Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice - Merrill's English Texts

183 Pages. Blueboards with black lettering to spine and front. Pages 20 thru 50 have very small dogears at the top corner. No other defects noted. Tight pages are free or marks. Illustrated with frontispiece, 2 plates, and 2 drawings. This is about the trials and tribulations of a Venetian shipping entrepreneur and his circle of friends. Shakespeare was writing to entertain an anti-Semitic audience with forced conversions and legalized theft. Shylock's twisted desire for vengeance in this play from the late 1590s is where he delivers his famous speech about the humanity of Jews: If you prick us, do we not bleed? But his ruin in Act IV is pitilessly celebrated all the same, by a group that includes Shylock's own daughter Jessica, a positively presented character who joins her Christian friends in calling her father the Jew. Contents: General Notice, Introduction, Life and Works of Shakespeare, Analysis of the Play, Critical Opinions, Shakespeare's Grammar and Versification, Plan of Study, The Merchant of Venice, Notes, and Questions and Topics for Study.…