The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition, Volume 5

"Shakespeare, the Critical Tradition" is an immensely useful and important series. As Vickers states, scholarship is in danger of losing the criticism of the previous 150 years because of the amount of modern criticism and the rejection of previous schools of criticism. By bringing together scholarly and performance-based essays from 1775 to 1939, Baker and Vickers assure that this will not happen to the rich and varied history of The Merchant of Venice, and their choices are uniformly excellent. However, this reviewer was quite disappointed with Vickers's preface, which is strongly biased. In a collection such as this, works should be allowed to stand on their own. Vickers instead argues openly and strenuously not only for reading Shylock as a comic villain but also for the claim that one does great damage to the play and to Shakespeare by attempting any other reading. This presumes a specific view of Shakespeare, plays, and characters in general, and a point of criticism with which many readers will not agree. The strident preface may stop some from discovering the riches contained in the rest of the volume. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers."--Sanford Lakoff "CHOICE "