1969–1973 Jonathan Miller/John Sichel Production

This adaptation, directed by Jonathan Miller (on stage in 1969) and John Sichel (on film in 1973) starred Laurence Olivier as Shylock; Joan Plowright as Portia; Jeremy Brett as Bassanio; Michael Jayston as Gratiano; Anthony Nicholls as Antonio; Anna Carteret as Nerissa; and Louise Purnell as Jessica.

In their 1988 critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen collected and quoted from various early reviews, especially of the stage production that preceded (by several years) the television broadcast. One early assessment, in the New York Times, called this production “consistently fascinating and beautifully mounted” but said it ultimately fails by trying to present too sympathetic a Shylock, although the review praised Olivier as “superb.” The same writer, in a different article, elaborated upon his earlier opinions, once again rejecting Olivier’s assertion that the play is a “a harsh portrayal of prejudice”—an issue also discussed in later letters to The Times. A writer for the London Times did not think Olivier was particularly challenged by this role when it was initially performed on stage and did not find his Shylock especially memorable, while a different writer for The Times, also responding to the stage performance, appreciated the updated setting; emphasized this production’s stress on Venice as a center of finance (244); called even this Portia an unromantic “frizzed homebuilder”; termed this Bassanio a “caddish adventurer”; and thought that even the love scene between Jessica and Lorenzo lacked romance, saying that this episode “fits the production, but it creaks.” The reviewer wrote that Olivier’s Shylock “marks a total departure from stage tradition” by making him someone who can “almost pass for a Christian merchant,” even in the way he speaks, adding that in this performance Olivier displays “a fleshy apoplectic countenance whose very lips have somehow grown thick and flabby. The voice is [mostly] thin and nasal … and altogether the performance disdains the easy process of making Shylock ‘sympathetic’; instead it shows the kind of monster into which Christian societies transform their shame.” Another review of the stage version said that it “adds very little to the inner life of Shylock”; found this production’s Portia (“a new[ly] rich, snobby spinster”) more interesting that Olivier’s merchant; and considered the pace somewhat sluggish (245).

Discussing this version in his 1999 History of Shakespeare on Screen, Kenneth Rothwell called Olivier’s nineteenth-century Shylock a “Baron Rothschild” and thought Antonio and Bassanio “mirror[ed] the love between Oscar Wilde and his Bosie.” He suggested that Bassanio and his friends displayed an “intrinsic shallowness of spirit”; noted that the “usual cries of ‘anti-Semitism’ swirled around the show”; but said that “Miller presented a sympathetic Shylock, more victim than villain” (69). Rothwell partly agreed with “June Schlueter’s objection to [this version’s] ‘trivializing’ of the casket plot into a ‘sideshow’” but praised “Olivier’s miraculous contributions,” adding that in this film “The Merchant of Venice surely becomes the woe-fullest but most complicated comedy ever written” (70).

Christopher McCullough, in his 2005 overview of the play (59–61), suggested that this adaptation was set “in the period of ‘high capitalism’ of the late nineteenth century” and featured a “claustrophobic atmosphere created by the crowded interior design of the ‘Victorians,’” as well as a pruned script that “remov[ed] as much of the comedic element as possible, as is evidenced by the almost total exclusion of the clown Launcelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo (his father). The emphasis” instead, he wrote, “is on money” (59), noting that the “Bassanio/Portia relationship, with a forty-year-old actor wooing a forty-four-year-old actress, as well as lacking any potential passion, reinforces the notion that Bassanio is in it for the money” and adding “[e]ven more mercenary seems the Lorenzo and Jessica relationship on the part of Lorenzo, whose sole motive seems to be financial” (60). McCullough thought Lorenzo was poorly acted and considered the “trial-scene setting … suggestive of attendance at a board meeting of international bankers” (60).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (96–97), Peter Cochran found Olivier’s Shylock unsympathetic; highly praised the humorous Morocco and Aragon; considered Plowright too low-key as Portia (96); said that our lack of interest in either Shylock or Portia makes the trial seem boring; and claimed it is hard to feel sorry for Shylock at the end, especially since Cochran thought the last act particularly uninvolving (97).

In an essay from 2022 titled “‘Hath Not a Jew Eyes?’ On Film and Stage,” Christopher Baker discussed Olivier’s performance of this speech in some detail, commenting that the actor’s “distraught emotion extends into the middle of the speech, where ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’ is spoken as if Shylock is about to weep; rather than appealing to reason, or righteousness, or his sense of betrayal, he is pleading with his audience (Salerio and Salarino observe him silently) to sympathize with his pitiable condition. This mood,” Baker noted, “then passes into the anger of the final lines, although, with his voice catching at times, Olivier still displays an element of fragility in Shylock’s vindictive demeanor. Rather than the contained and rather aloof businessman we have been dealing with until this point in the film, in this scene Olivier’s Shylock becomes more complex, his anger and vengeance now mingled with an apprehensiveness, as if he only now is realizing the depth of his victimization, an awareness that arouses a barely controllable anxiety” (134).

1980–81 BBC Shakespeare Production

This adaptation, directed by Jack Gold, starred Warren Mitchell as Shylock; John Franklyn-Robbins as Antonio; John Nettles as Bassanio; Gemma Jones as Portia; Richard Morant as Lorenzo; Kenneth Cranham as Gratiano; and Susan Jameson as Nerissa.

Henry Fenwick, in his valuable essay on “The Production” (19–27) in the booklet the BBC published to accompany the first broadcast of this adaptation, noted that the popular director Jack Gold had no experience directing Shakespeare before this play but also noted that producer Jonathan Miller thought Gold would bring freshness to the project (17). Because Gold had previously often found Shakespeare’s language hard to follow, he made a special effort to study the words here; he wanted the actors to avoid declaiming verse, asking them to focus instead on conveying meaning and playing realistic characters and scenes. He wanted to emphasize conversations between characters rather than obsessing over the set or props (18). The set designer Oliver Bayldon created two huge backcloths resembling paintings of each of the two locales (Venice and Belmont). These were not meant to be completely realistic but to create two different atmospheres, with Venice more down-to-earth and Belmont more ethereal. The settings show the influence of such artists as Canaletto, Turner, Piper, and Monet. At Belmont, horizons were emphasized, while Venice was presented as an almost medieval-looking city. Props placed in front of the backcloths were more realistic than the backcloths themselves (18–20). Gold felt liberated by the huge set, often using “‘long tracking shots’” and usually employing “‘single cameras,’” although several were used to film the trial. He focused (literally) on the actors to make sure their language was audible and meaningful (20). Costume designer Raymond Hughes wanted realistic clothing for the 20 main characters, clothed so as to reflect their social status without making them look too much alike. For Venice, he stressed such colors as black, orange, umber, and green, while for Belmont he emphasized blue, softly focused (20–21). The script was uncut; the “racial” theme was not obscured; all the characters were seen as complex (with Antonio capable of both love and hatred, Bassanio sometimes mercenary and sometimes romantic, and Portia sometimes noble and sometimes racially prejudiced). Similar complexity is evident in Gratiano, Lorenzo, and Jessica (whom Gold described especially harshly [21–22]). Leslee Udwin, playing Jessica, called her character passionate as well as sexually alert and spontaneous, as when she impulsively steals the money Shylock loves more than he loves her. She found Jessica’s selling of Shylock’s ring the harshest and cruelest of Jessica’s behaviors because it causes Shylock so much pain. This Jessica is full of desire for Lorenzo and sees her conversion to Christianity as a chance at freedom (21–22). Gemma Jones, playing Portia, tried to emphasize that character’s complexity and moodiness, such as being frustrated by her father’s will and thus being assertive during the trial (22–23). Miller and Gold, both Jewish, argued that only a Jewish actor could do real justice to Shylock. Warren Mitchell played him as unsentimental and complicated, with Fenwick writing that “Mitchell gives a performance breathtakingly poised between humor, pathos, emotion, and indignant empathy” (23). Mitchell wanted to make Shylock different from the Venetians but also very human in his need for self-control and his occasional inability to sustain it; having not faced prejudice himself, this Shylock tried to imagine how a Black person might feel. Mitchell saw Bassanio as a schemer pursuing a wealthy bride and also saw Portia as less than exemplary. Mitchell rejected any idea of the play as anti-Semitic, evidenced not only by Shylock’s famous speech but also by the contrast between the pain he suffers when forced to convert and the ensuing shallow happiness at Belmont. Gold saw resemblances between the mistreatment of Shylock and the mistreatment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night (23–25). He stressed Antonio’s love for Bassanio as his prime motive and noted that Antonio appears both first and last in this production (25–26).

