The Merchant of Venice (Play on Shakespeare) Paperback – November 1, 2021

Genius. No other word can explain how one man can make so many master works. Around half the reading of 'The Merchant of Venice' I was feeling it was a bit slow and, to be blunt, somehow pointless and perhaps predictable. But no, nothing is what seems and the first half prepares us to understand how extraordinaire is the character of Portia, maybe I am forgetting somebody but she is now my favorite heroine in literature. Super smart, absolutely amazing, beyond beautiful; cunning as a demon, lovely as an angel. She is just perfect. But not the dull and generic perfection that non talented writers incur so many times these days, because even when she portrays a man she is herself as well but in her own feminine way, with her own ideas and interests driven by her passions.Shakespeare has been a discovery to me, beyond his biography and the plot of Romeo and Juliet I didn't know about him, so I didn't know if this play would be either a tragedy or a comedy (and I wont tell you to not spoil you the reading). The second half is so thrilling, I fret about the words uttered by Bassanio unsuspectingly to a Portia in disguise, because it feels one of those tests a loved woman can put upon you, tests in which one world can forfeit you the world. Is so thrilling to know if Bassanio, Antonio and Shylock will surpass the test of so clever a heroine as Portia for love, trial and justice respectively. I didn't feel Shylock as a villain. The injustice of the insults by his customers and the fugue of his daughter Jessica with a Christian explain therefore the demand of justice, what could be mistaken by cruelty, but not: we would do the same in his place. This play is just perfect in that it resembles life.About the AmazonClassics edition it is another win. Excellent format, useful X-Ray, clear typography, and it contains only the masterwork, without introductions to spoil you the reading.

A very antisemitic work is held after the death of its author as fit to be taught in my British school (Victoria College, Alexandria, Egypt) class at the age of thirteen, six years after the concentration/death camps of the Nazi regime were liberated by the US and Allied forces. Today, when the anti-Semitic "protestors" are being removed by the NYPD, from Hamilton Building, Columbia University; I am sure there are scores, if not hundreds of early teen youth being herded into class in England to be spoon-fed the Merchant of Venice, or examined on that text, with no word of caution on the subliminal message being conveyed by William Shakespear from his grave. The stars given are the traditional award of WS, for who am I to denigrate his work.

I mean it has the text of the play which is really the most important part. I have better annotated copies of this play but this is.a perfectly fine edition

Great story - Shakespeare never disappoints & the cover is beautiful!

Ignatius deserves five stars for providing students with functional Kindle editions of the great Bard; in addition to The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet are also available.Let me briefly explain. Until now, there have been no Kindle editions of Shakespeare's plays that provide students with hyper-linked footnotes. The one exception I know of is the Penguin-Pelican Merchant of Venice, but this contains several formatting errors; the other volumes by this publisher do not have the footnotes hyper-linked, making the text pretty much unreadable. The Signet editions suffer from the same problem as the Penguin-Pelican.By the way,the only ranting here is the 'post-modernist' complaint, from an earlier review, of traditional criticism.Of course, the play itself is five stars.

Joseph Pearce -- the editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions -- remains one of my favorite biographers and so it was with great interest that I approached this edition. Unfortunately, I believe that Mr. Pearce is out of his element here. I'm no Shakespeare expert and couldn't do better, but I'm sure there are many who could.The problem with this edition is that it is self-contradictory. It opens with Chesterton's fabulous view: that true democracy considers tradition. Then, turning to the critical essays, one finds not a single traditional view of MoV. Rather, the critical essays are enclosed in a section called "Contemporary Criticism." It seems that to get traditional views, one must turn to Norton or some other edition.What passes as "tradition" is rather a collection of Catholic (which is fine) and distempered (which is unfortunate) rants against modern culture. The edition has confused "old" with "tradition" and comes off curmudgeonly.For example, in his look at MoV on film, James Bemis writes, "Sure enough, this [2004] production reveals all the wrongheadedness of the modern artistic mind and shows that Hollywood can take a piece of at that is beautiful and delicate and oafishly turn it into something dark, ugly, and vile." Bah humbug! Likewise, Anthony Esolen reminds us that modern readers are generally ignorant: "We no longer know 'innocent merriment'. All is lust, and lust is good. A glance at our mass entertainment will show that we have combined the vices of the precise, scheming, bet-hedging prig with the dissipation of the debauched." You kids, get off my lawn!Why so angry?I'm also a little nervous about the academic thoroughness of Mr. Pearce. For example, in his introduction, three of the first four references are to Mr. Pearce's other writings. Harmless self promotion, I guess.The text itself is fine. There aren't many critical notes -- only footnotes suggesting biblical references or defining words. Many of these notes seem unnecessary in a critical edition (for example, "sad=melancholy," "venture=commercial speculation," "that=who"). The quantity of footnotes looks impressive, but unless you have a ten-year-old reading this, they're mostly useless.This edition is not completely unusable, but the dogmatic and culture-rebuffing spirit of it makes it seem dogmatic and hostile to a general audience. As such, there are a number of other critical editions that spend more time letting the play speak for itself and offer truly traditional views on the play and playwright. It strikes me that this edition has a particular interest in proving Shakespeare as a Catholic and then disinviting non-Catholics (or those who don't care about such concerns).Disappointing.ps. Very small point. Why is the spelling American, but punctuation handled in a British style (marks outside quotations)?

Perfect pocket size book

Comme dans la description. Le livre est de bonne qualité, tout petit, facile à emporter partout

N/A

La storia è bella, poi sono gusti

Thought I’d be Shakespeare illiterate but…Yes, it definitely helped knowing a little bit about the play and the characters before diving into the actual play.And it’s purely necessary for Shakespeare blind readers like me to know in simple words what I missed out after reading the play as well.Yes, that’s how I read my first Shakespeare’s work and I’m still surprised why it is this play and not anything else.A surprisingly 5 🌟 read for me, I got thoroughly entertained and provoked while reading this play. I got so happy with how it ended and how justice was delivered.A story about debts and determination; romance and revenge; personal enmity and pathetic human nature also featuring one of the smartest female characters in fiction I have read so far, this play is one of my all time favourites now.I am so glad I read this play and got fresh perspectives on how to deal with difficult stubborn people.I say do not think too much about reading classics. Just pick up the book and read it. Take help from the internet on simple explanations it provides. More important is we know what the story is about and what we can learn from them.I still cannot believe I have read a William Shakespeare book 😵‍💫 and it’s a 5 ⭐️ and it’s a favourite now 🙄 Who am I?!