100 Fun Facts About The Merchant of Venice

From which part of Antonio's body does Shylock come to court ready to cut his pound of flesh?

His breast: when Shylock first proposes the bond he says any part of the body that pleases him, but the paper read out in court says 'nearest the merchant's heart'.

The Merchant of Venice's 1600 title page says which company, Shakespeare's own, acted it?

Lord Chamberlain's Men: Shakespeare was a business partner in the company as well as its playwright, so he took a share of the profits each time it played.

How is The Merchant of Venice classified in the First Folio of 1623?

A comedy: nobody dies and three couples end up married. Francis Meres was already counting it among Shakespeare's comedies in 1598, 25 years before the Folio.

How many ducats does Bassanio need to borrow so he can woo Portia in style?

3,000 ducats, for three months: Bassanio has already run through his own estate and owes Antonio the most, so the new loan is his bet that marrying an heiress will clear every debt.

Why can't Antonio lend Bassanio the money himself?

His ships and goods are all at sea, bound for Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England, so he tells Bassanio to borrow on his good name instead, which is how he ends up in Shylock's debt.

Besides insulting him, how has Antonio hurt Shylock's business before the play begins?

By lending money without interest: in an aside Shylock says he hates Antonio most because his free loans 'bring down the rate of usance', the interest a lender can charge in Venice.

What interest does Shylock charge Antonio on the loan?

None: Shylock offers the money as a kindness and calls the forfeit a 'merry sport', so Antonio agrees cheerfully, saying there is 'much kindness in the Jew'.

Which talkative, tactless friend accompanies Bassanio on his wooing trip?

Gratiano: Bassanio only lets him come after warning him that he is 'too wild, too rude and bold of voice', and he still ends the trip married to Portia's maid.

Where does the heiress Portia live?

Belmont: the Italian tale Shakespeare borrowed already had a rich lady at a port called Belmonte, but she drugged her suitors' wine and kept their ships; he swapped that trick for the caskets.

Portia's suitors must choose between three caskets made of which materials?

Gold, silver and lead: her dead father's will set the lottery, so Portia can neither choose a husband nor refuse one, and complains that she is 'curbed by the will of a dead father'.

Which suitor picks the gold casket, reading 'what many men desire' as meaning Portia?

The Prince of Morocco: instead of Portia's portrait he finds a skull with a scroll in its eye socket, which begins 'All that glisters is not gold'.

Which casket contains Portia's portrait?

Lead: its motto warns 'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath', and Bassanio picks it because he distrusts a showy outside, saying 'the world is still deceived with ornament'.

What must Portia's suitors swear if they pick the wrong casket?

To remain a bachelor for life: a loser must also swear never to reveal which casket he chose, so no later suitor can learn from his mistake, and to leave at once.

Shylock's daughter Jessica elopes with which Christian?

Lorenzo: Jessica slips away dressed as a boy with her father's ducats and jewels, and Shylock is heard in the streets crying 'My daughter! O my ducats!' in a single breath.

What keepsake from his late wife Leah does Jessica take when she flees?

A turquoise ring: Jessica trades it for a monkey, and Shylock groans that Leah gave it to him when he was a bachelor and he would not have sold it 'for a wilderness of monkeys'.

Who accompanies the disguised Portia to court, posing as a lawyer's clerk?

Nerissa: Portia's waiting-woman copies her mistress in everything, marrying Bassanio's friend at the same moment and then fooling her own husband in court just as Portia does.

Under what male name does Portia appear in the Venetian court?

Balthazar: Portia borrows the name from her own servant, the man she has just sent hurrying to her lawyer cousin to fetch the notes and robes she needs.

Portia's lawyer cousin Bellario lives in which nearby city, then under Venetian rule?

Padua: Portia sends her servant there for Bellario's notes and robes. Ruled by Venice since 1405, the city had long been famous for its university, where law was among the first subjects taught.

In court, Shylock praises the disguised Portia as which biblical figure 'come to judgment'?

Daniel: Shylock cheers 'A Daniel come to judgment!' while the ruling is going his way, and once it turns, one of Antonio's friends gleefully throws the same words back at him.

How does Portia stop Shylock collecting on his bond?

It allows flesh but not a drop of blood: Portia waits until Shylock is about to cut, then says 'Tarry a little', and adds that he must take exactly a pound, not a hair's weight more or less.

Under the law Portia cites against Shylock, who splits his forfeited goods?

Antonio and the state: Venice's law gives half an alien's goods to the citizen he plotted against and half to the treasury, and leaves his life to the Duke, so Shylock is told to kneel and beg.

