National theatre institutions, like the religious dramatic festivals of ancient Greece and civic mystery plays of medieval Europe to which they sometimes turn for models, have been haunted by questions about the relationship between religious identity and national citizenship. Within the Shakespeare canon, such questions are nowhere more awkwardly raised than by The Merchant of Venice, a play which seems to assume an indissoluble barrier between Christians and Jews. This illustrated lecture seeks to explain how the story of Shylock has nonetheless been adopted and naturalized not only in national theatres across the Judaeo-Christian world including that of Israel, but in countries variously Hindu, Shintoist, and secular. How has The Merchant of Venice achieved and enabled forms of cosmopolitanism exceeding those of its own characters and its own plot?
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