Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-359) and index.

About the series -- About the volume -- List of illustrations -- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (Edited by David Bevington) -- Cultural contexts -- Venice -- Finance -- Religion -- Love and gender -- Bibliography -- Index.

This edition of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by four sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate many different approaches to Shakespeare's play and the early modern culture out of which the play emerges. The texts include maps, woodcuts, sermons, statutes, early modern documents reflecting Christian attitudes toward Jews and Jewish reactions to these attitudes, excerpts from the Bible on money lending as well as contemporary discourses on usury and commerce, and excerpts from the first account of Jewish life written in the vernacular by a Jew for a Christian audience. The documents contextualize contemporary discourses on race, nationality, and religion; the place of Venice in the early modern English imagination; merchant culture; and marriage, sexuality, and friendship in the period.