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Before studying The Merchant of Venice, it is essential to understand the world Shakespeare was writing in and the ideas that shaped the play. This lesson covers the Elizabethan era, attitudes towards Jews and money-lending, the significance of Venice, and the play's genre and sources.
Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice around 1596–1598, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Key features of the period include:
Understanding the treatment of Jews is crucial to reading this play:
Shakespeare's audience would have expected Shylock to be a straightforward villain. The fact that Shakespeare gives him such powerful, sympathetic speeches (e.g. "Hath not a Jew eyes?") is what makes the play so interesting — and so debated.
Shakespeare chose Venice deliberately:
| Venice | Belmont |
|---|---|
| Commerce and money | Love and harmony |
| Legal conflict | Music and romance |
| Male-dominated trade | Female-dominated household |
| Harsh realism | Fairy-tale idealism |
The bond plot depends on Elizabethan attitudes to lending money at interest:
Shylock: "You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine" (Act 1, Scene 3)
The Merchant of Venice is classified as a comedy in the First Folio (1623), but it does not fit neatly into one genre:
Modern critics often call it a "problem play" or "problem comedy" because it resists easy classification. The comedy sits uneasily alongside the cruelty shown to Shylock.
Shakespeare drew on several sources:
| Source | What Shakespeare Used |
|---|---|
| Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone (1558) | The flesh-bond story and the lady of Belmont |
| The Gesta Romanorum (medieval) | The casket test (choosing between gold, silver, and lead) |
| Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (c. 1589) | The figure of the Jewish villain — but Shakespeare made Shylock far more human |
| The Lopez affair (1594) | Renewed public interest in stories about Jews |
Shakespeare combined these sources into a single play with two interwoven plots: the bond plot (Shylock and Antonio) and the casket plot (Portia and her suitors).
To read The Merchant of Venice responsibly, students must confront the historical antisemitism encoded in Elizabethan culture. After the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, Jewish communities were formally absent from England for over three centuries, returning only under Cromwell in 1656. In the meantime, English drama and popular balladry constructed an entirely imagined Jew: a caricature drawn from medieval blood-libel narratives, the passion plays performed at Corpus Christi, and Reformation polemic. Shakespeare's Shylock is therefore not a portrait of a living community; he is a response to a stereotype already in circulation.
The Lopez affair of 1594 is crucial context. Dr Roderigo Lopez, the queen's Portuguese physician, had converted to Christianity but was accused — almost certainly falsely — of plotting to poison Elizabeth I. His public hanging at Tyburn provoked a wave of revived anti-Jewish sentiment, and theatre companies quickly revived Marlowe's The Jew of Malta to capitalise on the mood. Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice into this febrile atmosphere.
Modern critical readings — by scholars such as James Shapiro (Shakespeare and the Jews, 1996) and Stephen Greenblatt — argue that Shakespeare simultaneously exploits and interrogates the stereotype. Shylock is given a stage villain's cruelty but also an interiority denied to Marlowe's Barabas. The "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech is unprecedented in its insistence on shared humanity, even as it reaches its troubling conclusion in the logic of revenge. Students at the highest grade bands should be able to name this tension: Shakespeare uses antisemitic convention while also exposing its cost.
Callout — handling this material: Always name historical antisemitism openly rather than evading it. Discuss Shylock's forced conversion as an act of cultural destruction, not a happy ending. Acknowledge that post-Holocaust readers cannot — and should not — read the play with Elizabethan detachment.
The bond plot rests on a specific economic history. In medieval and early modern Europe, Christian doctrine (drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas) held that charging interest on a loan — "usury" — was a sin, because money was sterile and could not naturally produce more of itself. Jewish communities, barred by guild restrictions and royal statutes from most trades, were in many cities forced into money-lending as one of the few permitted occupations, and were then despised for performing a service Christian society both required and condemned.
Venice in 1596 was the greatest mercantile republic in Europe: a city-state whose wealth depended on long-distance sea trade with the Levant, Constantinople, and North Africa. The Venetian Ghetto, established in 1516 on the site of an old foundry (geto), confined Jewish residents to a walled district locked at night but allowed them to practise specific trades, including lending at regulated rates. Shakespeare's Venice is therefore a real historical place where Christian and Jewish economies were visibly entangled — a setting that lets him stage the contradiction he cannot stage at home.
Antonio's insistence that he lends "gratis" (without interest) is not a neutral moral choice; it is a deliberate economic weapon against Shylock, undercutting his livelihood. When Shylock says Antonio has "hindered me half a million," he is describing real material damage. The "merry bond" is Shylock's attempt to turn the tables — to use Christian legal machinery against a Christian who has used Christian morality against him.
Exam-style question: Starting with the opening of the play, how does Shakespeare use context to shape the audience's response to Shylock?
Grades 4–5 response: Shakespeare shows that Shylock is a Jewish moneylender living in Venice. In Elizabethan times, people did not like Jews because they had been expelled from England. Shylock is hated by Antonio who calls him names. This makes the audience feel a bit sorry for him, but also they expect him to be a villain because that is what Jews were shown as on stage. Shakespeare uses the setting of Venice because it was a big trading city where Jews and Christians lived together.
Grades 6–7 response: Shakespeare draws on Elizabethan attitudes to Jews to create a character the audience would initially have seen as a villain. The Jewish expulsion of 1290 meant most playgoers had never met a Jewish person, so Shylock is built from stereotypes already familiar from Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. However, Shakespeare complicates the stereotype by giving Shylock reasons for his bitterness — Antonio has "spit upon my Jewish gaberdine." The setting of Venice, a cosmopolitan trading city, allows Shakespeare to explore tensions between Christian and Jewish communities that he could not stage in England. The context of usury is vital: Jews were forced into moneylending because they were barred from other trades, and then despised for doing it.
Grades 8–9 response: Shakespeare constructs Shylock at the intersection of Elizabethan antisemitic convention and a more disquieting humanism. AO3 context is essential: following the Lopez affair of 1594 and the revival of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, audiences arrived at the Globe expecting a stage Jew in the morality-play tradition. Shakespeare initially appears to meet that expectation — Shylock's first entrance, where he announces in prose "I hate him for he is a Christian," activates the stereotype of the vengeful usurer. Yet AO2 analysis reveals how swiftly the play destabilises this reading: the cumulative listing of Antonio's abuses ("spit upon my Jewish gaberdine… call'd me dog") reframes Shylock as a historically situated victim of Christian contempt. The dramatic irony that Antonio's "gratis" lending is itself an economic attack — hindering Shylock "half a million" — complicates any simple moral hierarchy. Modern critical readings by Shapiro and Greenblatt emphasise that Shakespeare uses the antisemitic form even as he interrogates its cost; an informed personal response (AO1) should recognise that the play is neither a full endorsement of nor a full repudiation of its period's prejudice, but a work that stages the contradiction. Post-Holocaust productions — notably the RSC's 2015 staging with Makram J. Khoury — have foregrounded this tension, refusing to allow the "comedy" to resolve it.
AQA alignment: This content is aligned with AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) Paper 1 Section A: Shakespeare. Assessed with one compulsory essay question worth 34 marks (30 for AO1/AO2/AO3 and 4 for AO4 SPaG). AOs assessed: AO1 (informed personal response), AO2 (language/form/structure analysis), AO3 (context).