J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their fine collection of the earliest reviews, quoted one writer for Britain’s The Listener who considered the production agnostic about whether the play is or is not antisemitic and who mocked the setting, while a reviewer for the Christian Science Monitor considered this staging quickly paced and intriguingly tragicomic with a somewhat mannered performance by Mitchell and a credibly intense Gemma Jones. A writer for the New York Times admired the audacity of the interpretation; thought this Shylock was recognizably Jewish; found Mitchell’s performance completely compelling; and praised all the leading actors (268). A long academic review regretted the unfunny casket scenes; admired the use of lighting; commended the rich costumes; and saw resemblances to Renaissance artwork. This reviewer praised Mitchell’s performance; found the forced conversion effectively agonizing; admired Mitchell’s ability to shift tones and moods; but seemed shocked by this production’s hateful Jessica. The reviewer called Jones’s Portia “brisk, efficient, cool and business-like, rather than romantic”; considered her “winningly compassionate” toward both Shylock and Antonio; commended John Nettles’s skill at speaking verse; but also considered his Bassanio perhaps “too noble.” The review emphasized the cruelty of certain characters (especially Gratiano) and ended by asserting that “Warren Mitchell will surely be remembered as one of the great Shylocks,” but “it is a pity that other important aspects of the plot [such as the fate of Portia] were not given equal weight,” saying that although “much of the comedy” was lost, this “was a pleasing production visually and a stimulating evening’s entertainment” (269).

Michael Manheim, in a long and appreciative review of this BBC production, called it “simple and direct” and praised it for lacking “gimmicks,” intrusive symbols, and self-indulgent originality. He called its “painterly backgrounds … appropriate”; was impressed by Mitchell’s Shylock; considered his performance at once “entertaining,” “moving,” and “enigmatic”; and found Gemma Jones’s Portia equally complex because she could seem alternately humane, “good, just—and fiery.” Manheim thought the “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech was mishandled because it drew “one’s attention away from the important irony that cruel money-lenders may have human feelings,” and he was “also put off by the [harsh] interpretation of Jessica,” saying that, as in “many other productions” the BBC’s “has trouble focusing on the play’s deepest irony because it refuses to allow Jessica, Lorenzo, and the other youth of Venice to be charming, warm-hearted people whom we admire as easily as we admire Gemma Jones’ Portia. That irony resides in our being directly called upon to feel that their treatment of Shylock is right and ‘Christian’ even as we feel it to be cruel and unfeeling.” Manheim was most impressed by John Franklyn-Robbins’s Antonio as a true friend who feels painfully melancholy but nonetheless displays “sad grace in yielding Bassanio to Portia,” when he “beautifully enacts the triumph of marital love over [the two men’s] friendship” (11).

Susan Willis, in her 1991 book on the BBC Shakespeare Plays, wrote that only this play, in the whole series, was “presented without textual change of any sort” (86). She also noted that the “painted gauze backdrops for Merchant imply locale without photographic reproduction” (209).

