Synopses & Reviews
In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When Antonio's business falters, repayment becomes impossibleand#151;and by the terms of the loan agreement, Shylock is able to demand a pound of Antonioand#8217;s flesh.and#160; Portia cleverly intervenes, and all ends well (except of course for Shylock).
Synopsis
The Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When Antonio's business falters, repayment becomes impossible--and by the terms of the loan agreement, Shylock is able to demand a pound of Antonio's flesh. Portia cleverly intervenes, and all ends well (except of course for Shylock).
This fully annotated version of Merchant of Venice makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.
About the Author
Burton Raffel is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities Emeritus and professor of English emeritus, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His most recent of many edited and translated publications is
Das Nibelungenlied, published by Yale University Press. He lives in Lafayette.
Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of theand#160;Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University, is the author of many books,
including
The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine.