas and beliefs and to make his work… More

• On Christian and Jew: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice

  - Allan Bloom, “On Christian and Jew: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, 13–34
  Excerpt: Venice is a beautiful city, full of color and variety. To this day, it represents the exotic and the exciting to the minds of those who know it – a port with all the freedom that proximity to the sea seems to encourage and with the presence of… More

• The Stranger in Shakespeare

  - Leslie Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare (New York: Stein & Day, 1973)
  Summary from the Publisher: In this provocative book, originally published in 1972, Leslie Fiedler turns his critical eye on what he calls the “borderline figure” in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Neither hero nor villain, this figure… More

• The Jew as Stranger

  - Leslie Fiedler, “The Jew as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 85–136
  Excerpt: If Shakespeare’s first historical tetralogy had ended with Joan’s condemnation, to turn from it to The Merchant of Venice would seem a transition in tone, perhaps, but not in theme. Its last words, however, are not a father’s curse… More

• Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice

  - Paul A. Cantor, “Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice,” Soundings, 70, nos. 1–2 (1987): 239–58

• Shakespeare and the Jews

  - James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
  Summary from the Publisher: Going against the grain of the dominant scholarship on the period, which generally ignores the impact of Jewish questions in early modern England, James Shapiro presents how Elizabethans imagined Jews to be utterly different from… More

• Shylock and the Jewish Question

  - Martin Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
  Summary from the Publisher: Much attention has been paid to the place of Shylock in the history of anti-Semitism. Most scholars have agreed with Harold Bloom that Shakespeare’s famous villain is drawn with a “murderous anti-Semitism” and… More

• The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice

  - Barbara Tovey, "The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice," in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 261–87
  Excerpt: The teaching that appearance often belies reality figures prominently in many Shakespearean plays. It seems fair to say, however, that there is no play in which that teaching is given such frequent explicit utterance as The Merchant of… More

• Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

  - Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (New York: Palgrave, 2003)
  Summary from the Publisher: Turning Turk looks at contact between the English and other cultures in the early modern Mediterranean, and analyzes the representation of that experience on the London stage. Vitkus’s book demonstrates that theEnglish… More