The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of The Merchant of Venice retains the text and Introduction prepared by M. M. Mahood and features a new introductory section by Charles Edelman. Where Mahood focuses in her Introduction on the expectations of the play's first audience and on our modern experience of seeing and hearing the drama performed, Edelman explores the play's sexual politics. He also foregrounds recent scholarship on the position of Jews in Shakespeare's time and surveys the international scope and diversity of theatrical interpretations of the text in the 1980s and 1990s. He pays particular attention to the ways in which directors and actors tackle the troubling figure of Shylock.

This student friendly book draws together text, context, criticism and performance history to provide an integrated view of one of the most dazzling works of the early modern theatre.

This large print title is set in Tiresias 16pt font as recommended by the RNIB.

The last decade has witnessed a spate of high-profile presentations of The Merchant of Venice: the 2004 Michael Radford film, 2010’s New York City “Shakespeare in the Park” production, as well as the play’s Tony Award-nominated 2010-11 Broadway run. Likewise, new scholarly works such as Kenneth Gross’s Shylock is Shakespeare (2006) and Janet Adelman’s Blood Relations (2008) have offered poignant insights into this play. Why has this drama garnered so much attention of late? What else can we learn from this contentious comedy? How else can we read the drama’s characters? Where do studies of The Merchant of Venice go from here? This collection offers readers sundry answers to these questions by showcasing a sampling of ways this culturally arresting play can be read and interpreted. The strength of this monograph lies in the disparate approaches its contributors offer – from a feminist view of Portia and Nerissa’s friendship to psychoanalytic readings of allegories between the play and Shakespeare’s Pericles to a reading of a Manga comic book version of The Merchant of Venice. Each essay is supported by a strong basis in traditional close reading practices. Our collection of scholars then buttresses such work with the theoretical or pedagogical frameworks that reflect their area of expertise. This collection offers readers different critical lenses through which to approach the primary text. Although Shakespeare scholars and graduate students will no doubt appreciate and employ the work of this collection, the primary audience of this anthology is undergraduate students and the professors who work with them. Many budding scholars have had the experience of checking out a monograph from the library and then finding it was a waste of time because the author spends three hundred pages discussing a perspective of which they have no interest. With this collection, students will not only see how multi-faceted interpretations of the play can be but they also are more likely to find essays that appeal to their own research interests.

Have you ever thought of Shakespeare as a fast-paced, comedy-filled, page-turning…novel?! Shakespeare plays on stage make for fantastic theatrics! But when you read it as a book…some of it’s glory can be lost. This novelization of The Merchant of Venice uses a more modern language and narration to capture the story as a novel. The story follows Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, who wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. This book is part of an expanding series that retells Shakespeare into fiction.

The Merchant of Venice is a popular text for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists (including websites) and classroom notes.

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In The Merchant of Venice, the path to marriage is hazardous. To win Portia, Bassanio must pass a test prescribed by her father's will, choosing correctly among three caskets or chests. If he fails, he may never marry at all.Bassanio and Portia also face a magnificent villain, the loan shark Shylock. In creating Shylock, William Shakespeare seems to have shared in a widespread prejudice against Jews. Shylock would have been regarded as a villain because he was a Jew. Yet he gives such powerful expression to his alienation due to the hatred around him that, in many productions, he emerges as the hero.Portia is most remembered for her disguise as a lawyer, Balthazar, especially the speech in which she urges Shylock to show mercy that "droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven."The Merchant of Venice is an intriguing drama of love, greed, and revenge.