As the price of his mercy, what does Antonio demand of the beaten Shylock?

That he convert to Christianity: Antonio also makes him will everything to the daughter who robbed him and the man she ran off with, and Shylock can only answer 'I am content'.

What gift does the disguised Portia finally ask of Bassanio for saving Antonio?

His ring: Portia gave it to him with the warning that parting with it would 'presage the ruin of your love', so the lawyer asking for it is his own wife testing him.

What good news does Portia hand Antonio in the final scene?

Three of his ships have safely returned: her letter says his argosies 'are richly come to harbour suddenly', and she will not say how she came by it: 'You shall not know by what strange accident'.

Promised 'as much as he deserves', whose portrait does the Prince of Aragon find in the silver casket?

A fool: 'I will assume desert', he announces, then finds 'the portrait of a blinking idiot' and leaves admitting he came to woo with one fool's head and goes away with two.

In Portia's roll call of suitors, what is her complaint about the English baron Falconbridge?

They share no language: the Englishman has 'neither Latin, French, nor Italian', so Portia calls him 'a proper man's picture' and asks who can 'converse with a dumb-show'.

Which proverb does Antonio mutter when Shylock defends interest with the tale of Jacob's sheep?

The devil can cite Scripture: Shylock has just told how Jacob bred himself streaked lambs from Laban's flock, and Antonio tells Bassanio the man is 'a goodly apple rotten at the heart'.

Asked what good Antonio's flesh could be to him, what does Shylock answer?

To bait fish: 'if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge', Shylock snaps, and the jibe sets off his list of every wrong Antonio has done him.

The Merchant of Venice's 'wealthy Andrew' may echo a galleon seized in the Earl of Essex's 1596 raid on which port?

Cádiz: the galleon San Andrés was seized in the harbour that summer, so a rich ship called Andrew tells scholars the play can't have been written before then.

Before Shylock, London playgoers had Barabas in The Jew of Malta, a stage hit by which contemporary of Shakespeare?

Christopher Marlowe: his Barabas also has heaps of gold and a daughter who deserts him to turn Christian, and Shakespeare's play was registered in 1598 with the alternative title 'the Jewe of Venyce'.

Which line is from Shylock's plea for common humanity?

'If you prick us, do we not bleed?': the list of shared feelings is a build-up, because it ends 'if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' and Shylock vows to better the villainy Christians have taught him.

In the 'quality of mercy' speech, mercy 'droppeth as' what 'from heaven'?

The gentle rain: Portia has just said Shylock must be merciful and he snaps 'On what compulsion must I?', so she answers that mercy cannot be forced; it falls freely and 'blesseth him that gives and him that takes'.

Bassanio likens Portia to her Roman namesake, 'Cato's daughter', who was the wife of which famous Roman?

Brutus: Bassanio calls her 'nothing undervalued to Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia', and Shakespeare soon put that Portia on stage in Julius Caesar, where she wounds her own thigh to prove she can keep a secret.

Which planet has a moon named after The Merchant of Venice's Portia?

Uranus's moons are named for characters from Shakespeare and Pope rather than classical mythology.

The 'Portia Hypothesis' claims women with what kind of name do better in the legal profession?

Masculine-sounding names: the idea is named for Portia because she wins in court only by passing as a man, and the 2009 study behind it found that going from Sue to Cameron tripled a woman's odds of becoming a judge.

Asked for a loan, Shylock reminds Antonio that he has often called him which animal?

A dog: 'Hath a dog money?' Shylock asks, and Antonio, far from apologising while he needs the favour, says he is as like to call him so again, and to spit on him again too.

Which actor's 1814 Drury Lane Shylock swapped the traditional red wig for a black one?

Edmund Kean: the strolling player made his Drury Lane debut in the part, and his fierce, black-bearded Shylock caused a sensation that made his name.

In The Merchant of Venice, who jokes that Jessica turning Christian will raise the price of pork?

Launcelot: the clown's logic is that with everyone turned pork-eater there will soon be no 'rasher on the coals for money', and Jessica repeats the joke to her husband minutes later.

Which actress played Portia opposite Henry Irving's Shylock at the Lyceum in 1879?

Ellen Terry: she was Irving's leading lady for 24 years, and the production ran for 250 nights. Irving added a wordless scene of his own, Shylock trudging home over a bridge to a house his daughter has just fled.

Jacob Adler famously played Shylock in which language in an otherwise English Broadway production?

Yiddish: Adler, a star of New York's Jewish stage, kept his own language on Broadway in 1903 while everyone around him spoke English, and played Shylock not as a villain but as a proud, noble patriarch.

