The Merchant of Venice

This study of “The Merchant of Venice” explores the degree of dramatic integrity Shakespeare achieves by unifying the play’s many hard choices through a tightly-knit interplay of contrarieties and correspondences in structure, language, characters and ideas. Engaging the play’s extensive body of criticism, the book contextualizes the most provocative questions raised by the day and provides considerable new evidence about Shakespeare’s possible sources and his innovative use of them, especially usury and merchantry, Judaism and Christianity, biblical and classical allusion, stage law and verbal-visual symbols.