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This article argues that a satirically distorted quotation from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, 'If we pick, do we not bleed?,' in the Seinfeld episode 'The Pick' reveal6 a subtext of Jewish anxiety in the sitcom. This anxiety about the limits of mainstream acceptance and the persistence of anti-Semitism in late twentieth-century America revolves around maintaining civility, a notion already evident in The Merchant's portrayal of Jewish and Christian acts, attitudes, and values. KEYWORDS: Judaism, sitcom, television studies, cultural studies, comedy, adaptation, IN 'THE PICK,' THE THIRTEENTH EPISODE OF the fourth season of the US sitcom Seinfeld (NBC, 1989-1998), the Jewish lead character Jerry Seinfeld defends himself against being dumped by a [...]

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE contains a remarkable plenitude of religious and theological material. Understandably, however, much scholarship on The Merchant of Venice centers on the difficulties of the Jewish subject [...]

SHAKESPEARE'S comedies and tragedies present a range of passions and emotions involving love, a point that is certainly all too obvious. Confusion and misapprehension in A Midsummer Night's Dream, rejection [...]

While the mercantile value of mercy in The Merchant of Venice has been often highlighted, the diminished role of pity has received scant attention. This article argues that the ways [...]

The article deals with the 1940 and the 1986 stagings of The Merchant of Venice in Hungary and with the forty-six-year gap between them. Comparing these events, the article draws attention to the ways in which the dominant ideology of these entirely different regimes influenced the interpretation of Shakespeare's play and its staging.Keywords: Hungary, ideology, Jews, National Theatre, Shakespeare, theatre, Apart from paraphrasing Hamlet, the Hungarian theatre critic Tamas Koltai posed these questions quite straightforwardly in his review of the performance of The Merchant of Venice in 1986. His questions [...]

Productions, adaptations and spinoffs of The Merchant of Venice since 1945 generally employ one of four strategies: continuing, historicizing, decentring and universalizing. Continuing means following nineteenth-century English productions in making Shylock a sympathetic outsider. Immigrant Shylocks still appear on English-speaking stages, but often seem sentimentalized and anachronistic. Historicizing means making the play reflect historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust, so that Shylock, however sharpedged, automatically attracts sympathy. Decentring means making Jessica's story at least as important as Shylock's. Many recent productions and prose adaptations explore Jessica's plight as immigrant's daughter, belle juive, forlorn wife or remorseful child. Universalizing means mapping the play's Jewish-Christian conflict onto other racial, religious or ethnic antagonisms, as in The Merchant ON Venice, about a Muslim 'Shylock' and his Hindu neighbours in Los Angeles.Keywords: adaptation, Shishir Kurup, Merchant of Venice, Merchant on Venice, Shylock, Rather than police the blurry boundaries between productions, adaptations and offshoots, or spinoffs of The Merchant of Venice since 1945, I want to focus on their employment of four strategies: [...]

In the Western world, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is controversial due to its stereotypical description of Jews as evil and greedy. In China, the work was not widely known until its translations came out. This article deals with two Chinese renderings of Shakespeare's classic, by Laura White (1914-1915) and Shiqiu Liang (2001 /1936) respectively, which reconstruct the image of Shylock and Jews on the basis of the translators' perceptions of the original figure, combining their identities and social backgrounds. In imagology, based on the ideas of Pageaux (1989/1994), the image of the 'other' can be analysed on three levels: lexical items, larger textual units, and plot. On the face of it, the image of the 'other' in translation can originate in either the source or target culture. However, the present article, which focuses on the lexical level, shows that there is a third possibility--a lexicon that blends two or more cultures.Keywords: Chinese translation, image of Jews, imagology, lexical items, The Merchant of Venice, translation studies, IntroductionSince the introduction of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (1) into China in the early nineteenth century, various Chinese translations have been published. The first translation, produced by Shu Lin [...]

