What type of play is “The Merchant of Venice”?
robertwilliam Teacher College – Sophomore Editor Debater $(document).ready(function() { $(‘a.toggle_expert_titles’).click(function() { $(‘#show_expert_titles’).toggle(); return false; }); }); Good question, and one which I think the play itself is quite interested in. Heminges and Condell, when they put together the First Folio, classed it as a “comedy” (see the link below), though in the modern theatre, it’s usually played as something more akin to a tragedy. Though no-one dies, and the play ends with the reinforcement of marriages (what Shakespeare scholars the last few years ago have defined as necessary for a “comedy”) – Shylock’s unusually dark ending (rather like Malvolio’s in “Twelfth Night”) seems far more akin to tragedy. What it’s usually called today is a “problem play”. All that means is that we just don’t know, and that both the generic labels of tragedy and comedy are difficult to definitively apply to the play. It has elements of both: it’s more complex, larger than the
