SOURCE: “‘Which is the merchant here? and which the Jew?’: Riddles of Identity,” in The Yoke of Love: Prophetic Riddles in The Merchant of Venice, University of Delaware Press, 1995, pp. 93-133.

In the excerpt below, Oz remarks that the outsider status that Renaissance European cities imposed upon non-European inhabitants (and on Jews in particular) was an attempt to exert power over various members of society. Thus, in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock does his best to reverse this “master-slave” relationship through his pound of flesh arrangement with the European Antonio.

The question whereby Portia, clad as a young male judge, launches the process of justice at the court of Venice has intrigued many readers of the play. “She can’t be serious,” we tend to ask, shifting our eyes from the figure of Venice's prince of merchants, who retains his posture of gloomy dignity even at court, to...