In the trial scene, what does Bassanio catch Shylock doing while the Duke reads a letter?

Sharpening his knife: Bassanio asks why he whets it 'so earnestly', and since Shylock is stropping it on his shoe, another Venetian puns that he sharpens it not on his sole but on his soul.

The earliest recorded performance of The Merchant of Venice was at court in 1605, before which monarch?

James I: his court saw it in 1605, five years after the play first reached print, and then saw it a second time within days.

Who played Shylock in Michael Radford's 2004 film?

Al Pacino: six years later he went back to the part on stage, first outdoors in Central Park and then in a transfer to Broadway.

Bassanio tells Antonio a fresh loan could recover the old one, just as a second one once found his lost what?

An arrow: as a schoolboy he would shoot a second shaft the same way, watch it more carefully and often find both, which is his case for throwing good money after bad.

Which actor surprised Jeremy Irons with a kiss between Bassanio and Antonio in the 2004 film of The Merchant of Venice?

Joseph Fiennes: he defended it by pointing to the 'very sensuous language' between the two men, while Irons, who said he was 'very surprised', warned audiences not to 'jump to the wrong conclusions'.

In 2011 the RSC, with Patrick Stewart as Shylock, moved the play from Venice to which city?

Las Vegas: the choice of caskets became a glitzy game show called Destiny, and an Elvis impersonator worked the casino floor.

Which critic wrote in 1998 that one must be 'blind, deaf and dumb' not to see The Merchant of Venice as antisemitic?

Harold Bloom: the verdict stings because it comes from a devoted admirer, a critic who argued that 'bardolatry', the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be a secular religion.

In Arnold Wesker's retelling, The Merchant, what are Shylock and Antonio to each other?

Close friends: in Wesker's 1976 play Shylock proposes the pound of flesh as a joke between the two of them, a jab at the antisemitic Venetian law that both men despise.

Nazi radio aired The Merchant of Venice as propaganda in 1938, around the time of which event?

Kristallnacht: the regime staged the play again and again, but a Jew's daughter marrying a Christian clashed with its race doctrine, so some versions made Jessica an adopted child.

In The Merchant of Venice, a man who lacks which art 'in himself' is 'fit for treasons'?

Music: 'Let no such man be trusted', the speech ends, and it is aimed at a new wife who has just admitted 'I am never merry when I hear sweet music'.

Which line opens The Merchant of Venice?

'In sooth I know not why I am so sad': his companions guess that business is worrying him, then that he is in love, and he waves both away, so the play never settles what ails him.

Returning home at night, Portia says 'So shines a good deed in a naughty world' of what?

A little candle: she marvels at how far its beams carry from her hall, and her maid at once undercuts the moral by noting that while the moon shone they could not see it at all.

Which everyday phrase is first recorded in Shylock's sarcastic offer to grovel 'in a bondman's key'?

Bated breath: 'bated' is a clipped form of 'abated', meaning held back, and because the word survives almost nowhere else, the phrase is now often misspelt 'baited breath'.

Which composer wrote incidental music for The Merchant of Venice in 1871?

Arthur Sullivan: he wrote it for a Manchester staging's masked revel, the cover under which Shylock's daughter elopes, and the same year brought his first show with W. S. Gilbert.

Where in Venice was the play staged in 2016, 400 years after Shakespeare's death?

The main square of the Jewish quarter: the run marked 500 years since Venice confined its Jews to the Ghetto, the play had never been staged there before, and five actors, one a woman, shared the part of Shylock.

Embarrassed to be seen in her disguise as she elopes, Jessica consoles herself with which saying?

Love is blind: 'and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit', she goes on, or Cupid himself would blush to see her dressed as a boy.

Which 2002 film has Henryk Szpilman read aloud from Shylock's 'Hath not a Jew eyes?' speech in the Warsaw Ghetto?

The Pianist: asked what he is reading, Henryk answers with Shylock's lines; his brother replies 'Very appropriate', and Henryk says that is why he brought it.

Under which English king were the Jews expelled in 1290, not to return until Cromwell's time?

Edward I: the ban stood for more than 360 years, so England had no open Jewish community when the play was new, and most of what Shakespeare knew of Jews was hearsay or legend.

Which actor played Shylock in Jonathan Miller's 1970 National Theatre production, set in late-Victorian times?

Laurence Olivier: he was running the National Theatre himself at the time, and his Shylock was a Victorian man of business trying to pass among the gentiles who despise him.

What does Shylock say he dreamed of the night before his daughter runs away, taking it for a bad omen?

