Overview

From the Royal Shakespeare Company a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy of courtship and ethnic tension. This edition includes an introduction to The Merchant of Venice by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate, the text of the play with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page, a helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play, an introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre and a rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions. This unique edition presents a historical overview of The Merchant of Venice in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with two leading directors and two actors -- Darko Tresnjak, David Thacker, Anthony Sher and Henry Goodman - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death.