The Merchant Of Venice : A Tragedy Of The Shakespearean Comedy

Shakespeare’s play ‘The Merchant of Venice’ starts off in Venice with Shylock as a simple money lender. His intentions seem reasonable to begin with, he sounds a nice man then he does a soliloquy saying how much hatred he has for Antonio, the Christian who treated him disrespectfully. Shylock conflicts his emotions again and speaks to Antonio in a joking manner which in his mind turns out to be the truth.

The merchant of Venice is a drama and romantic play, by William Shakespeare. Regarding the test for the suitors and the final part of the book, the author is inspired by a fourteenth-century Italian novel of Giovanni Fiorentino, called “Il Giannetto”, (Bullough, 1957). The merchant of Venice is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. It is contained on the First Folio, in the contents of Comedies, sharing certain aspects with others plays. That one traditionally ends with the positive return to order expected from the genre, it also has some characteristics of a tragedy, in particular with regard to the punishment and the oppression that are suffered to Shylock Jew. The peculiarity is the title of this book, “The Merchant of Venice”, in fact, it refers to the character Antonio, and not Shylock, a moneylender, which has a pivotal role in this play. One possible reason is that by calling “The Merchant of Venice”, Shakespeare wanted to focus the attention of the readers, on the

The Enmity between Christians and Jews is first revealed in this passage by Shylock’s tetchy, sarcastic reply to Bassanio. Bassanio politely invites Shlock to dinner and Shylock replies sarcastically saying, “Yes, to smell pork…” He further separates himself from Bassanio by referring to, “…your prophet, the Nazarite.” Also, in an irritated way, he lists the things he is prepared to do with Christians, and the things he in not prepared to do. In this passage, “I will buy with you…nor sell with you”, Shylock repeats the word ‘YOU’ Eight times, making it sound like an accusation, not only against Bassanio, but all Christians, for wronging

The novel The Merchant of Venice is an interesting play about how people dealt with money. Money has a very important role in this book because it helps the story develop and progress. They use money in different ways in the story; they are used in commerce, debt and in a will. Money is a very important asset in life, but every character has their own view on money, which then dictates their actions throughout the story.

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is so alike to our financially afflicted world. The rules of law and commerce are subject to deceptive manipulation, fear of "the other" overwhelms respect for a common humanity, duplicity is the norm, sexuality is a vehicle for ambition, and money drives and wraps almost every action. It is a classic tale that includes important details of the financial crisis in the United States during 2007-2009. Shakespeare’s Venice, like the New York of his time - and the financial capitals of ours - is a city based on borrowing, on market speculation and greed masquerading as wealth and sophistication. Behind the curtains of the practice of lending and borrowing money in Shakespeare’s play lay the transition to capitalism: the rise of banking system; the scarcity for credit in developing industrial enterprises; and the growing dispute of default facing both aristocratic landlords and, above all, small, independent early entrepreneurs on trading ventures. Even though almost 600 years apart from each other, both Shakespeare’s tale and the financial crisis in the United States during 2007-2009 have a similar financial dilemma, each has its unique Shylock, Bassanio and Antonio- people who were responsible for causing the meltdown of their days.

In Shakespeare’s play the merchant of Venice the audience learns about love in many forms. Through the characters, of Portia and Bassanio, Shylock and his love for money over his daughter and Antonio and Bassanio. The audience learns through Portia that true love always triumphs. From shylock we learn that money isn’t everything it seems to be and that you should treasure your family more than money. Through the friendship of Antonio and Bassanio we learn about the love of one friend for another and how they would sacrifice anything for one another. Shakespeare uses many techniques including: tests, plot incident, passionate dialogue, characterisation and emotive language to express his idea of love and friendship to the

The Merchant of Venus, is a play written by William Shakespeare and is a majority of the time remembered for its scene with Shylock and Antonio. As intricate as the play wove itself, the word that seemed to occur a majority of the time “bonds”, had multiple meanings occurring throughout the play. Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tells us that Bonds can mean the bondage of a marriage, the ways of which a thing is bound or tied down, agreement or engagement binding to him of which who makes it, and a deed, by which binds himself, his heirs, executors, or assigns to pay a certain sum of money. In this play, we see a strong connection between bonds and goods reoccurring from start to finish. The term “bond”, is

By tracing back the early roles of Shylock done in the Elizabethan stage, we are able to appreciate the complexity of Shakespear’s character, Shylock, and how he has the greatest impact than any other character.

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is a perplexing story of dark humor, race, religion, identity, love, and justice. Generally, most people understand The Merchant of Venice as a comedy about a bitter and outcasted Jewish moneylender named Shylock who seeks revenge against a Christian merchant who has failed to pay his loan back. However, there are many different perspectives on whether The Merchant of Venice is a comedy or a tragedy depending on one’s views on the difference between race and religion. If one views the story as a comedy, it is a dark comedy full of many problems, especially the controversial subject matter of anti-Semitic attitudes of its Christian characters. If one views it as a tragedy, it is a tragedy that concludes with majority of its characters in a “happy ending”—that is if one agrees that Jessica’s decision of love over betraying her father and giving up her Jewish identity is indeed a happy ending.

Until his speech, Shylock has “borne it with a patient shrug” (1.3.107), but here, his anger at the treatment of Jews spills over. From a modern perspective, this speech creates sympathy for Shylock, however an Elizabethan audience would have felt differently. Shakespeare’s audience would have used this speech to form a poor view of Shylock. Their view of Shylock contributes to the idea that this play is comedic and makes Shylock the

Symbolism is used extensively in the play The Merchant of Venice. It is used to represent aspects of the people’s culture and to signify feelings within people in love. The caskets signify the choices that people have in the community as well as depict the character of Portia’s suitors. The three caskets are the key to the marriage between Bassanio and Portia, and the rings signify the love and affection among the two of them as well. The caskets and the rings are used to enhance the two major themes of the play, which are love and friendship. They also bring out the characters of the various individuals.

Shakespeare’s Presentation of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare’s portrayal of Antonio in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is decidedly open to interpretation, as his melancholic nature is revealed at the start of the play and foreshadows his later bad luck, but a specific reasoning behind it is never given. For an Elizabethan audience, Antonio provides the perfect Christian protagonist to Shylock’s evil Jewish antagonist, although our modern reception of him is much more diverse and as such provides the audience with a greater sense of suspense concerning his fate, and enigma surrounding his personality. Arguably this was Shakespeare’s intention as Antonio is perceived as being the eponymous

The Merchant of Venice, also known as “The Jew of Venice” is a drama play originally written by William Shakespeare in 1598. The major conflict occurs when a man named Antonio (Venetian merchant) fails to pay off a loan to a greedy Jewish money loaner known as Shylock who demands a pound of flesh from Antonio in return. Antonio and his friends take a journey through friendship, love, and hatred in an attempt to free him of his pound of flesh fate induced by Shylock. Imagine yourself sitting in the master minds of directors Michael Radford and John Sichel while they are directing their adaptations of the play. Imagine experiencing their unique ideas first hand looking through their

1 scene 3 in a building in a street in Venice. The building in which

Can time and historical events affect the categorization of a literary piece? William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is a play that is difficult to classify in a specific genre. It is often referred to as one of his problem plays. This means that it does not easily fall into a single category. Most literary sources categorize The Merchant of Venice as a comedy because it fits the description by having a happy ending. There are those, however, that discuss the dark side of the play and insist that the play could also be classified as a tragedy. Due to the plays’ complexity and the events of history, it can be argued that