Money bags: he senses 'some ill a-brewing', yet still goes out to supper and hands his daughter the keys, and she is gone with a casket of his gold before he returns.

Shylock says Antonio's ventures are bound for Tripolis, the Indies, England and which New World land?

Mexico is one stop on Shylock's list as he sizes up his borrower's credit, adding drily that ships are only boards and sailors only men.

In The Merchant of Venice, which grim object does Portia's first suitor find in his chosen casket?

A skull greets the suitor who trusted appearances, with a rhyming scroll lodged in its empty eye socket to tell him his suit is cold.

In The Merchant of Venice, Jessica slips out of Shylock's house by night disguised as what?

A boy is her disguise, and she serves as torchbearer to the masked party that has come to spirit her away with a casket of her father's valuables.

Who devised the casket test that decides Portia's husband in The Merchant of Venice?

Her late father wrote the test into his will, and Portia chafes at it: she may neither choose the man she likes nor refuse one she dislikes.

Shylock's runaway daughter and her lover are reported leaving Venice together in what kind of boat?

A gondola is where the pair were spotted, the play's only mention of Venice's famous boats. By then Shylock had roused the Duke to search Bassanio's ship, which had already sailed.

Which Brad Pitt thriller has a lawyer forced to cut a pound of his own flesh, echoing Shylock's bond?

Seven makes a criminal attorney its greed victim, the second murder in a killer's series on the deadly sins. The makers cast an actor for his likeness to lawyer Robert Shapiro.

Christopher Moore's novel The Serpent of Venice blends The Merchant of Venice with which other Shakespeare play?

Othello gives the novel its second Venetian plot: Moore makes Portia and Desdemona sisters and adds a dash of Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado.

Roderigo Lopes, whose execution may have shaped Shylock, held which post at the court of Elizabeth I?

Royal physician from 1581, Lopes was a Portuguese of Jewish descent convicted of plotting to poison the Queen. She waited three months to sign his death warrant, a delay sometimes read as doubt.

Whose short film of The Merchant of Venice was left unreleased when two of its three reels were stolen?

Orson Welles played Shylock himself and cut Portia from the story after his partner Oja Kodar declined the part. The reels vanished soon after a private screening in Rome.

Shylock learns that Jessica has swapped his late wife's keepsake for which animal?

A monkey was the price, and the news cuts Shylock deeper than the money she took: he says he would not have parted with the gift for a whole wilderness of them.

Which Venetian landmark, the hub of the city's trade, does Shylock name when asking for news?

The Rialto was the commercial heart of Venice, and it is also where Shylock says Antonio has berated him over his business in front of everyone.

Portia asks Shylock to have whom standing by, at his own expense, when he cuts Antonio's flesh?

A surgeon would be an act of charity, Portia says, but Shylock refuses because no such thing is written in the bond, which shows the court he means Antonio to die.

Where does Portia claim she will wait in prayer while Bassanio is away, hiding her journey to Venice?

A monastery two miles off is her cover story, told to the couple she leaves in charge of the house, while she and her maid set off dressed as young men.

Which wealthy fellow Jew, sent to find Shylock's runaway daughter, comes back with news of Antonio's losses?

Tubal alternates good news with bad, so that Shylock swings between glee at Antonio's ruin and anguish over what his daughter is spending.

Shylock is told his runaway daughter spent eighty ducats in a single night in which Italian port city?

Genoa is as far as the trail goes: the searcher often heard of her there but never found her, and Shylock groans that he will never see his gold again.

Shylock tells the court that his claim on Antonio's flesh is no different from Venetians owning what?

Slaves are bought and used as their owners please, Shylock argues, so a pound of flesh he has dearly bought is his to use too.

Shylock tells the Duke that some men cannot bear a cat, a roast pig or the sound of which instrument?

The bagpipe, he says, makes some men lose control of their bladders, and his loathing of Antonio needs no better reason than theirs.

At the trial, Bassanio's loudest companion says Shylock's soul came from which animal, hanged for killing a man?

A wolf's spirit flew from the gallows into the unborn Shylock, the speaker jeers, borrowing the idea of wandering souls from Pythagoras.

Recalling old insults, Shylock tells Antonio that the merchant spat on which garment of his?

His gaberdine took the spit, Shylock recalls, and he asks drily whether a man who did that can now expect a favour.

Which American film star played Shylock for director Peter Hall in London before taking the production to Broadway?

Dustin Hoffman earned a Tony nomination as Shylock, adding Shakespeare to a stage record that already included Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

Don Selwyn's film of The Merchant of Venice, shot in Auckland, is performed in which language?

