Antonio’s best friend, Bassanio, is in love with Portia, a wise and wealthy heiress, and needs three thousand ducats to press his suit. With Antonio’s wealth tied up in ships at sea, he approaches Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, who agrees to lend the money under the provision that Antonio shall forfeit a pound of his flesh if the debt is unpaid. When Antonio’s ships become wrecked, Shylock, the maligned Jew, calls for the debt to be settled.

The Merchant of Venice’ is one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies, celebrated for its captivating villain, Shylock. In a production full of contrasts and ambiguities, Warren Mitchell plays the moneylender with a finely balanced combination of wickedness and pathos – leaving the audience to decide whether he is a villain, a buffoon or a tragic hero?

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

In Credits Order

• Director: Jack Gold
• Produced: Jonathan Miller
• Adapted: William Shakespeare’s original play

Written between the 1596 and 1598, The Merchant of Venice is both an early Shakespearean comedy and one of the Bard's problem plays; a work in which good triumphs over evil, yet the dramatic tension often remains unresolved and the world is not as put to rights as its heroes would hope. And it is such a tension that surrounds the legendary villain of The Merchant Of Venice, the Jewish money-lender Shylock, who seeks a literal pound of flesh from his Christian opposite, the generous, faithful Antonio after Antonio becomes unable to repay the 3000 ducats he borrowed from the exacting usurer to fund his friend Bassanio's marriage to Portia.

After the money is lost in a battle at sea where Antonio's fleet is lost, Portia engages in an extraordinary, legal battle of wills with Shylock in an attempt to free Bassanio from his terrible forfeit.

First entered in the Stationer’s Register on 22 July 1598 as ‘a book of The Merchant of Venice or otherwise called the Jew of Venice probably represents an attempt by Shakespeare’s Company to prevent unauthorised printing of a popular play: it eventually appeared in print as The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice in 1600 . . .

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