Can The Merchant of Venice be performed in Germany after the Holocaust, and if so, how? Is the claim that the play is a touchstone for German-Jewish relations, with a philosemitic tradition--and therefore eligible to be performed today--verifiable? The article begins by briefly surveying this tradition from the Jewish emancipation in the mideighteenth century, which, with a few relapses, continued--especially in productions directed by Jews and/or with Jewish actors in the role of Shylock--until the rise of the Nazi regime, to be resumed after the Second World War. The main part analyses a test case, staged by the Israeli director Hanan Snir at the Weimar National Theatre (1995), and intended rhetorically to avenge the Holocaust on the German audience: Merchant as a viciously antisemitic playwithinaplay, directed by SS personnel in the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp with eventually murdered Jewish inmates compelled to play the Jewish parts.Keywords: acculturation, antisemitism, Buchenwald, German stage, The Merchant of Venice, play-within-a-play, Shylock, Weimar, Shylock as a touchstone: The Merchant of Venice on the German stageFrom the Enlightenment to our own day, German-language productions of The Merchant of Venice have reflected the always problematic [...]

This article gives due and extended attention to the performance in 1943 of The Merchant of Venice in Vienna, examining the ways in which Shylock was portrayed and potentially misused for propagandistic purposes by the regime. The approach will be both primarily analytical and comparative. Archival material sourced from the theatre museum in Vienna (Theatermuseum) and the Burgtheater will form the base of this research. The question 'How was Shylock performed under the Nazis?' will be accompanied by 'To what extent was the play modified?' and 'How does the infamous Vienna production differ from previous, celebrated productions?' Considering that Merchant is a play which, up until today, often upsets audiences, analysing a Nazi performance might seem too crude an endeavour. This article, however, aims to demonstrate that no matter how painful or uncomfortable a topic may be, 'Erinnern macht frei'--remembrance can set you free (Marko Watt).Keywords: Germany, The Merchant of Venice, National Socialism, Shakespeare, Shylock, theatre, Third Reich, twentieth-century, Eighty-five years ago, in 1933, Dr Walter Stang, a theatre critic and member of the National Socialist German Workers Party, claimed that 'National socialism... would ensure the development of completely [...]

This article takes up one of the most perplexing and thoroughly examined questions posed by Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice--the origin and extent of Antonio's melancholy. While many critical responses point to anxieties towards his ventures abroad, unrequited romantic love or general indecisiveness to explain the merchant's sadness, this reading asserts that his atrabilious nature must stem from something more latent, comprehensive and socially binding. This article argues that it is Antonio's unwanted, yet pre-existing and indisputable similitude with Shylock, the Jewish usurer, that incites an internal sadness; Antonio's insistence upon his absolute difference to Shylock's profession, religion and humanity ignites and prolongs melancholy, since those are, ironically, the very things that make them so similar and renders his opposition unsuccessful.Keywords: early modern Jewish and Christian relations, melancholy, The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, usury, Antonio's confession of sadness opening Shakespeare's The Merchant of . Venice has long intrigued students, scholars, readers, performers and spectators of Shakespeare:This article takes up the question of that melancholy's [...]

The Merchant of Venice remains a 'problem play' for contemporary production. Whether the play is inherently antisemitic or not, it remains one of the most popular of the canon. I will consider how actors and their directors can, with the wisdom imparted by twentieth-century psychology and Stanislavskian-derived ideas of objectives, circumstances and subtext, seek to circumvent the challenges and infuse problematic text with more acceptable interpretations. Possible reinterpretations of Shylock are centrally considered, but the characters and motives of Jessica, Portia, Antonio and Bassanio are also scrutinized. Such re-evaluation of the underlying motivations seems a reasonable resolution for keeping the text intact while undermining any inherent negative stereotyping. However, once we admit of this subversion of a writer's intentions, what might the consequences be if there are those who wish to use the same tools to create anti-humanitarian theatre?Keywords: antisemitism, given circumstances, Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, Shylock, Stanislavski, subtext, Thacker asserts that we do not have the right to change the substance of the play: 'If you think that The Merchant of Venice is an antisemitic play, the answer [...]

