Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century: Criticism and Research
- Daddy’s Girls: Shakespearian Daughters and Eighteenth-Century Ideology
- Shakespeare and Clarissa: ‘General Nature’, Genre and Sexuality
- Early Georgian Politics and Shakespeare: The Black Act and Charles Johnson’s Love in a Forest (1723)
- Race Mattered: Othello in Late Eighteenth-Century England
- From Pericles to Marina: ‘While Women are to be had for Money, Love, or Importunity’
- ‘A Thousand Twangling Instruments’: Music and The Tempest on The Eighteenth-Centruy London Stage
- Double Falsehood and the Verbal Parallels with Shelton’s Don Quixote
- Eighteenth-Century Performances of Shakespeare Recorded in the Theatrical Portraits of the Garrick Club
- Eighteenth-Century Editing, ‘Appropriation’, and Interpretation
- Shakespeare Survey: Beginnings and Continuities
- Destined Livery? Character and Person in Shakespeare
- Prejudice and Law in The Merchant of Venice
- ‘Many A Civil Monster’: Shakespeare’s Idea of the Centaur
- Shakespeare’s International Currency
- Repeopling the Globe: The Opening Season at Shakespeare’s Globe, London 1997
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 1997
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January–December 1996
- TheYear's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies: 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index to Volume 51
- General Index to Volumes 41–50
Prejudice and Law in The Merchant of Venice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century: Criticism and Research
- Daddy’s Girls: Shakespearian Daughters and Eighteenth-Century Ideology
- Shakespeare and Clarissa: ‘General Nature’, Genre and Sexuality
- Early Georgian Politics and Shakespeare: The Black Act and Charles Johnson’s Love in a Forest (1723)
- Race Mattered: Othello in Late Eighteenth-Century England
- From Pericles to Marina: ‘While Women are to be had for Money, Love, or Importunity’
- ‘A Thousand Twangling Instruments’: Music and The Tempest on The Eighteenth-Centruy London Stage
- Double Falsehood and the Verbal Parallels with Shelton’s Don Quixote
- Eighteenth-Century Performances of Shakespeare Recorded in the Theatrical Portraits of the Garrick Club
- Eighteenth-Century Editing, ‘Appropriation’, and Interpretation
- Shakespeare Survey: Beginnings and Continuities
- Destined Livery? Character and Person in Shakespeare
- Prejudice and Law in The Merchant of Venice
- ‘Many A Civil Monster’: Shakespeare’s Idea of the Centaur
- Shakespeare’s International Currency
- Repeopling the Globe: The Opening Season at Shakespeare’s Globe, London 1997
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 1997
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January–December 1996
- TheYear's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies: 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index to Volume 51
- General Index to Volumes 41–50
Summary
The legally institutionalized prejudice seen in The Merchant of Venice is repulsive from a modern perspective. I will argue that this play portrays deeply ironic images of social prejudice that offended Elizabethan standards of decency and fairness as well as ours. Paradoxically, these contemporary Elizabethan standards come into focus when the play is viewed from a perspective involving legal history, for they in fact trumped the prejudicial laws of Shakespeare's time.
In the updated approach to Shakespeare of his provocative book Kill All the Lawyers?, a practising American lawyer Daniel J. Kornstein advises Shylock to appeal against Portia's judgement. And he makes frequent reference to modern legal doctrines, often specifically American, to show how these have evolved or advanced since Shakespeare's time. Yet Kornstein sometimes discusses issues and principles which have persisted in the Anglo-American legal tradition since Shakespeare's time, which may guide us to the shared social and moral vocabulary of Shakespeare and his age.
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- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 159 - 174Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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