The merchant of Venice /

Believing that The Merchant of Venice "has too often fallen victim to agressive and single-minded interpretations," Lyon undertakes a sustained critical reading of what he considers one of Shakespeare's most controversial and intellectually demanding plays. He argues that the play's many strengths challenge us to value a work that "reaches for discoveries and profundities beyond those which it can fully comprehend or contain." Lyon demonstrates that the play feels out of sequence in the canon, in many ways more compatible with the problem than the romantic comedies. He believes the issues of the play are ones on which we are characteristically prejudiced: conflicting loyalties of love, antagonisms of race and religion, debate over ways of earning a living, conflict between the alien individual and society, and diverging notions of value in human affairs. Lyon illustrates with reasonable success his argument that criticism has often added little to our appreciation of The Merchant of Venice, and he concludes that the play "cannot be convincingly rescued' into any stable artistic unity, narrowly conceived." Above all, the author provides a frank, complex, original, and appreciative close reading of the text, which demonstrates that both its joys and sorrows have not often been fully appreciated. A highly provocative and worthwhile general introduction to this play and appropriate for college, community college, university, and public libraries. D. O. Dickerson Seattle Pacific University