The Merchant of Venice

Enter a money-obsessed, patriarchal, dysfunctional society in which wealth bestows power; one in which women cannot determine their own fate; one marked by religious and racial prejudice. Shakespeare’s dark comedy could not be more resonant for our time. A play that offers no true villains or heroes, his Merchant of Venice presents a culture as complex and troubling as our own, in which the situations and questions posed ask us to examine the “quality of mercy” in myriad ways.