Merchant of Venice - A General Overview

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Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice, it is one of Shakespeare's less known plays because the original manuscripts were lost but the play did re-surface in the 1600s. In Shakespeare's time there was only one Jew in England, he name was Rodrigo Lopez. He was the Queen's Physician and was only half Jew. He was tried and executed. Shakespeare probably never met a Jew so he may have got his attitudes towards Jews from his experiences of them; he may also have got ideas and inspiration from the one other play about Jews at the time called `The Jew of Malta'. Christopher Marlowe who was a contempary of Shakespeare wrote it. Marlowe was stabbed to death in a pub.

This play was a controversial play when it was written and it still is now. It was controversial in Shakespeare's time because Jew's were not well liked and this is supported by the fact that the only Jew in England was executed. This play is arguably even more controversial now because we live in a post-holocaust world. The holocaust changed people's views towards Jews because they were treated like sub-humans and they were massacred by the millions.

The genre of this play is hard to decide because in Shakespeare's time it would have been a comedy because people would have wanted to see Shylock lose everything because he was a Jew but now it is more of a tragedy because our attitudes towards to Jews have changed. The Merchant of Venice is also a bit of a mystery play because we do not know who sent the letter about Antonio's ships because they never did sink it was a dramatic device use by Shakespeare.

The courtroom scene is one of the most important scenes because everyone is on stage and it is the penultimate scene of the play. Act IV Scene I is a stage for Shakespeare to present his ideas to the audience, he shows the Duke using derogatory language towards Shylock to show the attitudes of Venice towards Jews and he also shows us that women were not recognised in court through Nerissa and Portia dressing up as men to save Antonio. This scene also shows a change in attitude over time because in Shakespeare's time a Jew having to change to a Christian was a fate worse than death because it is a spiritual death and some people would say if you cant be yourself what's the point of life. But in our time death is much worse because we are not so religious.

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As the scene opens, the Duke begins the dialogue with references to Shylock. The Duke uses phrases such as `That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice', `thou art come to answer a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch' to describe Shylock and his actions. Shakespeare uses this language to show how alienated Shylock is from the rest of the people in the courtroom and it also sets the scene that the trial is straight away biased because of the prejudice towards Jews. When Shylock enters the court, the Duke continues to use derogatory and insulting language to address Shylock ...

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