The English Staff Room Podcast

This week we look at the religious backdrop of The Merchant of Venice and the ongoing implications of conflict between Jewish Old and Christian New Law, and the inconsistencies and anomalies that this creates within the human experience of mercy and justice.  We also introduce two new teachers into TheEnglishStaffroom podcast.

You will need to make sure that you have a copy of:

• Shylock’s You call me misbeliever monologue
• Antonio, Bassanio and Shylock’s extract from trial scene

In the discussion, we draw upon and reference academic interpretations of The Merchant of Venice:

• Lewalski, B. K. (1962). Biblical Allusion and Allegory in “The Merchant of Venice”. Shakespeare Quarterly, 13(3), 327-343.
• Oser, L. (2017). Bad Christians in “The Merchant of Venice”: A Rhetorical Matter. Literary Imagination, 19(1), 1-18.
• Coonradt, N. M. (2007). Shakespeare’s Grand Deception: The Merchant of Venice – Anti-Semitism as ‘Uncanny Causality’ and the Catholic-Protestant Problem. Religion and the Arts, 11, 74-97.
• Beauchamp, G. (2011). Shylock’s Conversion. Humanitas, 24, 55-92.

Image taken from page 102 of ‘Humorous Poems … With a preface by A. Ainger, and … illustrations by C. E. Brock. L.P’

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