Context: Anti-Semitism & Venice
Venice: A City of Commerce and Prejudice
Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice around 1596–1598. Venice was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, a centre of international trade and banking. For an Elizabethan audience, it represented both sophistication and moral danger — a place where money ruled everything. Shakespeare sets his play in this world of commerce, where relationships are transactional and human worth is measured in ducats.
For the closed-text Shakespeare question, the most important context is the treatment of Jewish people in Elizabethan England and Venice. Jews had been officially expelled from England in 1290 and were not formally readmitted until 1656. Most Elizabethans had never met a Jewish person. Their understanding came from stereotypes: Jews were portrayed as greedy, vengeful, and dangerous. In Venice, Jews were confined to the ghetto — a restricted area they could not leave at night — and were required to wear red hats to identify themselves.
Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and confined to ghettos in Venice. Elizabethan audiences would have known Jews primarily through hostile stereotypes. Shakespeare both uses and complicates these stereotypes through Shylock — making context essential for understanding the play's moral complexity.
Usury and Christian Hypocrisy
Usury — charging interest on loans — was officially forbidden by Christian doctrine. But the Venetian economy depended on borrowed money. Jewish money-lenders like Shylock filled an essential economic role: Christians needed their services but despised them for providing them. Antonio, the 'merchant' of the title, lends money without interest and spits on Shylock for charging it. Shakespeare exposes the hypocrisy: Christian Venice depends on Jewish money while persecuting the Jews who provide it.
This economic context is crucial for the OCR exam. Shylock's anger is not irrational — it is a response to systematic abuse. When he demands his 'pound of flesh,' he is asserting his legal rights within a system that otherwise denies him justice. Shakespeare creates a character who is both villain (in the bond plot) and victim (of Christian prejudice), making the play morally complex rather than simply anti-Semitic.
The play has two intertwined plots. The bond plot concerns Shylock's loan to Antonio. The casket plot concerns Portia's suitors. Portia's dead father has decreed that she must marry whoever correctly chooses between three caskets (gold, silver, lead). This removes her agency — like Juliet, she is subject to patriarchal control, even from beyond the grave.
However, Portia is also the play's most intelligent and resourceful character. She manipulates the casket test (arguably through the song's hints), disguises herself as a male lawyer, and saves Antonio's life through her legal brilliance. Shakespeare creates a character who outsmarts the patriarchal system while technically obeying its rules — a subversive portrait of female intelligence for an Elizabethan audience.
Sources and Genre
Shakespeare drew on multiple sources, including Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecorone (for the bond plot) and the Gesta Romanorum (for the casket plot). He combined these into what is technically a comedy — the play ends with marriages and the resolution of the bond. But many modern readers and audiences find the treatment of Shylock deeply troubling, which is why the play is often classified as a 'problem play.'
For the OCR exam, this genre tension is important. The play asks to be read as a comedy (lovers united, villain defeated), but the forced conversion of Shylock and his destruction in Act 4 sit uncomfortably within this framework. Shakespeare may be inviting the audience to question whether the 'happy ending' is truly happy — or whether Christian mercy is actually Christian cruelty in disguise.
In 1594, two years before Shakespeare likely wrote the play, Rodrigo Lopez, a Portuguese-Jewish physician to Queen Elizabeth I, was accused of plotting to poison the queen and was publicly executed. The trial provoked intense anti-Semitic feeling in England. Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (featuring a villainous Jewish character) was revived to capitalise on this sentiment. Shakespeare's play was written in this atmosphere of heightened anti-Jewish prejudice, which shaped both his portrayal of Shylock and his audience's expectations.
The play is technically a comedy (marriages, happy resolution) but the treatment of Shylock — forced conversion, loss of wealth, public humiliation — complicates the genre. In the Shakespeare question, this tension between comedy and cruelty is essential for top-band analysis.