The Merchant of Venice: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by William Shakespeare, Leah S. Marcus

Overview

The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful plays and, conversely, his ugliest. Juxtaposed within the same conceptual frame are heavenly and musical harmonies, romantic love, materialism, and racism.

This Norton Critical Edition has been carefully edited to make The Merchant of Venice, its surrounding history, and the history of its critical reception and rewritings accessible to readers. The text of this edition is based on the 1600 First Quarto, with light editing and substantial explanatory annotations by Leah S. Marcus.

"Sources and Contexts" largely focuses on the character of Shylock and the issue of anti-Semitism in the play. Materials included are diverse, and at times contradictory, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Examples include seventeenth-century anti-Semitic literature, an essay from the same period defending Jews and arguing for their repatriation in England, an examination of the Christian theology of the play, and readings of The Merchant of Venice as exclusionary for Jews, women, and people of color.

"Criticism" collects twenty-one diverse interpretations. In addition to Shylock and the question of anti-Semitism, these essays address The Merchant of Venice in the context of postcolonial, feminist, and queer theory and explore relevant issues of economic status and organization.

"Rewritings and Appropriations" includes excerpts from dramatic, musical, and other literary adaptations of The Merchant of Venice, as well as a selection of poems, most of them from the twentieth century, on the character of Shylock.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393925296
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/27/2005
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	404,846
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Leah S. Marcus is Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Childhood and Cultural Despair, The Politics of Mirth, Puzzling Shakespeare, and Unediting the Renaissance. She has edited two volumes of the writings of Queen Elizabeth I (with Janel Mueller and Mary Beth Rose), a Norton Critical Edition of The Merchant of Venice, and an Arden Early Modern Drama text of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.

Date of Death:

2018

Place of Birth:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Place of Death:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Read an Excerpt

In The Merchant of Venice, the penniless but attractive Bassanio seeks, and finally wins, the hand of the fabulously wealthy Portia. But even as the play provokes laughter, it also provokes something disturbing, as Bassanio's courtship is actually financed by the magnificent villain Shylock the moneylender -- the focus of anti-Semitic sentiment, and one of the most controversial yet strangely sympathetic of Shakespeare's characters, whose actions and whose treatment in the play are still debated to this day.

Table of Contents

	List of illustrations	viii
	Series editors' preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Editor's note	xiii
	List of abbreviations	xiv
	List of productions	xvi
	Introduction	1
	List of characters	94
	The Merchant of Venice and commentary	95
	Appendix 1	263
	Appendix 2	265
	Bibliography	267
	Index	282

Editorial Reviews

A collection of new perspectives on Shakespeare's most controversial play, for students. Essays open up the play's historical, cultural, and political significance, and demonstrate some of the ways in which contemporary criticism is both based on critical theory and is also about the practice of criticism. Specific subjects include Shakespeare and the Jews, colonization and miscegenation in the play, how to read the play without being heterosexist, and Venetian patriarchy. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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