Bassanio borrows from Antonio, who borrows from Shylock against a pound of his own flesh; Portia, bound by her father’s casket lottery, becomes the instrument of the loan’s undoing. The trial scene is as gripping as anything in the tragedies.
Shylock — wronged, wronging, and given the most humane speech in the play — long ago outgrew the comic villain the plot asks him to be, and the play’s antisemitism and its critique of the Christians’ mercy sit unresolved side by side. Essential, uncomfortable, and permanently modern.
Which edition?
1Arden Shakespeare, Third Series
Ed. John Drakakis · Bloomsbury
Drakakis refuses to soften the play, and the edition is stronger for it.
2Oxford World’s Classics
Ed. Jay L. Halio · Oxford University Press
Halio is the calmest guide to the play’s legal machinery.
3The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Ed. M. M. Mahood · Cambridge University Press
Mahood is wonderful on Portia, and on how much of the play is about money.
4Folger Shakespeare LibraryFirst read? Start here
Ed. Barbara Mowat & Paul Werstine · Simon & Schuster
The trial scene at speed, with the hard words handled as you go.
Merchant of Venice on stage
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Merchant of Venice on screen
1The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Film · dir. Michael Radford
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Reading Merchant of Venice this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.