Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a play that, like many of Shakespeare's

plays show characters at the edges of society. In The Merchant of

Venice we see Shylock and Portia showing this by either being the

minority or the least respected or in Shylock's case both. What adds

to their role at the edge of society is the way they subvert their

roles because this focuses, in the case of Portia, the audience on her

and, in shylocks case, the other characters on him.

In The Merchant of Venice we see Shylock, whose character can be seen

in many different ways, this is due to the audience of the time. Up

until the late 1700s he was played as a comic character but the 1700s

onwards saw him played as more of a villainous character. In 1814

Shylock's role was depicted as a character to be pitied, and in 1879

he was first portrayed as a tragic character; this giving The Merchant

of Venice its title of "tragicomedy". Since then he has been depicted

in many different ways and has reaped sympathy from the audience ever

since the unjustness towards Jews in the Second World War.

The Merchant of Venice was almost certainly performed between 1596 and

1598 and was performed in front of an Elizabethan audience who were

not particularly well educated or literate but they understood the

complexities of the issues being raised in the play and the "rules" of

the stage (Portia dressing as a man). The audience of this time would

have been less sympathetic towards Shylock than a modern day audience.

The Elizabethan audience believed that females did not have any

authority and once married they would belong to the husband; "one half

of me is yours, the other half yours" is what Portia says to Bassanio

so this is widely known and accepted in the day and this provokes

Portia to dress up as a man, and subvert her "accepted role". This

"subversion" on Portia's terms coincides with Shylock's "subversion",

this is nevertheless the reason.