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15 unusual facts about The Merchant of Venice


André Tchaikowsky

He began work on an opera, a setting of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Colin George

Colin George was also a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company during the years 1994-1999, in plays such as Peer Gynt, Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest and a stage musical adaptation of the French film Les Enfants du Paradis.

George has also directed many plays including Antony and Cleopatra and A Man For All Seasons, Richard III, Autumn Crocus, The Merchant of Venice, The Chairs and The Persians, The Boy Friend and The Heiress and The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night.

Free Family Portrait Studio

Meanwhile, when Andy is reinstated as manager, Nellie begs him by reciting Shakespeare's quality of mercy quote from The Merchant of Venice.

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne

Granville also followed Dryden in adapting Shakespeare; The Jew of Venice (1701) was a successful updating of The Merchant of Venice.

Great Hucklow

The first production (The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare) was in 1927 staged in the Hucklow Holiday Homes.

Gregor Jordan

Prior to making films Gregor Jordan played Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice for Shakespeare By The Sea (Australia).

Lewis Hallam Jr.

Hallam came to America in 1752, with his family, and first performed in The Merchant of Venice in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Old American Company

Their first performance, The Merchant of Venice, is generally considered to be the first professional staging of Shakespeare in America.

Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble

In 2011, the founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars, Curt Tofteland, visited QSE on a Fulbright Fellowship and traded skills with the facilitators of the Prison Project (as well as co-directing QSE's production of The Merchant of Venice.

Robert La Tourneaux

On stage, La Tourneaux appeared in a small role in a Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice; he was slated to appear in the 1977 Broadway production of Tennessee WilliamsVieux Carré, but was dropped from the cast prior to the show’s opening.

Sam Sejavka

This work centres around a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice set in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Seth Numrich

He made his Broadway debut as Lorenzo in the 2010 revival of The Merchant of Venice and has played the boxer Joe Bonaparte in Golden Boy and as Albert in War Horse both at the Lincoln Center Theater on Broadway.

The Pick

The episode alludes to Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice in Jerry's monologue defending nose-pickers: "If we pick, do we not bleed?"

Tim DeKay

In addition to his roles in film and television, his resume includes numerous theatrical credits, with performances in plays both on and off Broadway, including: Ridiculous Fraud at the McCarter Theatre; Billy Budd at the Circle in the Square Theatre; Someone to Watch Over Me with the Denver Theatre Company; The Merchant of Venice on the Hartford Stage; and the national tour of The Lion in Winter.


Aharon Meskin

During his career on the Hebrew stage, Meskin played many leading roles, including Othello; the Golem; Shylock (in The Merchant of Venice); Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman; the black pastor Stephen Kumalo in Cry, The Beloved Country; Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny and many others.

Angus L. Bowmer

The Works Progress Administration helped construct a makeshift Elizabethan stage on the Chautauqua site and Bowmer, college students, teachers, and Ashland citizens mounted two plays, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, for three performances.

Anjul Nigam

In theater, Nigam has appeared alongside fellow-NYU alumni Philip Seymour Hoffman in the controversial production of the Peter Sellars' directed The Merchant of Venice at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and The Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Bruno Zanin

In the theatre, he has worked with Giorgio Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Marco Sciaccaluga, Gianfranco De Bosio, Sandro Sequi, and Alfredo Arias, appearing chiefly in Venetian language plays by Goldoni but also in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Derek Hatton

His subsequent academic success was limited, but he enjoyed sports and appeared on stage as Gratiano in a school production of The Merchant of Venice with the future-theatre producer Bill Kenwright CBE.

Don Selwyn

He was a founding member of the New Zealand Maori Theatre Trust and directed the 2002 film The Merchant of Venice, the first Maori language feature film with English subtitles.

Shylock

The award-winning monologue Shylock (play), by Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young, focuses on a Jewish actor named Jon Davies, who is featured as Shylock in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

The Jew

The anti-Jewish tradition on the English stage dates back at least to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and is exemplified by the characters of Shylock in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.

Thomas Jefferson Education

Level I is an introduction to the Five Pillars and the Classics/Mentors model of education includes attending a seminar, submitting a form to a facilitator, and reading and discussing the following books: The Chosen, Jane Eyre, The Lonesome Gods, Little Britches, Laddie, The Merchant of Venice, and A Thomas Jefferson Education.

Will Sharpe

Sharpe spent a year at the RSC and appeared in such plays as The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, in which he played a young Isaac Newton.

Winthrop Ames

After the war, Ames began to direct most of his Broadway shows, which included The Betrothal (1918), The Green Goddess (1921), The Truth About Blayds (1922), Will Shakespeare (1923), Beggar on Horseback (1924), Minick (1924), Old English (1924), White Wings (1926), Escape (1927), The Merchant of Venice (1928) and Mrs. Moonlight (1930).

Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School

In 2008 it emerged that nine pupils had refused to sit a Key Stage 3 Shakespeare test on The Merchant of Venice because they felt the character of Shylock was antisemitic.