The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition

William Baker, Brian Vickers, William Baker, Brian Vickers

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9780826473295
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847141873
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama
• Index: Literature

The Merchant of Venice has always been regarded as one of Shakespeare's most interesting plays. Before the nineteenth century critical reaction is relatively fragmentary. However between then and the late twentieth century the critical tradition reveals the tremendous vitality of the play to evoke emotion in the theatre and in the study. Since the middle of the twentieth century reactions to the drama have been influenced by the Nazi destruction of European Jewry. The first volume to document the full tradition of criticism of The Merchant of Venice includes an extensive introduction which charts the reactions to the play up to the beginning of the twenty first century and reflects changing reactions to prejudice in this period. Material by a variety of critics appears here for the first time since initial publication. Reactions are included from: Malone, Hazlitt, Jameson, Heine, Knight, Lewes, Halliwell-Phillips, Furnivall, Irving, Ruskin, Swinburne, Masefield, Gollancz and Quiller-Couch.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 On Macklin's Shylock, 1775
• 2 An 'apology' for Shylock, 1796
• 3 'One of Shakespeare's most perfect works', 1815
• 4 Kean's debut as Shylock, 1816
• 5 Sympathy for Shylock, but not for Portia, 1817
• 6 The major sources, 1824
• 7 In defence of Shylock, 1833
• 8 Portia, 1833
• 9 Shylock 'ill-used', 1838
• 10 Shakespeare justifies'an unfortunate race', 1838
• 11 Summa jus summa injuria, 1839
• 12 Lessons of charity, 1849
• 13 Shylock's humanity, 1850
• 14 Shakespeare's evenhandedness, 1851
• 15 Human rights and religious belief, 1856
• 16 Sympathetic liberality versus murderous avarice, 1856
• 17 In praise of Portia, 1859
• 18 'A just estimate of things', 1862
• 19 Shakespeare's love of justice, 1863
• 20 'The relation of man to property', 1863
• 21 Shylock 'the corrupted merchant', 1873
• 22 Portia the central character, 1875
• 23 Shylock 'the hero of the piece', 1877
• 24 A Hegelian reading, 1877
• 25 A plea for toleration, 1879
• 26 Shylock: an actor's view, 1879
• 27 Not a doctrinal play, 1879
• 28 'Not about Jewish grievances', 1879
• 29 Shylock's 'nobility and distinction', 1879
• 30 Shylock 'a product of history', 1879
• 31 A sonnet to Portia, 1879
• 32 'The Lopez case' and Shakespeare's Jew, 1880
• 33 A critique of Irving and Terry, 1881
• 34 Shylock from a Jewish point of view, 1882
• 35 An interview with Henry Irving, 1884
• 36 Shakespeare's interweaving of plots, 1885
• 37 On acting Portia, 1885
• 38 Portia's womanliness, 1885
• 39 Privileged Christian, proscribed Jew, 1885
• 40 Staging the play, 1887
• 41 Shylock's 'revengeful selfishness', 1888
• 42 'The first of his [Shakespeare's] great comedies', 1888
• 43 Shylock's character determined by the plot, 1894
• 44 Shakespeare's concession to bigotry, 1896
• 45 Shylock 'a monster of passionate hatred, not avarice', 1898
• 46 Shylock and modern criticism, 1898
• 47 'Two communities which meet but never mingle', 1900
• 48 'Some faint sympathy' for Shylock, 1905
• 49 Shylock 'a man of one idea', 1905
• 50 Shylock's language, 1905
• 51 Shylock more sinned against than sinning, 1907
• 52 'Untrammelled' as against 'plot-ridden' characters, 1907
• 53 The opposing principles of Love and Hate, 1908
• 54 Shylock less sinned against than sinning, 1909
• 55 Shakespeare's Jew and Marlowe's Christians, 1909
• 56 Shylock a comic villain, 1911
• 57 Shylock and his interpreters, 1911
• 58 'Man is what man had made him', 1916
• 59 Shakespeare's 'stage-cleverness' and the story's 'monstrous absurdity', 1916
• 60 Shylock's anal-erotic tendencies, 1921
• 61 Shylock not an authentic Jew, 1921
• 62 Shylock's self-revelation in soliloquy, 1922
• 63 Shakespeare's intentions and the dynamics of comedy, 1927
• 64 The 'alien' question, 1929
• 65 Shakespeare's attention to character and story, 1930
• 66 Shylock the Venetian, 1933
• 67 Antonio a depressive homosexual, 1934
• 68 Shylock a London usurer, 1935
• 69 The distribution of imagery within the play, 1935
• 70 The idea of riches, true and false, 1936
• 71 Shakespeare's 'matter-of-fact fairy tale', 1936
• 72 The two Shylocks, 1938
• 73 Anti-Semitism, ancient and modern, 1938
• 74 No hint 'where Shakespeare's sympathies lay', 1939
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX