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    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    Ebook166 pages1 hour

    The Merchant of Venice

    By William Shakespeare

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    The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Although classified as a comedy in the First Folio, and while it shares certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps more remembered for its dramatic scenes, and is best known for the character of Shylock.
    The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who is the play's most prominent and more famous villain. Though Shylock is a tormented character, he is also a tormentor, so whether he is to be viewed with disdain or sympathy is up to the audience (as influenced by the interpretation of the play's director and lead actors). As a result, The Merchant of Venice is often classified as one of Shakespeare's problem plays.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGérald Gallas
    Release dateSep 12, 2017
    ISBN9788826400549
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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      Book preview

      The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

      The Merchant of Venice

      William Shakespeare

      Published: 1598

      Categorie(s): Fiction, Drama, Comedy

      About Shakespeare:

      William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the Bard of Avon (or simply The Bard). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called bardolatry. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. 

      Act I

      SCENE I. Venice. A street.

      Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO

      ANTONIO

      In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

      It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

      But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

      What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,

      I am to learn;

      And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

      That I have much ado to know myself.

      SALARINO

      Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

      There, where your argosies with portly sail,

      Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

      Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

      Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

      That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

      As they fly by them with their woven wings.

      SALANIO

      Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,

      The better part of my affections would

      Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

      Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,

      Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;

      And every object that might make me fear

      Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt

      Would make me sad.

      SALARINO

      My wind cooling my broth

      Would blow me to an ague, when I thought

      What harm a wind too great at sea might do.

      I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,

      But I should think of shallows and of flats,

      And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,

      Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs

      To kiss her burial. Should I go to church

      And see the holy edifice of stone,

      And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

      Which touching but my gentle vessel's side,

      Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

      Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

      And, in a word, but even now worth this,

      And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

      To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

      That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?

      But tell not me; I know, Antonio

      Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

      ANTONIO

      Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,

      My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

      Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

      Upon the fortune of this present year:

      Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

      SALARINO

      Why, then you are in love.

      ANTONIO

      Fie, fie!

      SALARINO

      Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,

      Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy

      For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,

      Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,

      Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:

      Some that will evermore peep through their eyes

      And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,

      And other of such vinegar aspect

      That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,

      Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

      Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO

      SALANIO

      Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

      Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well:

      We leave you now with better company.

      SALARINO

      I would have stay'd till I had made you merry,

      If worthier friends had not prevented me.

      ANTONIO

      Your worth is very dear in my regard.

      I take it, your own business calls on you

      And you embrace the occasion to depart.

      SALARINO

      Good morrow, my good lords.

      BASSANIO

      Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when?

      You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

      SALARINO

      We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

      Exeunt Salarino and Salanio

      LORENZO

      My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

      We two will leave you: but at dinner-time,

      I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.

      BASSANIO

      I will not fail you.

      GRATIANO

      You look not well, Signior Antonio;

      You have too much respect upon the world:

      They lose it that do buy it with much care:

      Believe me, you are marvellously changed.

      ANTONIO

      I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

      A stage where every man must play a part,

      And mine a sad one.

      GRATIANO

      Let me play the fool:

      With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,

      And let my liver rather heat with wine

      Than

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