SOURCE: Smallwood, Robert. “Shakespeare Performances in England, 1998.” Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 229-53.

In the following excerpted review, Smallwood observes that Gregory Doran's Stratford production of The Merchant of Venice offered no new insights into the play.

Gregory Doran's The Merchant of Venice started as it meant to go on, with a determination to fill the space, its opening dumb-show of merchants, Jewish and Gentile, congregating on the Venetian dockside in the half light of a February day, lasting several minutes before the play's first line. With a dark mist rising and black stone walls oozing damp, cargo was examined and valued while prostitutes stood around hopefully waiting for customers: everything was for sale here, including sexual companionship; and from this we moved to the scene in which Bassanio seeks another loan from Antonio.

Doran's production had nothing particularly startling to tell us about the play, no new directorial reading to...