What happens when we consider Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as a play with "real" Jewish characters who are not mere ciphers for anti-Semitic Elizabethan stereotypes? Is Shylock Jewish studies Shakespeare's extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in The Merchant of Venice, and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognizably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play. By examining the legacy of Jewish exegesis and cultural lore surrounding these biblical episodes, this book traces the complexity and richness of Merchant's Jewish aspect, spanning encounters with Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the early modern world as well as modern adaptations of Shakespeare's play on the Yiddish stage.

Sara Coodin's profile page

Sara Coodin is assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches Renaissance literature and Shakespearean Drama. Raised and educated in Montreal, Quebec, she learned Yiddish, Hebrew, and French at an early age, and came to the study of Shakespeare somewhat later during her graduate studies at McGill University. Her research focuses on questions of moral agency in Shakespeare and the multi-vocality of Shakespeare's plays, including Shakespeare's adaptation into other languages.