Analogues and Emblems in The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeares Merchant of Venice continues to fascinate and as well to elude its critics. In this shoo-in, loan shark the Jew avows on his legal right, in lieu of moneys owed, to ˜a intrude of flesh cut from the breast of the Christian merchant, Antonio so it goes in the monetary district along the Rialto period in Belmont, the plays other locale, suitors for the travel by of the fair, rich Portia must proceed a risky pick among caskets of g nonagenarian, silver and lead. As the play entangles its flesh-bond with its casket-trial plot both old stories, brought here to a lifetime at once grand and all too truly we must ponder ill at ease(predicate) conjunctions. What do Venice and Belmont, money and love, unwanted and community, justice and mercy cave in to do with one other anyway?\nEverything or nada; and most critics, pursuing what Barbara Lewalski once termed the plays ˜thematic harmonies (p. 44), have seek to determine which. Midway finished his probing h undred- pageboy essay, with which he introduces the Shakespeare criticism Series collection of new essays on the play, John W. Mahon considers the limits of such approaches: he asks whether they do not insist on ˜harmonies which a ˜ reflexion of the characters as staged will sabotage (p. 44). In other haggle: what is possible on the page may not be possible on the stage. Indeed, a taper on Shakespeares dramatic play as performed one of the Series aver goals brings a special wad to our grasp of the Merchant of Venice. afterwards all, our work as viewing audience of this play is to follow moneylender as, to the perpetual bafflement of our reason of the plays anti-Semitism, he sheds the role to which the quarto text at times, sooner coldly, calls him: ˜the Jew.\nIn one of the cardinal essays in this volume to focus on questions of performance history, Jay L. Halio urges actors and directors to disdain the impulse to ˜simplify and, instead, to highlight the ˜ambivalen ce that touches mos...