The Merchant of Venice - Digby Ricci - Lecture One

The Merchant of Venice remains one of Shakespeare's most frequently taught and hotly debated texts. Some mistakenly regard it as an anti-Semitic text, others see it as an interesting, flowered romantic comedy. These lectures argue that this great play is a darkly comic study of the dehumanizing effects of prejudice upon both victims and victimizers, and a probing analysis of the spiritual emptiness of a wealth-obsessed society.