The Merchant of Venice: Venice and Belmont (original) (raw)
The Merchant of Venice: About This Volume
The Merchant of Venice: Critical Insights edited by Robert C. Evans Salem Press, 2023, 2023
The Merchant of Venice: Critical Insights edited by Robert C. Evans Salem Press, 2023
Wonder, Ambivalence and Heterotopia: The City in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura
This essay proposes a discussion of the representation of Venice in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, addressing the city as a site of ambivalence and cultural interrogation. It examines how Shakespeare drew on the “myth of Venice” to create a space into which Renaissance anxieties about justice, gender, religion and finances were projected. Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is applied here to show how representations of Venice are used to mirror Elizabethan and Jacobean society. The essay also proposes an analysis of how the Italian city-state is rendered in Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with special attention to the images of the prostitutes in the film, and the ambivalent portrayal of the justice system during the courtroom scene.
Sweet Use: Genre and Performance of The Merchant of Venice
Philosophy and Literature, 2009
This paper answers the questions ‘what is the Merchant of Venice?’ and ‘how may it accomplish its purpose?’ I argue that the usual treatments of this play are inadequate and show how the play is a comedy through which the passions appropriate for the good human being are engendered. What is raised and ridiculed are our own temptations to lesser joys and less sweet uses mimetically roused in us by the action and characters of the play. What is whetted but left unsatisfied is our higher love for justice. Thus the play provides a catharsis (purification) of desire and sympathy. Attached is a PDF of the final typescript, for purposes of scholarly notation, the journal version (Phil and Lit) should be used.
“News on the Rialto”: Shakespeare’s Venice
Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 2009
Shakespeare set thirteen of his plays in Italy. Since he probably never visited the country, he shows only the vaguest notion of the topography of most of his Italian settings. However, the two plays set in Venice are notable exceptions. The Merchant of Venice (composed around 1596-1597), and Othello, the Moor of Venice (probably written between 1601 and 1603) are not only distinguished by authentic 'local colour', but also convey the playwright's awareness of a certain image of Venice, both as it was presented by Italian historians, and as English visitors recorded their experiences of the city. David McPherson writes: [H]istorians have shown that certain aspects of the city's reputation became so powerful that, in the aggregate, they may justifiably be called the Myth of Venice, and that England was the country in Northern Europe in which this Myth was most strongly felt. 2
An Analysis on The Merchant of Venice
An Analysis on The Merchant of Venice - Ayşenur Köse , 2020
In this article I will talk about some of the issues mentioned in Shakespear's book which is The Merchant of Venice. My analysis will be based on the character of Syhlock. In this article, I will first discuss the issues and concepts of inequality, minority rights and marginalization under the same roof. The second issue I will examine will be on the impact of the issues I have mentioned above on Shylock's psychology. Finally I will examine the concepts of justice and injustice that all these issues cause or create. In this way, the topics I will deal with from the Merchant of Venice will be complete. While doing this work, I have identifed the original version of this book as the main source. I do not see it is necessary to summarize the book and I do not think it will be useful either.
The Merchant in Venice: Shylock’s Unheimlich Return
Multicultural Shakespeare
The first decades of the new millennium have seen an odd return to origins in Shakespeare studies. The Merchant in Venice, a site-specific theatrical production realized during the 500th anniversary year of the “original” Jewish Ghetto, was not only a highlight among the many special events commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, but also a more creative and complex response to historicism. With her nontraditional casting of five Shylocks (developed through collaborations with scholars and students as well as her international, multilingual company), director Karin Coonrod made visible the acts of cultural projection and fracturing that Shakespeare’s play both epitomizes and has subsequently prompted. This article, written by a participant-observer commissioned to capture on video the making and performance of Compagnia de’ Colombari’s six-night run in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, explores the way this place is—and indeed, the category of place itself is a...
Reading The Merchant of Venice Dialogically
Seen through the eyes of contemporary Shakespeare criticism, threeperhaps four-of Shakespeare's plays stand out as ideologically problematic or 'politically incorrect': The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Tempest-and perhaps The Taming of the Shrew. The specific ways in which these plays address, or are seen to address, issues of anti-Semitism, race, colonialism, and gender respectively, have elicited a wide range of politically charged responses, both in criticism and performance. None perhaps more so than The Merchant of Venice. The play's dominant action of castigation and forced conversion of Shylock the Jew will inescapably jar post-Holocaust sensibilities to such an extent that critical responses almost inevitably find themselves bogged down in negotiating strategies of dismissal or apology, or both. One of the most recent, and most sophisticated instances of such a negotiation is found in Harold Bloom's chapter on The Merchant of Venice in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1999). The initial and provocative point made by Bloom is this: One would be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognize that Shakespeare's grand, equivocal comedy The Merchant of Venice is nevertheless a profoundly anti-Semitic work (pl71)
William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
Film Quarterly, 2006
Lingering controversy about anti-Semitism has kept The Merchant of Venice off the screen. Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation creates a critique of anti-Semitic violence revealingly at odds with the play's comic form. This review considers the challenge Shakespeare's art poses to the ethical imperatives of contemporary filmmaking.