The article explores Shakespeare's secularized retelling of the Christian theological narrative of deceiving the Devil, with Antonio playing the role of Christ and Shylock as the Devil. The article argues that recasting the contest between Christ and the Devil in the world of Venice sets the stage for Shakespeare's larger exploration of the pervasive nature of deceit in human affairs. Although it seems that Shakespeare's characters are resigned to live in a fallen world where truth is obscured, Portia's invocation of mercy may be Shakespeare's attempt to offer some hope of an earthly salvation. The article argues that this portrait of a world filled with deception resonated with Shakespeare's audience. Men and women in early modern England lived in a world where they often had to hide their religious identities and loyalties. This interpretation challenges more recent attempts to see the play as primarily concerned with race and tolerance.Keywords: Christ, deception, Devil, Incarnation, Jew, Shylock, theology, After more than four centuries, Shylock remains an enigma. He can be seen, of course, as the incarnation of traditional Christian ideas about the viciousness of Jews and Judaism. However, [...]

An author who brought a new work to a publisher would be paid for the text ... but this payment secured outright ownership of the text. ... Having once received [...]

ABSTRACT The Merchant of Venice remains a vital, yet problematic play. It continues to be open to a range of argument and interpretation because, as so often with Shakespeare, its [...]

'Those Things' and 'You People': Issues of Racism in Zombie Cinema. Kyle Allkins, University of Oakland, Department of English For almost eighty years, popular culture has been inundated with the [...]

The thesis of this essay is simply stated: The Merchant of Venice is a Christian play and a comedy that ends well for all. I argue for this reading not [...]

This report, discussing the author's adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice to Henan-area bangzi, is revised from a speech given at the National Taiwan University Shakespeare Forum's conference Shakespeare in Culture, 26-28 November 2009. Ching-Hsi Perng, a retired distinguished professor of drama and English at National Taiwan University, now teaches at Fu Jen Catholic University as a visiting professor of comparative literature. He has written extensively on Shakespeare, Chinese drama, and other topics. He is the founder of National Taiwan University's Shakespeare Forum (www.shakespeare.tw) and Taiwan ShakeScene (www.shakecene.tw). Coeditor (with Biqi Beatrice Lei) of Shakespeare in Culture (forthcoming from National Taiwan University Press), he is currently working on a new, annotated Chinese translation of Measure for Measure., Shakespeare performances run the gamut from 'faithful' literary translations to thinly veiled appropriations that conceal rather than reveal the original. There have been many attempts to mount Shakespeare on the [...]

Abstract Part one of this article examines a species of 'figural' plot--single episodes that mirror a substantial part of the narrative that contains it. These include Portia's predicament in The [...]

ALTHOUGH THE MERCHANT OF VENICE HAS BEEN one of Shakespeare's most performed plays, until 2004, it had never been made into a major film feature during the sound era. In [...]

MANY critics have noted that The Merchant of Venice explores distinctions between law and love, justice and mercy, and Jew and Christian. Each of these discussions usually involves an analysis [...]

Inundated daily with horrifying images and vitriolic rhetoric, few readers would fail to recognize the magnitude of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its impact on regional and global politics, and the suffering [...]

Balaam and Shakespeare: Two gentiles, two excellent poets, each assigned to a task, one against the biblical Israelites, one against the European Jews. Concerning Balaam, we have the text in [...]

The article examines the play, 'The Merchant of Venice', performed in 2005 by the Irish theatre company Corcadorca. The play is about the increasing number of immigrants in Ireland and how Ireland has become multilingual and multiracial.

Here is a letter lady, The paper as the body of my friend, And every word in it a gaping wound Issuing life-blood (3.2.262-65) (1) THE APPARENT DISAPPEARANCE of 'literary [...]

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then that thing that commeth out of the doors [...]

IN FREUD'S History of an Obsessional Neurosis, the case history that develops most explicitly his theory of compulsion, Freud compares the behavior of his patient, the Rat Man, to the [...]

Shakespeare highlights the eternal controversies over the preachings of Christianity as a universal religion of brotherhood on one hand, and its fanaticism over blood-lineage, race conversion, and nationality on the other. In The Merchant of Venice, the status of Jessica's conversion, which actually made her wish that she were not her father's daughter, is discussed.

