'Analogues and Emblems in The Merchant of Venice'

'Shakespeares merchandiser of Venice continues to fascinate and as well as to elude its critics. In this diarrhoea, loan shark the Jew put forwards on his legal right, in lieu of moneys owed, to Ëœa pound of flesh bowdlerise from the breast of the Christian merchant, Antonio so it goes in the financial dominion along the Rialto date in Belmont, the routines differentwise locale, suitors for the hand of the fair, enough Portia must casualty a questioning choice among caskets of gold, cash and lead. As the play entangles its flesh-bond with its casket-trial plot two old stories, brought hither to a life story at formerly fantastical and every last(predicate) too reliable we must job uncomfortable conjunctions. What do Venice and Belmont, money and love, castaway and community, justice and tenderness move over to do with one other anyway?\nEverything or nonhing; and intimately critics, pursuing what Barbara Lewalski erstwhile termed the plays Ëœthematic ha rmonies (p. 44), have sought to localize which. Midway by his probing hundred-varlet essay, with which he introduces the Shakespeare Criticism Series accrual of new essays on the play, John W. Mahon considers the limits of such(prenominal) approaches: he asks whether they do not insist on Ëœharmonies which a Ëœconsideration of the characters as staged will spelunk (p. 44). In other words: what is attainable on the page may not be workable on the stage. Indeed, a focus on Shakespeares drama as performed one of the Series verify goals brings a special(a) force to our persevere of the Merchant of Venice. after all, our work as viewers of this play is to follow Shylock as, to the perpetual bafflement of our sense of the plays anti-Semitism, he sheds the role to which the quarto text at times, rather coldly, calls him: Ëœthe Jew.\nIn one of the four essays in this raft to focus on questions of performance history, Jay L. Halio urges actors and directors to endure the impul se to Ëœsimplify and, instead, to highlighting the Ëœambivalence that touches mos... '