Originally published in 1991. Essays here are arranged chronologically within sections: ‘The Play as Text’, ‘Shylock’ and ‘The Play in the Theatre.’ Collecting previously published important commentaries and scholarly articles, this volume in the Shakespearean Criticism set looks at one of the Bard’s most disturbing plays. These historical critical pieces give witness to the changing attitudes to the play and the characters and provide readers with a wide range of material relating both to performances and to textual readings.
Preface Joseph Price Introduction Thomas Wheeler Part 1: The Play as Text 1. The Merchant of Venice Harley Granville-Barker 2. Shakespeare’s Method: The Merchant of Venice John Middleton Murray 3. Brothers and Others W. H. Auden 4. The Letter of the Law A. D. Moody 5. Meaning and Shakespeare Norman Rabkin 6. Style and Assessment A. R. Humphreys 7. The Merchant of Venice and the Pattern of Romantic Comedy R. F. Hill 8. Portia, the Law, and the Tripartite Structure of The Merchant of Venice Alice N. Benston 9. The Counterfeit Order of The Merchant of Venice Leonard Tennenhouse 10. Beginning in the Middle John Lyon Part 2: Shylock 11. The Merchant of Venice William Hazlitt 12. Shylock E. E. Stoll 12. The Realization of Shylock: A Theatrical Criticism John Russell Brown 13. The Problem of Shylock Bill Overton Part 3: The Play in the Theatre 14. Strumpet Wind – The National Theatre’s Merchant of Venice Patrick J. Sullivan 15. Portia in The Merchant of Venice Sinead Cusack 16. Lorenzo’s ‘Infidel’: The Staging of Difference in The Merchant of Venice Paul Gaudet