Merchant of Venice Grade 10 Test January 2016
transition from the romantic focus of act 2 into the now dreaded conclusion of the play in cat 4, which by the utilization of foreshadowing has developed an intense environment to make the conclusion even more effective. This act serves as a stepping stone to the final act and the opening scene is made effective by the portrayal of dramatic conflict which not only intensifies the scene but also sets up the next one with unresolved conflicts (like person vs person, person vs society, person vs self), suspense and foreshadowing. The scene starts with a very iconic line, 'Now what news on the Rialto?' which is in media res due to the usage of the word 'now' showing us how the characters had been talking about a topic which in its importance was irrelevant and how the news about the Rialto is a key point which attracts the attention of the audience by the use of in media res and pulls the reader directly into the story. This pulling of focus, with it brings an aura of suspense and builds up tension to foreshadow an emerging conflict. The device of suspense is further used to engage the reader deep into the conflict by creating an environment of uncertainty around the status of Antonio's ships and their impact on his future. The semantic field is used to create this by the usage of the phrases 'Yet it lives there unchecked that Antonio hath a ship of rich landing wracked on the narrow seas.' By the violent use of such words like 'wracked' and the repeated " ed " sound throughout the sentence an atmosphere of destruction is put across. Also the usage of RICH and narrow seas brings about usual cliche of a ship wreck and a lost treasure, which when amalgamated creates a vivid picture of a shipwreck in the readers mind due to the playwright's skillful use of the language which creates this effect on the reader. This idea of a shipwreck is made more believable by the usage of the words 'flat' and 'fatal' hinting at flat-lining heart, foreshadowing what the future may hold for Antonio if he doesn't pay up the bond, making his personal conflict with Shylock even more pivotal and attracting main focus of the play and helps bring across the major themes. This suspense is complimented by the time of love/admiration the people display towards Antonio. This is seen in the lines " the good Antonio…to keep his name company. " Here the playwright uses personification to give Antonio's name the equal amount of importance as a
Bazmavep, 2019
This paper will looks and questions the way in which the Venetians create a false narrative of toleration and how the characters of Shylock, Jessica, and the Prince of Morocco form particular representations of how migrants negotiate being vulnerable to the Venetians and their usage of the law and legality to undermine their motivations to be in Venice. This will look then at how the supposed state of legality of citizenship and belonging is used against communities who are disparate in being at the mercy of the Venetians all the while being held under suspicion and held at a distance due to their status of migrants. In this way, this paper will question the established paradigm of legal migration and how Venetian society uses it to gaslight the migrants who are aware of the suffering under the auspices of calls for assimilation and the narratives of toleration being proposed by the Doge and the eponymous merchant. Doing so will look at the Prince of Morocco’s own realization of his position among the other princes due to his place of birth and race and at the construction of Shylock as unfit to be a citizen of Venice due to his Jewishness and seek to establish how the concept of legality forms a particular vehicle of oppression.
Staging The Merchant of Venice in the 21ˢᵗ Century: A Dramaturgical Case Study
2015
Staging The Merchant of Venice in the 21 Century: A Dramaturgical Case Study” aims to document the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s 2015 production of The Merchant of Venice by framing it within the historical narrative of the play’s place in Kansas City theatrical history. This thesis also seeks to further define the relationship between the production process and dramaturgy by examining the development and implementation of dramaturgical responsibilities as they related to audience engagement with The Merchant of Venice. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of The Merchant of Venice and examines the progression of the play from comedy to anti-Semitic tragedy beginning in the late nineteenth century. This chapter also identifies the decades-long hiatus of The Merchant of Venice from Kansas City. Chapter 2 will explore this gap in Kansas City’s production history of The Merchant of Venice by looking at the two most recent productions of the play in 1950 and iv 1986 and introdu...
SigMa - Rivista di Letterature comparate, Teatro e Arti dello spettacolo, 2018
Elizabethan England viewed Venice as in many ways a model of an equitable society, an ideal to be emulated. But Venice at the Globe is concerned with the far less idealized versions of Venice as imagined for the English stage. If Venice is seen as a model for England, it is not a mirror, but an alternative, or even a mirror of England's least admirable aspects. L'Inghilterra elisabettiana guardava a Venezia, per molti aspetti, come un modello di società equa, un ideale da emulare. Ma Venice at the Globe riguarda una Venezia, come immaginata per la scena inglese, molto meno idealizzata. Se vista come un modello per l'Inghilterra, Venezia non è uno specchio, ma un'alternativa, o perfino uno specchio degli aspetti meno ammirevoli dell'Inghilterra.
Sederi
Shakespeare was introduced into the Romanian Principalities between 1830 and 1855, beginning with a production of The Merchant of Venice, translated from a French adaptation of the play. This essay considers the dearth of critical attention paid to the influence of French melodrama in Southeastern Europe, and in Romania in particular; examines the circulation of Shakespearean productions in this area; and investigates the various processes of de-and re-contextualization involved in the melodramatic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice in France in the 1830s and in its translation/performance in the Romanian Principalities in the 1850s.
Marlowe and Shakespeare Cross Borders: Malta and Venice in the Early Modern World
Early Theatre, 2019
This essay deals with the worlds of early modern Malta and Venice, two distinctly non-English locations, as depicted by Marlowe and Shakespeare. In particular, it considers the roles Jews played in The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice. I argue that while Shakespeare is completely accurate in his depiction of the spirit of financial and mercantile adventurism and huge risk-taking that characterized early modern Venice, he does not fully reflect the tolerance that marked this early modern trading capital. Shakespeare bases his play on binaries and antagonistic opposition between the Jews and the Christians in Venice while Marlowe consciously resists painting his world in black and white. Marlowe’s Malta is a melting pot, a location where boundaries and distinctions between Jew, Christian, and Muslim, and between master and slave, blur, and easy definitions and categorizations become impossible. In spite of borrowing many historical details of the Great Siege of Malta (1565), Ma...