Abstract

ExcerptI. The Action of the Play: The Playacting Character of Human Life Antonio, the “Merchant of Venice,” in speaking to his friend Gratiano at the beginning of the play, says: “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano: / A stage where every man must play a part, / And mine a sad one” (1.1.77–79).1 The Merchant of Venice, which is a play, is (as Shakespeare announces at the outset) about the inescapability and insurmountability of playacting as the substance of human reality. Life, as it were, is lived at one remove from itself—where our assumption….