The Merchant of Venice is a Shakespearean comedy, set in Venice, Italy. The story revolves around competing and contradicting ideas: love versus money, mercy versus justice, and appearance versus reality.

     One of the great questions of this play revolves around whether Shakespeare is trying to enforce or critique the bigotrous and prejudicial religious stereotypes of his day.

     The play's timlesness revolves around the relevance of teh social issues being addressed. For these reasons we take up the play and analyze it. Translating Shakespeare into a modern text will play a major part of your final project.