E X T E n S i o n THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ON STAGE The Merchant of Venice was already wellknown to the public by 1598. the title page of the first edition in 1600 states that it had been performed divers times by that date, probably by the Lord Chamberlain s Men, Shakespeare s company, at the theatre. on 10th February 1605, the King s Men performed it at court before James i and, by his order, The Merchant of Venice was played again the following tuesday. in the first Folio (1623), The Merchant of Venice is considered a comedy and Charles Macklin it certainly has much in common with Shakespeare s other romantic comedies such as The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing etc. yet, in spite of the title, it is not Antonio but the Jew Shylock who gives the play its dramatic dimension: he is a joyless, lonely man whose life is obsessively centred on religion, his daughter and his money. When all three are questioned, he reveals the secret side of his nature, his humiliation at being laughed at, and the wish to avenge himself. the play disappeared from the stage until 1741; between the 17th and 18th centuries it was interpreted as a comedy and Shylock Henry Irving as a clown, clever and calculating, a master of negotiation who creates laughter with his gestures and intonation. in the 18th century charles macklin was the first actor to perform Shylock as a passionate and terribly cruel man, but it was only in the first half of the 19th century that the tradition of playing Shylock sympathetically, making of him the object both of hate and pity, began with edmund Kean. Henry irving portrayed Shylock as a proud aristocratic character, and in the early 20th century, Jacob Adler played the role in yiddish in an otherwise english-language production. 71