Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Book Note: Shylock's Revenge

Smith, David Murray. Shylock's Revenge. From Tales of Chivalry and Romance. Edinburgh: James Robertson & Co., 1826.

I've been doing some work on Merchant of Venice recently, and it involves a number of tangents. Shylock's Revenge isn't terribly interesting, but it has its place in the history of uses of the play.

Largely, it's a prose retelling of the play, but it has its own particularly anti-Semitic characterization of Shylock. I suppose one might expect that from the title—it isn't the story of a merchant of Venice but of his enemy and his attempt to gain revenge.

Let me give you a quick sample:




It's not far from the play's plot, but I think there's a greater connection between Shylock's Jewishness and his desire for vengeance.

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Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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