Notes on Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and its Sephardi Jewish Roots
The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare’s classic play on love, commerce, and bigotry, has been the subject of a great, enduring controversy concerning its depiction of Shylock, “…the Jew/ That Shakespeare drew (Alexander Pope? 1741).” Over four centuries, different readings and productions of the play have ranged from accentuating “the extreme cruelty of Shylock the Jew” (Quatro of 1600) to showing a highly sympathetic figure who is driven by Christian anti-Semitism to become a