The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a comedy in which the merchant Antonio borrows money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, pledging a pound of his own flesh as security. It is also one of Shakespeare's most troubling plays because of its treatment of Shylock.

Main characters

• Antonio, a merchant of Venice
• Bassanio, his friend, suitor to Portia
• Portia, a rich heiress of Belmont
• Shylock, a Jewish moneylender
• Jessica, Shylock's daughter
• Lorenzo, who elopes with Jessica
• Gratiano and Nerissa
• Launcelot Gobbo, a clown

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Bassanio needs money to court Portia, a wealthy heiress. His friend Antonio's fortune is tied up in ships at sea, so Antonio borrows three thousand ducats from Shylock, whom he has often insulted and spat upon. Shylock proposes, as if in jest, that if the loan is not repaid in three months he may cut a pound of flesh from Antonio's body.

At Belmont, Portia's dead father has decreed that suitors must choose between caskets of gold, silver and lead; whoever picks the one containing her portrait wins her hand. The Princes of Morocco and Arragon choose wrongly. Bassanio, reasoning that outward show deceives, chooses lead and wins. Meanwhile Shylock's daughter Jessica elopes with the Christian Lorenzo, taking her father's money and jewels.

Antonio's ships are reported lost and Shylock, embittered by his daughter's flight, demands his bond. At the trial in Venice, Portia appears disguised as a young lawyer. She appeals to Shylock for mercy; he refuses. She then rules that he may take exactly a pound of flesh but no drop of blood. Shylock is defeated, loses his wealth and is forced to become a Christian. Back in Belmont, the comedy closes with a teasing trick over rings and news that Antonio's ships have come home.

Themes

• Mercy and justice
• Religious and racial prejudice
• Money, debt and value
• Appearance against reality

Famous lines

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.

Portia, Act 4 Scene 1

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Shylock, Act 3 Scene 1

All that glisters is not gold.

Scroll in the golden casket, Act 2 Scene 7

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

The bond story comes from Il Pecorone, a 14th-century Italian collection by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino; the caskets from the medieval Gesta Romanorum. Christopher Marlowe's popular The Jew of Malta (c. 1589) was an obvious influence.

On stage and screen

Jews had been officially expelled from England since 1290, so few of Shakespeare's audience would have known a Jewish person. Modern productions wrestle with the play's antisemitism. Since the 18th century, actors from Charles Macklin to Henry Irving, Patrick Stewart and Antony Sher have made Shylock a figure of dignity and grievance rather than a comic villain.

See where The Merchant of Venice sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.