The Merchant of Venice: Texts and Contexts

This edition of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by four sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate different approaches to Shakespeare's play and the early modern culture out of which the play emerges. The documents contextualize contemporary discourses on race, nationality and religion; the place of Venice in the early modern English imagination; merchant culture; and marriage, sexuality and friendship in the period.