When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.

Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[and Attendants]”). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

Editorial Stage Directions such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing them in the right margin in a different typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

Line Numbers in the left margin are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.

Explanatory Notes at the foot of each page explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “Q” indicating a Quarto reading, Q2 a reading from the Second Quarto of 1619, “F2” a reading from the Second Folio of 1632, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 2 Scene 9 line 45: “peasantry = Q. F = pleasantry” means that the Folio text’s “pleasantry” has been rejected in favor of the Quarto reading “peasantry,” which seems to make better sense of the line.

KEY FACTS

MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Portia (22%/117/9), Shylock (13%/79/5), Bassanio (13%/73/6), Gratiano (7%/58/7), Lorenzo (7%/47/7), Antonio (7%/47/6), Lancelet Gobbo (6%/44/6), Salerio (5%/31/7), Morocco (4%/7/2), Nerissa (3%/36/7), Jessica (3%/26/7), Solanio (2%/20/5), Duke (2%/18/1), Aragon (2%/4/1), Old Gobbo (1%/19/1).

LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 80% verse, 20% prose.

DATE: Registered for publication July 1598 and mentioned in Francis Meres’ 1598 list of Shakespeare’s comedies; reference to a ship called the Andrew suggests late 1596 or early 1597, when the Spanish vessel St. Andrew, which had been captured at Cadiz after running aground, was much in the news.

SOURCES: There are many ancient and medieval folk variations on the motif of a body part demanded as surety for a bond. The setting of the story in Venice, the pursuit of “the lady of Belmonte” as the reason the hero needs the money, the bond being made by a friend rather than the hero himself, the identification of the moneylender as a Jew, and the lady disguising herself as a male lawyer, coming to Venice and arguing that the bond does not allow for the shedding of blood all come from a tale in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s collection Il Pecorone (“The Dunce,” in Italian, published 1558—no English translation). A lost English play of the 1570s called The Jew may have been an intervening source. The character of Shylock and the elopement of his daughter with a Christian are strongly shaped by Christopher Marlowe’s highly successful play The Jew of Malta (c.1590). The choice between three caskets as a device to identify a worthy marriage partner is another ancient motif; the closest surviving precedent is a story in the medieval Gesta Romanorum (translated by Richard Robinson, 1577, revised 1595 with use of the rare word “insculpt,” which is echoed in Morocco’s speech).

TEXT: Quarto 1600: a good quality text, apparently set from a fair copy of the dramatist’s manuscript; reprinted 1619, with some errors and some corrections. Folio text was set from a copy of the first Quarto, making some corrections, introducing some errors, and apparently drawing on a theatrical manuscript for stage directions, including music cues. We follow Folio where it corrects or modernizes Quarto, but restore Quarto where Folio changes appear to be printers’ errors. The only serious textual problem concerns the Venetian gentlemen known in the theatrical profession as the “Salads.” They are initially identified in entry directions and speech headings as “Salarino” and “Solanio” (variously abbreviated, most commonly to “Sal.” and “Sol.”), but never named in the dialogue, so are unidentified from the point of view of a theater audience. Folio reverses their speech headings at the beginning of the opening scene, probably erroneously. In Act 3 Scene 2 “Salerio” arrives in Belmont as “a messenger from Venice”; he is named in the dialogue, so identifiable to the audience. Is this a third character, a composite of the first two, or—more probably—has Shakespeare forgotten that he began with “Salarino”? In the following scene, Quarto has “Salerio” back in Venice with Antonio and Shylock, which must be an error—he has only just exited from Belmont with Bassanio. Folio intelligently corrects the Act 3 Scene 3 entry direction to “Solanio.” In Act 4 Scene 1, “Salerio” has returned with Bassanio. Some editions and productions have retained Salarino, Solanio, and Salerio, but it seems more likely that Salarino and Salerio are intended to be the same character: we have followed this assumption.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

LIST OF PARTS

ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice

BASSANIO, his friend, suitor to Portia

LORENZO, friend of Antonio and Bassanio, in love with Jessica

GRATIANO, friend of Antonio and Bassanio

Friends of Antonio and Bassanio:

SALERIO

SOLANIO

LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio

PORTIA, an heiress

NERISSA, her gentlewoman-in-waiting

BALTHASAR, servant to Portia

STEPHANO, servant to Portia

Prince of ARAGON, suitor to Portia

Prince of MOROCCO, suitor to Portia

SHYLOCK, a Jew of Venice

JESSICA, his daughter

TUBAL, a Jew, Shylock’s friend

LANCELET GOBBO, the clown, servant to Shylock and later Bassanio

OLD GOBBO, Lancelet’s father

DUKE of Venice

Magnificoes of Venice

A Jailer, Attendants and Servants

Act 1 [Scene 1]

running scene 1

Location: Venice

Enter Antonio, Salerio and Solanio

ANTONIO   In sooth1 I know not why I am so sad.
     It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
     But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
     What stuff4 ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
     I am to learn5:
     And such a want-wit6 sadness makes of me
     That I have much ado7 to know myself.

SALERIO   Your mind is tossing on8 the ocean,
     There where your argosies9 with portly sail
     Like signiors10 and rich burghers on the flood,
     Or as it were the pageants11 of the sea,
     Do overpeer12 the petty traffickers
     That curtsy13 to them, do them reverence,
     As they fly14 by them with their woven wings.

SOLANIO   Believe me, sir, had I such venture15 forth,
     The better part16 of my affections would
     Be with my hopes17 abroad. I should be still
     Plucking the grass to know where sits18 the wind,
     Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads19,
     And every object that might make me fear
     Misfortune to my ventures out of doubt
     Would make me sad.

SALERIO   My wind cooling my broth
     Would blow me to an ague24, when I thought
     What harm a wind too great might do at sea.
     I should26 not see the sandy hour-glass run,
     But I should think of shallows and of flats27,
     And see my wealthy Andrew28 docked in sand,
     Vailing29 her high top lower than her ribs
     To kiss her burial30; should I go to church
     And see the holy edifice of stone,
     And not bethink me straight32 of dang’rous rocks,
     Which touching but33 my gentle vessel’s side,
     Would scatter all her spices on the stream34,
     Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks35,
     And in a word, but even36 now worth this,
     And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
     To think on this, and shall I lack the thought
     That such a thing bechanced39 would make me sad?
     But tell not me, I know, Antonio
     Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

ANTONIO   Believe me, no. I thank my fortune for it,
     My ventures are not in one bottom43 trusted,
     Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate44
     Upon45 the fortune of this present year:
     Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

SALERIO   Why, then you are in love.

ANTONIO   Fie48, fie!

SOLANIO   Not in love neither: then let us say you are sad
     Because you are not merry; and ’twere as easy
     For you to laugh and leap, and say you are merry
     Because you are not sad.