The Merchant of Venice is rightfully considered one of  Shakespeare’s “problem plays” with its dark overtones of anti-Semitism and a feud between a Jew standing obstinately with the Old Testament (“Cursed be my tribe if I forgive him.”) and Christians clinging righteously to the New (“The quality of mercy is never strained.”). Shakespeare does not make it as black and white as it sounds and eventually paints himself into a corner that requires some questionable poetic license to resolve at least the immediate conflicts. It was so controversial that for nearly a hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, nobody performed it. [Read more...]