The Merchant of Venice - (Shakespeare in Performance) by Boika Sokolova & Kirilka Stavreva (Paperback)

About the Book

This book offers essential reading on a wide array of theatre and film productions of Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. Richly contextualised analyses of individual productions by major directors help produce a nuanced picture of the performance history of the play, guiding the reader from the 1930s through the early twenty-first century.

Book Synopsis

Boika Sokolova and Kirilka Stavreva's second edition of the stage history of The Merchant of Venice interweaves into the chronology of James Bulman's first edition richly contextualised chapters on Max Reinhardt, Peter Zadek, and the first production of the play in Mandatory Palestine, directed by Leopold Jessner. While the focus of the book is on post-1990s productions across Europe and the USA, and on film, the Segue provides a broad survey of the interpretative shifts in the play's performance from the 1930s to the second decade of the twenty-first century. Individual chapters explore productions by Peter Zadek, Trevor Nunn, Robert Sturua, Edward Hall, Rupert Goold, Daniel Sullivan, and Karin Coonrod. An extensive film section including silent film offers close analysis of Don Selwyn's Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti and Michael Radford's adaptation. Accessible and engaging, the book will interest students, academics, and general readers.

From the Back Cover

Boika Sokolova and Kirilka Stavreva's second edition of the stage history of The Merchant of Venice interweaves into the chronology of James Bulman's first edition richly contextualised chapters on Max Reinhardt, Peter Zadek, and the first production of the play in Mandatory Palestine, directed by Leopold Jessner. The main focus of the book is on post-1990s productions across Europe and the USA.

The Segue provides a broad survey of the interpretative shifts in performance from the 1930s to the second decade of the twenty-first century. Informative chapters on productions of the play by major contemporary directors present the work of Trevor Nunn, Robert Sturua, Edward Hall, Rupert Goold, Daniel Sullivan and Karin Coonrod's staging in the Venetian Ghetto. An extensive section engages with the cinematic history of the play, from silent-era adaptations, like Peter Paul Felner's Der Kaufmann von Venedig (The Jew of Mestri), through Pierre Billon's talkie Le Marchand de Venise; it includes a close analysis of Don Selwyn's Te Tangata Whai Rawa or Weniti (The Maori Merchant of Venice) and Michael Radford's William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

This broad picture of key theatrical and film transformations of The Merchant of Venice will prove essential to students of the history of performance, scholars interested in the general trends and local specificities of the play's staging and reception, as well as to theatre practitioners and all those who are prepared to look into the dark history of anti-Semitism and oppression, reflected in the stage fortunes of Shakespeare's play.

Review Quotes

'James Bulman's 1991 investigation of The Merchant of Venice in performance was outstanding. Now Boika Sokolova and Kirilka Stavreva have added a whole new range of brilliant and exhilarating studies, from Max Reinhardt in 1906 to the Venetian Ghetto in 2016, from 1936 Palestine to post-war Germany, to 21st century stage and screen, adding up to a transformative exploration of this endlessly troubling play.'
--Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame

About the Author

Boika Sokolova is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame (USA) in England

Kirilka Stavreva is Professor of English at Cornell College, USA