Tanya Sokolova et al., in their 2023 overview of productions of Shakespeare’s play, commented on the BBC adaptation (112–28) by describing its Shylock as a “squat, domestic, garrulous little man,” a “comic figure with a plaintive face,” saying that although this Shylock was the figure whom Gold and Miller (both Jews) “called authentically Jewish,” his “portrayal bordered on caricature” (113). They found it “hard to take Shylock’s villainy seriously,” saying that Mitchell—a well-known British comic actor—“shamelessly exploited the traditions of music-hall performance,” noting that he “spoke his asides straight to the camera, breaking the illusion of naturalism with a theatrical device to ingratiate himself with the viewer” (113) and spending much of his time laughing (often ironically and sarcastically) at his “relationship with the Christians” (114). Commenting on the look of the production, the essay reported that because Gold had “intended only to create the impression of a Renaissance canvas” (120), the sets of the BBC production “do not disguise their studio origins, but capitalise on them” and often “feature many angles,” with “characters appearing from around corners, or through arches, or from under bridges,” so that “one delights in discovering the ingenuity that allows these structural units, most of them on casters for easy mobility, to keep reappearing in apparently different places” (120). Gold was intent on “occasionally breaking conventional televisual strategies” by using “more overtly theatrical techniques,” such as “characters’ delivering their asides to the camera” to “make us acutely aware of our role as spectators” (122). He also often created “a number of discrete smaller scenes within the larger scene Shakespeare wrote, juxtaposing a sequence of private moments with the public occasion of the trial,” but often his “use of the camera was so adroit that it never called attention to the artifice of his technique” (124). He tried to “ensure that the play [would] not be received as Shylock’s tragedy,” especially in the trial scene, where, “[i]n terms of both ethos and art, Portia has [control] and the intricacies of her role-playing have made her, for once, more interesting than Shylock and have assured us of her benevolent purpose.” Yet Shylock, when he “poignantly kisses the cross during his forced conversion,” wins some real sympathy (127).

Concluding by surveying the mixed critical response to this production, this 2023 essay noted the “number of critics who found [Gold’s] Merchant balanced, simple, direct, and inoffensive,” and the essay commented that “[i]n the theatre, these are not necessarily terms of praise. In television, they usually are” (128).

Assessing this version briefly in his 2013 book on Small-Screen Shakespeare (97–98), Peter Cochran called the setting “fairy-tale” and the costumes “gorgeous”; praised Gemma Jones as Portia; admired the characters and the relations between them for being “solid” (97); found Morocco and Aragon just “mildly funny”; noted that Old Gobbo is included; and praised Warren Mitchell’s Shylock, who, Cochran thought, feels compelled to play a fool. Although Cochran suggested that this intriguing Shylock risks diminishing the other characters, he found the role of the duke very well played and commended the proper final loneliness of Antonio (98).

In an essay from 2022 titled “The 1980 Televised BBC Production of The Merchant of Venice: A Survey of Reviews,” Eric Sterling reported that the “early reviews of the BBC production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice were remarkably consistent. Reviewers focused on the Shylock plot and virtually ignored Portia’s relationship with Bassanio and Jessica’s elopement with Lorenzo. In fact, none of the early reviewers even mentioned Lorenzo. At least half of them,” according to Sterling, “mentioned that the director, producer, and main actor were Jewish, arguing that this meant that the production could not have been anti-Semitic and must have attempted to portray, rather than support, anti-Semitism.” He noted that a “few reviewers, however, felt that by dramatizing anti-Semitism without attacking it, the production came close to condoning it” (216–17).

2001 Trevor Nunn/Chris Hunt Production

This adaptation, based on a production directed by Trevor Nunn for the Royal Shakespeare Company, starred Henry Goodman as Shylock; David Bamber as Antonio; Alexander Hanson as Bassanio; Jack James as Lorenzo; Richard Henders as Gratiano; Derbhle Crotty as Portia; and Alex Kelly as Nerissa.

Christopher McCullough, in his 2005 overview of the play (61–63), wrote that “[p]ersonal and social dysfunction seems to lie at the heart of Trevor Nunn’s production.” Although he called Antonio “an inwardly troubled and alienated man and one with whom, in this production, I have never found much empathy,” he felt that “Henry Goodman’s Shylock, equally inwardly troubled, grows in stature throughout the film and is a far more complex character than that presented by Olivier” (61). Suggesting that “Shylock’s complexity and inner turmoil in Nunn’s production is demonstrated aptly in his extended scene with Jessica” (62), whom he considered “equally fragile” (63).

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (99–101), thought that Antonio and Bassanio here are former lovers; called this Portia a “poor little rich girl”; found the set plain and depressing; considered this Shylock tough and forceful; considered the time scheme puzzling; called both Shylock and Jessica “very tense”; and termed this production “no fairy tale” (99). He considered the trial episode compelling; thought that the setting and the duke both imply strong anti-Jewish prejudice; believed Shylock acts compulsively in a way that will lead to total ostracism; and thought Shylock suddenly realizes that the law is against him. Arguing that Portia realizes that Antonio is her real antagonist (100), Cochran also said that both Portia and Jessica seem ambivalent as the production ends (100–101).

In an essay from 2022 titled “‘Hath Not a Jew Eyes?’ On Film and Stage,” Christopher Baker reported that at first Shylock “recites his catalogue of human qualities with an attitude of careful moderation. But at the start of the third section (‘If you prick us…’) his pace and tone become more angry and at ‘If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ the final word is shouted as he is practically at the point of furious tears. Again,” Baker continued, “he softens his tone, but at ‘What is his humility? Revenge‘ he shouts the final word, lurches threateningly toward Salarino, cane upraised, and both listeners physically restrain him. The third ‘revenge’ of this section (3.1.76) is spoken in a whisper as he taps his head with a forefinger, as if his plot for vengeance is already forming in his mind. The speech’s last line, as we have come to expect from practically all performers of the part, is a growled shout to make it ‘go hard‘ and to ‘better the instruction” (140–41).

In their 2023 assessment of this version, Sokolova et al. (229–42), noted that it was greeted with “a flow of positive reviews” and commented that “[k]ey to Nunn’s interpretative approach was his choice to lay bare the instabilities and weaknesses of all characters, which allowed for shifts of empathy.” Writing that by “doubly-othering Antonio as a gay man and misfit among the metropolitan set” Nunn “helped make sense of his intense hatred for the other Other—Shylock” more readily comprehensible (236), they also considered “Henry Goodman’s darkly scintillating Shylock … another lonely Other” who was “always on the alert” (237) and whose “Yiddish conversation and Hebrew prayer divulged a heart-wrenching emptiness in his life” (238). In contrast, Nunn gave Portia a “household of sympathetic female servants,” making her one of the least isolated characters in the play (239). This 2023 assessment praised Nunn’s production for proving “responsive to the rich colours of the play, its human relationships, its social tensions, and its challenges of class, race, and patriarchal oppression. It echoed with the larger sensibilities of a post-Holocaust culture, offered a polyphonic reading of the play and memorable performances, and justly deserves a place in the production history” (242).

2004 Radford Production

This big-budget film, directed by Michael Radford, starred Al Pacino as Shylock; Jeremy Irons as Antonio; Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio; Lynn Collins as Portia; Zuleikha Robinson as Jessica; Kris Marshall as Gratiano; Charlie Cox as Lorenzo; and Heather Goldenhersh as Nerissa.

In a typically clear and thorough 2006 essay titled “Looking for Shylock: Stephen Greenblatt, Michael Radford and Al Pacino,” Samuel Crowl argued that “[w]hat holds Radford’s approach together and makes it work is Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock. Not since Marlon Brando’s Mark Antony fifty years ago has an American film actor given such an intelligent, subtle and accomplished performance of a major Shakespearean role in the movies” (118).

