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    Louisse Romaine
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    The document discusses The Merchant of Venice and analyzes its origins. It notes that the play references a specific event from 1596, indicating it could not have been written before then. While Shakespeare was considered a solitary genius during the Romantic period, most of his plots were adapted from previous works, including The Merchant of Venice which was largely based on the Italian work Il Pecorone. The document examines how Shakespeare had access to source material like Il Pecorone despite it only being translated later, suggesting he may have been able to read Italian or had an English manuscript.

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    The document discusses The Merchant of Venice and analyzes its origins. It notes that the play references a specific event from 1596, indicating it could not have been written before then. While Shakespeare was considered a solitary genius during the Romantic period, most of his plots were adapted from previous works, including The Merchant of Venice which was largely based on the Italian work Il Pecorone. The document examines how Shakespeare had access to source material like Il Pecorone despite it only being translated later, suggesting he may have been able to read Italian or had an English manuscript.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    7 views1 page

    Merchant of Venice

    Uploaded by

    Louisse Romaine
    The document discusses The Merchant of Venice and analyzes its origins. It notes that the play references a specific event from 1596, indicating it could not have been written before then. While Shakespeare was considered a solitary genius during the Romantic period, most of his plots were adapted from previous works, including The Merchant of Venice which was largely based on the Italian work Il Pecorone. The document examines how Shakespeare had access to source material like Il Pecorone despite it only being translated later, suggesting he may have been able to read Italian or had an English manuscript.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 1

    THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

    Genre: comedy that also tackles serious issues

    The Stationer's Register: a place where plays would be registered so that they would be
    registered as plays of a specific company

    The capture of St. Andrew (1596): an incident that everyone knew about and an incident that is
    talked about in the first act – meaning that the play could not have been written before the date
    of the said event.

    The Romantic period (first part 19th century) popularized Shakespeare as a literary genius in
    terms of his originality and solitude – a solitary genius who worked alone and had written works,
    plots never been written before. During Shakespeare's time, however, originality was not his
    trademark. All of his plots, in exemption of the Tempest, were all taken from previous literature.

    One of the sources was Il Pecorone written by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, a story structured like
    the Decameron. The book has only been translated during the last century and this poses a
    dilemma: it suggests that Shakespeare could either read in Italian or he had access to the
    english manuscript of the book. Reading the plot, it is evident that Shakespeare copied and
    plagiarized almost all of Il Pecorone. This is because his greatness did not reside in his
    originality.

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