William Shakespeare edited by M. M. Mahood - The Merchant of Venice

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

GENERAL EDITOR

Brian Gibbons

ASSOCIATE GENERAL EDITOR

A. R. Braunmuller, University of California, Los Angeles

From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate General Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

The Merchant of Venice has been performed more often than any other comedy by Shakespeare. Molly Mahood pays special attention to the expectations of the plays first audience, and to our modern experience of seeing and hearing the play.

In a substantial new addition to the Introduction, Charles Edelman focuses on the plays sexual politics and recent scholarship devoted to the position of Jews in Shakespeares time. He surveys the international scope and diversity of theatrical interpretations of The Merchant in the 1980s and 1990s and their different ways of tackling the troubling figure of Shylock.

THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE

Alls Well That Ends Well, edited by Russell Fraser

Antony and Cleopatra, edited by David Bevington

As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Comedy of Errors, edited by T. S. Dorsch

Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss

Cymbeline, edited by Martin Butler

Hamlet, edited by Philip Edwards

Julius Caesar, edited by Marvin Spevack

King Edward III, edited by Giorgio Melchiori

The First Part of King Henry IV, edited by Herbert Weil and Judith Weil

The Second Part of King Henry IV, edited by Giorgio Melchiori

King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr

The First Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Second Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

The Third Part of King Henry VI, edited by Michael Hattaway

King Henry VIII, edited by John Margeson

King John, edited by L. A. Beaurline

The Tragedy of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio

King Richard II, edited by Andrew Gurr

King Richard III, edited by Janis Lull

Loves Labours Lost, edited by William C. Carroll

Macbeth, edited by A. R. Braunmuller

Measure for Measure, edited by Brian Gibbons

The Merchant of Venice, edited by M. M. Mahood

The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited by David Crane

A Midsummer Nights Dream, edited by R. A. Foakes

Much Ado About Nothing, edited by F. H. Mares

Othello, edited by Norman Sanders

Pericles, edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond

The Poems, edited by John Roe

Romeo and Juliet, edited by G. Blakemore Evans

The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans

The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Ann Thompson

The Tempest, edited by David Lindley

Timon of Athens, edited by Karl Klein

Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes

Troilus and Cressida, edited by Anthony B. Dawson

Twelfth Night, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno

The Two Gentleman of Verona, edited by Kurt Schlueter

The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Robert Kean Turner and Patricia Tatspaugh

The Winters Tale, edited by Susan Snyder and Deborah T. Curren-Aquino

THE EARLY QUARTOS

The First Quarto of Hamlet, edited by Kathleen O. Irace

The First Quarto of King Henry V, edited by Andrew Gurr

The First Quarto of King Lear, edited by Jay L. Halio

The First Quarto of King Richard III, edited by Peter Davison

The First Quarto of Othello, edited by Scott McMillin

The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, edited by Lukas Erne

The Taming of a Shrew: The 1594 Quarto, edited by Stephen Roy Miller

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Edited by

M. M. MAHOOD

Emeritus Professor of English Literature,
University of Kent

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521825443

Cambridge University Press 1987, 2003

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1987

Reprinted 1989, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001

Updated edition 2003

10th printing 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Shakespeare, William, 15641616.
The merchant of Venice
(The New Cambridge Shakespeare)
I. Mahood, M.M (Molly Maureen). II. Title.
III. Series: Shakespeare, William, 15641616 Works.
1984. Cambridge University Press.
PR825.A2M34 1987 822.33 8628413

ISBN 978-0-521-82544-3 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-53251-8 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations are reproduced by courtesy of the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon.

PREFACE

The Merchant of Venice is a play which calls for unobtrusive editing. Though the reader, or the actor studying his lines, is nowhere brought to a halt by a major textual or linguistic problem, there are many places where he or she may be glad of a reassuring clarification of sixteenth-century usage or ideas. One of the pleasures of preparing this edition has been that of receiving this kind of help from several of the plays early editors, who had the advantage of being closer to Elizabethan speech and Elizabethan ways of thinking than, for all our research into the period, we can be today. Among the plays recent editors, my main debt has been to John Russell Brown, whose Arden edition was the first to take full cognisance of the probability that the printers of the plays first quarto were working from Shakespeares manuscript.

In preparing the Introduction and Appendix I have sought the advice on particular points of many correspondents, friends, and colleagues, all of whom have responded generously; among them, Daniel Cohn-Sherbok, Bernice Hamilton, Peter Laven, and Brian Simpson have cast an expert eye over portions of the typescript. The General Editor of the series has offered encouragement just at the times when it was most needed. Throughout my preparation of the edition I have had invaluable help from the Associate General Editor, Robin Hood, whose painstaking attention to textual minutiae has never obscured his enthusiastic awareness of the play as theatre. At a later stage, the sharp-eyed accuracy of Paul Chipchase as press reader has preserved me from many errors and inconsistencies.