The Merchant of Venice (29 page)

Adelman, Janet,
Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice
(2008). Fascinating psycho-theological analysis.

Auden, W. H., “Brothers and Others,” in
The Dyer’s Hand
(1962). Pioneering account of the homoerotic element.

Chernaik, Warren,
William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice
, Writers and Their Work Series (2005). Useful introduction to text in conjunction with performance issues.

Coyle, Martin, ed.,
The Merchant of Venice: William Shakespeare
, New Casebooks Series (1998). Diverse collection of influential, theoretically informed essays.

Edelman, Charles, “Which Is the Jew That Shakespeare Knew? Shylock on the Elizabethan Stage,”
Shakespeare Survey
, 52 (1999), pp. 99–106. Excellent correction of many misapprehensions about the representation of Jews on the Shakespearean stage.

Gross, Kenneth,
Shakespeare Is Shylock
(2006). Challenging, provocative, sometimes personal account of Shylock’s outsider status making him a kind of double for Shakespeare himself.

Holmer, Joan Ozark,
The Merchant of Venice: Choice, Hazard and Consequence
(1995). Focuses on play’s genre, structure, and language.

Janik, Vicki K.,
The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Play
(2003). Useful introductory guide with a wide range of material.

Kaplan, M. Lindsay, ed.,
The Merchant of Venice: Texts and Contexts
(2002). Useful introductory guide.

Mahon, John W., and Ellen Macleod Mahon, eds.,
The Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays
(2002). Useful collection of essays covering a wide range of approaches from text to theory and performance.

McCullough, Christopher,
The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Text and Its Theatrical Life
, Shakespeare Handbooks Series (2005). Useful study guide covering text, history, and performance.

Nuttall, A. D., “
The Merchant of Venice
,” in his
A New Mimesis: Shakespeare
and the Representation of Reality
(1983). Has a brilliant feel for the realized texture of the world of the play.

Shapiro, James,
Shakespeare and the Jews
(1996). Fascinating, detailed historical account.

Wheeler, Thomas, ed.,
The Merchant of Venice: Critical Essays
(1991). Useful collection of essays from Granville-Barker on text, to Hazlitt on Shylock, up to contemporary productions of the play.

Wilders, John, ed.,
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice
, Casebook Series (1969). Useful selection of early criticism and significant twentieth-century essays up to 1960s.

Yaffe, Martin D.,
Shylock and the Jewish Question
(1997). Jewish religious scholar, generally sympathetic to Shylock, reads play as a work of political philosophy.

Barton, John,
Playing Shakespeare
(1984). Chapter 10, “Playing Shylock,” in which David Suchet and Patrick Stewart explore their different approaches to the role.

Bonnell, Andrew G.,
Shylock in Germany: Antisemitism and the German Theatre from the Enlightenment to the Nazis
(2008). Scrupulously detailed study.

Brockbank, Philip, ed.,
Players of Shakespeare
(1985). Actors discuss their roles: Chapter 2, Patrick Stewart discusses Shylock; Chapter 3, Sinead Cusack on Portia.

Brooke, Michael, “The Merchant of Venice on Screen,”
www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/564652/index.html
. Summary overview of film and television versions, with links to clips.

Bulman, James C., ed.,
The Merchant of Venice
, Shakespeare in Performance (1991). Excellent detailed overview of stage history.

Edelman, Charles, ed.,
The Merchant of Venice
, Shakespeare in Production (2002). Detailed historical overview and annotated text with stage directions from important historical productions.

Gilbert, Miriam,
The Merchant of Venice
, Shakespeare at Stratford (2002). Detailed account of RSC productions.

Gross, John,
Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend
(1992). Exemplary detailed account of Shakespeare’s Shylock, dramatic interpretations and the character’s afterlife.

Jackson, Russell, and Robert Smallwood, eds.,
Players of Shakespeare 2
(1988). Ian McDiarmid on playing Shylock.

Jackson, Russell, and Robert Smallwood, eds.,
Players of Shakespeare 3
(1993). Deborah Findlay on playing Portia; Gregory Doran on Solanio.

Jones, Maria,
Shakespeare’s Culture in Modern Performance
(2003). Chapter 3 on
Merchant of Venice
, pp. 57–100: detailed discussion of the “alien” in
Merchant
in Shakespeare’s time and today in relation to historical and modern performance.

Kennedy, Dennis, ed.,
Foreign Shakespeares: Contemporary Performance
(1993). With Avraham Oz’s influential essay, “Transformations of Authenticity:
The Merchant of Venice
in Israel,” pp. 56–75, which discusses performance and the play’s legitimacy.

Lelyveld, Toby,
Shylock on the Stage
(1960). Useful historical overview with chapter on theatrical greats such as Kean and Irving.

O’Connor, John,
Shakespearean Afterlives: Ten Characters with a Life of Their Own
(2003). Chapter 4, “Shylock,” pp. 95–148, detailed stage history and discussion of place of play in contemporary culture.

Overton, Bill,
The Merchant of Venice: Text and Performance
(1987). Part 1 has a useful introduction to play; Part 2 discusses play in performance from 1970 to 1984.

Parsons, Keith, and Pamela Mason, eds.,
Shakespeare in Performance
(1995). Useful introduction to play, pp. 136–142; lavishly illustrated.

Smallwood, Robert, ed.,
Players of Shakespeare 4
(1998). Christopher Luscombe on playing Lancelet Gobbo in
Merchant
(and Moth in
Love’s Labour’s Lost
), pp. 18–29.

The Merchant of Venice
, directed by John Sichel for television (1973, DVD 2007). Stars Laurence Olivier as Shylock; with its Edwardian setting and middle-aged cast, the production seems pervaded by
fin de siècle
languor.

The Merchant of Venice
, directed by Jack Gold for BBC Shakespeare (1980, DVD 2005). Warren Mitchell as Shylock is compelling.

The Merchant of Venice
, directed by Trevor Nunn for BBC films (2001, DVD 2003). Royal National Theatre staging with Henry Goodman as Shylock (the production discussed in his interview, above).

The Merchant of Venice
, directed by Michael Radford (2004, DVD 2005). Filmed in Venice, starring Al Pacino as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as Antonio, Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio, and Lynn Collins as Portia.

Preparation of “
The Merchant of Venice
in Performance” was assisted by a generous grant from the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning) of the University of Warwick for research in the RSC archive at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded a term’s research leave that enabled Jonathan Bate to work on “The Director’s Cut.”

Picture research by Michelle Morton. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for assistance with reproduction fees and picture research (special thanks to Helen Hargest).

Images of RSC productions are supplied by the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive, Stratford-upon-Avon. This library, maintained by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, holds the most important collection of Shakespeare material in the UK, including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s official archive. It is open to the public free of charge.

For more information see
www.shakespeare.org.uk
.

1.
 Drinkwater Meadows as Old Gobbo (1858). Reproduced by kind permission of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust