INTRODUCTION

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

(BULLOUGH)

Date:

- It entered in S.R. to James Roberts on 22 July, 1598, and again in 28 October, 1600, to
Thomas Heyes ‘by Consent of Master Roberts’, who printed Q1 for Heyes in that year
- Q2, 1600, was printed in 1619
- Francis Meres mentioned the play -> the play was performed before 7 September, 1598
- It is fought that Shakespeare’s character, Antonio, got his name from the Pretender,
Antonio Perez
- The allusion to ‘the wealthy Andrew’ might also give a date for the play, because it
makes reference to the Spanish vessel the Saint Andrew, captured in 1596

Sources:

- The first source is considered to be an old play, which is now lost, on the same subject
Shakespeare approached: corruption and the power of money.
- Another Shakespearean source might have been The Jew. Brown (1955) doesn’t consider
this source a relevant one, but proposes another:
- Il Pecorone, from which Shakespeare adapted his own play, is a collection of prose
stories from the fourteenth century, but it wasn’t translated in English. The villain of this
story is a Jew, in the beautiful Venice, and the bond is made by the hero’s friend.
- Several features of the Merchant of Venice, such as: a triple love test, the disguising of
the hero’s bride and her revelation of identity can be easily recognized in an old story,
which was mentioned for the first time in the thirteenth century poem Cursor Mundi.
- A pre-Shakespearian ballad, entitled ‘Shewing the crueltie of Gernutus a Jew’, contains
also this bond in its story and might also been a source for Shakespeare. It is even thought
that this ballad was inspired by the already mentioned ‘ The Jew’
- Both works combine allegorical with realistic characters and have a moral lesson, just
like the Merchant of Venice
- The Three Ladies is another possible source, since it deals with the subject of money
- Alexandre Sylvain’s ‘Epitomes de cent histories, partie extraictes des Actes des Romains
et autres, de l’invention de l’Autheur, avecq les demandes, accusations, et deffences sur
la matiere d’icelles’ (1581), translated by Anthony Munday in 1596, might have also
been a source of inspiration for Shakespeare, especially in his Court Scene
- A variant of this story was Anthony Munday’s ‘Zelauto or The Fountaine of Fame’
(1580), in which the person who lends money is not Jew, but ‘an extorting Usurer’,
named Truculento. Shakespeare could have had in mind this version too when he wrote
down his play
- Another important source mentioned is ‘Jew of Malta’, written by Marlowe, which is
considered an important inspiration in the construction of the Jew. The most striking
evidence is Marlowe’s character’s confusion between love for money and for his
daughter, a confusion which Shakespeare’s character also makes.
- If in developing his Jew, Shakespeare inspired from Marlowe’s Jew, regarding the
character of Jessica, he is thought to have had in mind ‘Novellino’, Masuccio’s tale from
fifteenth century. This Italian story is about a cavalier of Messina who falls in love with
the daughter of a miser in Naples.