Māori is the language of a translation made in 1945 by Pei Te Hurinui Jones, which waited more than half a century to become the first Shakespeare film in the language.

A BBC radio version with Andrew Scott as Shylock moved The Merchant of Venice to London during which upheaval?

The 2008 crash suited a story of credit and ruinous debt, so the production moved the plot to the City of London, with Hayley Atwell as Portia.

In which Ernst Lubitsch film does a bit-part actor at last deliver Shylock's great speech, to Nazi soldiers?

To Be or Not to Be gives the moment to Greenberg, played by Felix Bressart, who has dreamed of the part and gets it as a diversion while his troupe tricks Hitler's guards.

Which actor played Chang, the Klingon general who quotes Shylock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?

Christopher Plummer had the part written for him and at first was reluctant to take it. His one-eyed general fires off Shakespeare throughout, from Hamlet to Julius Caesar.

Which American novelist's book Operation Shylock sends a narrator bearing his own name to Israel?

Philip Roth subtitled it A Confession and blurred fact with fiction, having his namesake narrator carry out a mission for Israeli intelligence.

Which Booker Prize winner retold The Merchant of Venice as the novel Shylock Is My Name?

Howard Jacobson won the Booker for The Finkler Question, a comic novel about being Jewish in Britain, six years before he took on Shylock.

Which pioneer became the first American woman to direct a feature film with a 1914 Merchant of Venice?

Lois Weber also played Portia in the silent film, sharing the direction with her husband Phillips Smalley, who took the part of Shylock.

Which Irish actor's dark, serious Shylock of 1741 ended decades of the role being played for laughs?

Charles Macklin went on playing Shylock for nearly fifty years, retiring only when he found he could no longer remember the whole part.

Which future star of the London stage was dismissed from Drury Lane after a poorly received debut as Portia?

Sarah Siddons spent six years touring the provinces, then came back to the same theatre as an immediate sensation and became the best-known tragedienne of her century.

How does Shylock describe the pound-of-flesh clause when he first proposes the bond to Antonio?

A merry sport is all he calls it, and Antonio signs happily, sure that his ventures will be home a full month before the debt falls due.

Under Antonio's terms at the end of the trial, Shylock must leave everything he owns at death to whom?

His daughter and her husband gain twice: Antonio also holds half the estate in trust for them, and when the deed is handed over the young man calls it manna dropped before the starving.

What reason does Shylock give for leaving the courtroom once he has accepted Antonio's terms?

He feels unwell, he says, and asks for the deed to be sent after him to sign. They are Shylock's last words in the play, which still has a whole act to run.

How does Bassanio learn, moments after winning Portia, that the bond with Shylock is forfeit?

Antonio writes to him from Venice, and the page drains the colour from Bassanio's face: it cancels every debt between them and asks only to see him once more before the end.

By moonlight at Portia's house, Jessica and her husband swap tales of lovers, starting with which Trojan prince?

Troilus sighing from the walls of Troy towards Cressida's tent opens the game, and the couple cap each other with Thisbe, Dido and Medea before turning the teasing on themselves.

Shylock defends taking profit with the story of Jacob breeding spotted lambs while tending which uncle's flock?

Laban had agreed that Jacob could keep every streaked and spotted lamb as his wages, and Jacob's trick with peeled rods multiplied them. Antonio is unimpressed by the parallel.

In The Merchant of Venice, one of Antonio's ships is rumoured wrecked on which real sandbank off the Kent coast?

The Goodwin Sands are believed to have wrecked more than 2,000 ships, and the play's gossip calls them a very dangerous flat where many a tall vessel lies buried.

The three-caskets test in The Merchant of Venice comes from which medieval Latin collection of moral tales?

Gesta Romanorum, whose title means Deeds of the Romans, was compiled as a manual for preachers and also holds a tale much like the story of King Lear.

Which French composer's suite Shylock grew from his score for an 1889 Paris stage version of The Merchant of Venice?

Gabriel Fauré wrote for a small theatre orchestra, then greatly expanded the score for the concert hall, keeping two serenades for solo tenor.

In The Merchant of Venice, Portia jokes she will lure her hard-drinking suitor to the wrong casket with a glass of what?

Rhenish wine would do it, she says, because the Duke of Saxony's nephew is bad enough sober in the morning and worse drunk in the afternoon.

Bassanio says Portia's fame draws suitors to her shore like so many of which questing Greek hero?

Jason sailed for the Golden Fleece, and Bassanio likens Portia's sunny hair to that prize, with her home as the far shore of Colchis.