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare tests the viability in the contemporary world of a marriage of venture capital and Christian ideals. The question that the play implicitly asks is [...]

The Merchant of Venice is an ambiguous text that has been interpreted in different ways by critics, producers and actors ever since it was first written. In post-Holocaust times the […]

Hate speech is legally defined as racist or sexist remarks descriptive of a group. However, defamatory statements such as those found in William Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice' about Jews or Philip Larkin's statements about people he knew, is not 'hate speech' in its current sense.

An analysis of the character Shylock in William Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' is presented, focusing on the issue of Jewish male menstruation. Topics include early modern notions of female menstruation, attitudes towards the Jewish population, and similarities between the male and female body.

An analysis of William Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' and the two texts of 'King Lear' is presented focusing on the presence of equity in these texts. Topics include an historical overview of English equity highlighting conceptual and terminological differences, as well as evidence that Shakespeare did refer to equity and law jurisdictions in the quarto version of 'King Lear'.

It is not possible to fully define the Jew that William Shakespeare drew when he created the character of Shylock. However, it is worth trying to identify the Jew that Shakespeare knew before Sep 1598, when the role was reinvented by Richard Burbage or another actor. It is important to be aware that it is not true that everybody in Elizabethan England, and thus all the actors and members of the audience at 'The Merchant of Venice,' was anti-Semitic. In fact, many Jews lived in or visited the UK by the late 1590s. It is quite likely that some people in the audience saw lending money at the prevailing market rate, or obtaining commission for arranging a loan, as a socially useful activity.

The first wave of feminist Shakespeare criticism was characterized by its intensive concentration on gender, specifically female circumvention of male authority. This was apparent in the critique of 'The Merchant of Venice' which largely dwelled on the victory of Portia over Shylock. The second wave of feminist criticism, which commenced in 1986, concerned itself with the impact of developments in feminism and emphasized cultural differences among women. Gender, in the second wave, was seen in the context of multiple cultural variables., My goal in this essay is to contribute to the overall effort to construct a history of feminist Shakespeare criticism in the United States. However, I want to anticipate two [...]

At the dawn of the process of secularization, during what historians now refer to as the early modern period and some literary critics still call the Renaissance, the medieval religious [...]

The merchant of venice is a puzzle. The ways in which it has been discussed suggest that it is more problematic even than the so-called problem plays of Shakespeare.(1) Indeed, [...]

The interdisciplinary study of literature has received considerable impetus over the last two decades from the rise of New Historicism. Particularly in Renaissance studies, the work of Stephen Greenblatt, Louis [...]

On a discussion night during the recent run of The Merchant of Venice, the air at the Hartford Stage Company was filled with emotional heat as a panel on stereotypes [...]

William Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice' uses disappointment as a theme. For example, the love duet scene contains remarks that courtship may be more satisfying than marriage, and this applies to other marriages in the play. The disappointment of financial success is also portrayed. There is also an implication that divine love in the afterlife is more satisfying than mortal marriage, which is disappointing by comparison., While Jessica and Lorenzo's banter at the beginning of Act V of The Merchant of Venice has been viewed as out of character with the harmony one expects at this [...]

Shakespeare draws heavily on imagery from Ovid and Horace to develop Aristotelian concepts of wealth as an ethical means of attaining happiness in 'The Merchant of Venice.' Wealth in Shakespeare is both material and symbolic of happiness, friendship and affection. The Aristotelian ethic of doing good is linked with the reward of wealth and happiness. The two images that dominate 'The Merchant of Venice,' that of friendship as a sea of love and love as a bond, embodied in the language and imagery of the play, are derived from the Roman poets.

William Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice' has similarities to Aeschylus's play 'Eumenides' in its portrayal of justice. Both plays concern revenge as a form of justice, rehabilitation and justice as independent of legal complications in formal proceedings. Shakespeare dealt with an unjust contract while Aeschylus dealt with old gods being supplanted by new gods, yet both used blood as central symbols of revenge.