SOURCE: Jensen, Hal. “Merciless Qualities.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5022 (2 July 1999): 20.

In the following review of Trevor Nunn's production of The Merchant of Venice for the National Theatre, Jensen describes the way Nunn's direction emphasized the isolation of the main characters and notes that Henry Goodman's praiseworthy Shylock dominated the production.

It is difficult, from our historical vantage point, to regard The Merchant of Venice as a comedy. Hatred and cruelty, born of racial difference, are obviously not funny; but that should not exclude them from serious comic treatment. What disagrees with our present-day knowledge is the blink-of-an-eye transition from discord, malice, violence and unqualified enmity at the end of the Trial scene, to the harmonious, all-unifying, non-drama of Act Five. How can little rituals with rings, and paeans to the music of the spheres and pledges of loyalty in the fantasy world of moonlit Belmont, erase, counterbalance or...