The Merchant of Venice

The Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the worlds greatest dramatist In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When Antonios business falters, repayment becomes impossibleand by the terms of the loan agreement, Shylock is able to demand a pound of Antonios flesh. Portia cleverly intervenes, and all ends well (except of course for Shylock). This fully annotated version of Merchant of Venice makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.