Merchant of Venice

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Edited by William Baker

Continuum Publishing

Due/Published August 2004, 416 pages, cloth

ISBN 0826473296

The Merchant of Venice has always been regarded as one of Shakespeare's most interesting plays. Critical reaction is relatively fragmentary before the nineteenth century. 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.