The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare
252 pp, $7.95. Order Now!
"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one."
The Merchant of Venice is probably the most controversial of all Shakespeare's plays. It is also one of the least understood. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? What is the meaning behind the test of the caskets? Who is the real villain of the trial scene? Is Shylock simply vicious and venomous, or is he more sinned against than sinning?
Study Guide to The Merchant of Venice
38 pp, $3.95
ICE Study Guides are constructed to aid the reader of ICE classics to achieve a level of critical and literary appreciation befitting the works themselves.
Ideally suited for students themselves and as a guide for teachers, the ICE Study Guides serve as a complement to the treasures of critical appreciation already included in ICE titles.
Can the play be described as anti-semitic? What exactly is the quality of mercy? Is Portia one of the great Christian heroines of western literature? And what of the comedy of the rings with which Shakespeare ends the play? These questions and many others are answered in this critical edition of one of the Bard's liveliest plays.
Essays
James Bemis gives his thoughts on the play's interpretations and its various film adaptations while Raimund Borgmeier takes up "The Family in The Merchant of Venice".
Michael G. Brennan mixes cultural, economic, and geographical tensions in "Shakespeare's Italian Stages". Crystal Downing, meanwhile, gives a compelling argument for more careful and circumspect reading by illustrating three levels of understanding one can have of the play. [Read excerpt.]
Anthony Esolen celebrates "The Hazard of Love"; James E. Hartley provides an informative history of usury; Daniel H. Lowenstein compares Portia's and Shylock's commitment to law, stressing that Portia's is greater than usually supposed, but of a different type; and Michael Martin reveals Shakespeare's treatment of the different kinds of friendship, a topic very much in vogue at the time.
Joseph Pearce situates the reader with the introductory essay.
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Meet the Minds behind the Merchant of Venice Edition
Editor
Joseph Pearce
JOSEPH PEARCE is the acclaimed author of numerous literary studies, including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare, and Shakespeare on Love, as well as popular biographies of Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is the general editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series.
Other Works Edited
Critical Essayists
James Bemis
James Bemis is an editorial board member, weekly columnist, and film critic for California Political Review and is a frequent contributor to Latin Mass Magazine. His five-part series "Through the Eyes of the Church", on the Vatican's list of the forty-five "Most Important Films in the Century of Cinema", was published in the Wanderer. His essays on film adaptations of King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth have appeared in the Ignatius Critical Editions of the plays. He is currently writing a book on Christianity, culture, and the cinema.
Critical Essays in
Raimund Borgmeier
Raimund Borgmeier is professor emeritus of English Literature at the University of Giessen, Germany. He has been visiting professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in both Madison and Milwaukee. His research fields are Shakespeare, eighteenth-century and Romantic poetry and culture, special genres (science fiction and crime fiction), nineteenth-century fiction, and contemporary literature. In 2000, he was honored with the Festschrift Lineages of the Novel: Essays in Honour of R. B., ed. B. Reitz and E. Voigts-Virchow.
Critical Essays in
Michael G. Brennan
Michael G. Brennan has taught Renaissance literature and Shakespeare at the School of English, University of Leeds, since 1984 and is currently professor of Renaissance there. His most recent books include The Sidneys of Penhurst and the Monarchy, 1500 – 1700 (Ashgate, 2006) and a study of the early modern English travelers on the Continent, The Origins of the Grand Tour (The Hakluyt Society, 2004).
Critical Essays in
Crystal Downing
Crystal Downing received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. She has published on a wide variety of literary topics, from Shakespeare to the Brontës, and has won both national and international awards for her essays on film. Her three books explore the relationship between Christianity and poststructuralism: Writing Performances (2004); How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith (2006); and Changing Signs of Truth (2012).
Anthony Esolen
Anthony Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College. His work includes the Modern Library translations of Dante's Divine Comedy (Random House), Ironies of Faith: The Deep Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature (ISI Books), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery).
Critical Essays in
James E. Hartley
James E. Hartley is Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches courses on macroeconomics and money and banking, as well as a year-long interdisciplinary course on Western civilization. Currently, he is also serving as the director of the first-year seminar program at Mount Holyoke.
Critical Essays in
Daniel H. Lowenstein
Daniel H. Lowenstein is Professor of Law, Emeritus, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously he was the first chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. His specialty is election law, but he also has published commentary on Shakespeare, Dickens, and other authors. He is the director of the UCLA Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions.
Critical Essays in
Michael Martin
Michael Martin teach English at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan. His criticism, essays, and poetry have appeared in many journals and magazines. Michael lives on a small farm outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and eight children.
Critical Essays in
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