The Merchant of Venice mercy". Critic Harold Bloom listed it among Shakespeare's great comedies. Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate, he needs 3,000 ducats to subsidise his expenditures as a suitor. Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice who has previously and repeatedly bailed him out. Antonio agrees, but since he is cash-poor – his ships and merchandise are busy at sea to Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England – he promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns
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