The Merchant of Venice which Shakespeare was likely familiar. (Auden sees the theme of usury in the play as a comment on human relations in a mercantile society.) Other interpreters of the play regard Auden's conception of Antonio's sexual desire for Bassanio as questionable. Michael Radford, director of the 2004 film version starring Al Pacino, explained that, although the film contains a scene where Antonio and Bassanio actually kiss, the friendship between the two is platonic, in line with the prevailing view of male friendship at the time. Jeremy Irons, in an interview, concurs with the director's view and states that he did not
The London Merchant to the change in comedy made by Richard Steele's "The Conscious Lovers", a play that refined sensibility in comedy and depicted the middle class as modern gentry "The London Merchant" asserts the ethics of the merchant, creating Thorowgood as a character who exemplifies all of the desired values that a merchant should have. While exchange and trade are important issues to the merchant, they are also key factors in the text itself as they become metaphors throughout the play. Imperial commerce was growing in the eighteenth century, and Thorowgood describes this phenomenon as a circulation throughout the world. For example,