Background on "The Merchant of Venice"

Hi,

I would like to share on some of the background information of "The Merchant of Venice", which will be my literature text for Term 3. It is written by William Shakespeare, a very famous playwright in the early 17th century. I will address some issues about William Shakespeare and other interesting facts about life in the 17th century.

Shakespeare lived in the Elizabethan era, which was from the mid-1500s to the early 1600s. Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 to 1603 as Queen, but her position was very different from that of the present Queen. She had the power to disagree with the Parliament and to order the imprisonment or death of anyone, even an important minister or landowner. She was very rich and was also a great patroness of poetry, drama, music and all the crafts. Like any other rich lady, she loved bautiful clothes and had many highly decorated dresses in her enormous palace. At that time, London was tradng heavily with different cities like Venice. Queen Elizabeth was also portrayed in "The Merchant of Venice" in the form of Portia, a beautiful, elegant lady who was very smart.

There was a very big divide between classes during the Elizabethan era. The 'upper-class' people had lots of land and money, and could therefore afford to eat better food. They also wore very delicate clothings. They lived in big houses and went to watch plays for recreation. However, those of the 'lower-class' did not have enough money to live life in luxury. They had to work in jobs like farmers, and hence did not have much time for recreation. Their personal hygiene was also not as good as the rich people, and they wore less elaborate clothing.

Venice and Belmont were chosen as the settings of the story. Venice's dominant religion then was Catholic, while England were Protestant Christians until the middle of the sixteenth century, were increasingly oppressed. This was because Henry VIII quarelled with the Pope and broke away from the church of Rome, influencing Elizabeth I to enforce Protestant Christianity by law. Thus, for the first time, the Bible was widely available in English and large numbers of people could understand it. Ever since then, the Jews in Venice were discriminated by the Christians, who had anti-semitism feelings (or anti-Jewish) due to economic problems. The Christians were not allowed to work as usurers, hence leaving only the Jews to take up this money-lending businesses. As this resulted in Christians owing money to the Jews, many people viewed the Jews as loan sharks and they grew increasingly unhappy with them. There was also a conflict in religious views, where many Christians claimed that the Jews did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, hence leading to the widespread persecution of the Jews. The Christians also further laid claims on the Jews, saying that they were responsible for Christ's death, killing Christian children and even for causing the Bubonic Plague (or the Black Death) to happen. Finally, this animosity also came about because many Christians at that time suffered from xenophobia, the fear of foreigners. The Christians discriminated them by persecuting them, first starting from torture, before expelling them from the country and finally, even killing them in big numbers. Therefore, the animosity between Christians and Jews was quite a big matter.

All in all, I think that it is very important to read up on the context of a novel before reading it so that we can better understand the plot and how the characters are feeling in the story. It also helps us to imagine the setting and the context on which the whole story is based on. Therefore, I feel that reading up on "The Merchant of Venice" will help me a lot when I analyse it further in Term 3.