The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice (Antonio) must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for Shylock and the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech on humanity. Also notable is Portia's speech about "the quality of
History of the Shakespeare authorship question that now-lost plays may have served as models for Shakespeare's published work, such as, for example, the "ur-Hamlet", an earlier version of Shakespeare's play of that name. In Benjamin Disraeli's novel "Venetia" (1837) the character Lord Cadurcis, modelled on Byron, questions whether Shakespeare wrote "half of the plays attributed to him", or even one "whole play" but rather that he was "an inspired adapter for the theatres". A similar view was expressed by an American lawyer and writer, Col. Joseph C. Hart, who in 1848 published "The Romance of Yachting", which for the first time asserted explicitly and unequivocally in