Drew Daniel, in a 2006 essay titled “William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice,” asserted that Radford’s film is “on sure footing when it is engaged in an ethically admirable and historically accurate project of depicting Jewish oppression, but precisely at those moments it struggles desperately with the comic machinery and fairy-tale logic of Shakespeare’s play.” According to Daniel, “If Shylock is to truly be the moral hero of the play, then we must correspondingly view Portia and Antonio as cruel and cynical bigots. Unwilling to pursue this logic to its end, Radford’s film attempts instead to sympathize equally with each character, padding the sharp corners until the dramatic shape disappears. Radford’s compromise,” Daniel wrote, “ultimately betrays Shakespeare’s Christian and Jewish characters by levelling down his play’s vision of their differences for the sake of a smoothly digestible universality” (56).

Discussing this version of The Merchant in his 2007 book Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (87–106), Mark Thornton Burnett wrote that Radford’s typical filmic procedure was “a prioritization of visuals and institutions,” so that here he depicted the Jewish ghetto in detail and, by using imagery that would remind viewers of the Holocaust, offered “layerings of representation” (91). He noted that the “interior of [Shylock’s] house, for instance, is imagined as small, cramped and nervously patrolled and protected, a sharp contrast to the sumptuous garishness of the Christian residences” (95) but also commented that cuts to the text of the play here “minimize the markers of Shylock’s stereotypical Jewishness,” so that the “effect is to downplay the elaboration of Shylock’s own prejudices, to bypass suggestions of miserliness and fiscal probity, and to spotlight hatreds whose unsettling circulation resides in their apparent causelessness.” The film thus offers “a forcefully realized sense of Shylock’s victimhood” (96), reminding us again of the Holocaust (99), although he denied that this adaptation “boldly shackles itself to what has been termed elsewhere the ‘Holocaust industry’” (106).

In an essay from 2007 titled “Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice and the Vexed Question of Performance,” Laury Magnus claimed that “what works about Radford’s film does so by creating a threefold distancing from the direct experience of Shakespeare’s characters speaking the words: Radford’s praiseworthy mise en scene, a historical framing of the film’s action, and the much easier fix of liberal cuts that are sometimes judicious but are, on the whole, morally evasive. In the film’s opening minutes,” he wrote, “a sumptuous Venetian locale, gleaming darkly, is identified as Venice, 1596, not the somewhat vaguely contemporaneous setting as on Shakespeare’s own bare stage, but somewhere around the time in which the play was written. The visual splendor is everywhere, occasionally counterpointing but more usually blunting the edge of the psychic ugliness portrayed” (110).

Discussing the Radford film briefly in his 2007 book Studying Shakespeare on Film, Maurice Hindle wrote that the “movie was bound to be primarily perceived, evaluated and marketed as a star vehicle for Pacino, but [its] strong ensemble playing has the effect of foregrounding many of the play’s ethical complexities,” with “the stylishly shot and edited medium-close and close shots of the principals drawing us into the tangled web of the story’s suspenseful plotting” (65). Hindle concluded that “Radford offers a courageous, if muted, attempt at raising the profile of one of Shakespeare’s more controversial plays” (66). Meanwhile, commenting in passing on the movie in his 2008 Norton Guide (93–94, 150–51, 192–96), Samuel Crowl noted that it was made with a relatively large budget (93); said it uses a fairly traditional filmic approach; praised Pacino’s convincing acting; and said that Shylock is presented “almost exclusively as a victim of Christian hypocrisy” (94). Crowl discussed the use of flash-cuts and close-ups and the film’s emphasis on Jessica’s ring (150–51); explained why and how the film’s lengthy trial scene is effective and how it uses various kinds of shots (included a jostled camera to suggest the crowded courtroom); observed the placement of Pacino on the left of most of those shots; and suggested Lynn Collins’s greater effectiveness as an actor in the trial scene than earlier at Belmont (192–96).

In his 2010 book Contemporary Shakespeare Production (160–65), Herbert R. Coursen cited critical disagreement about this adaptation; agreed with those who faulted it; called it an “often incoherent film, undermined by shadowy production values, shaky characterizations and dubious editing of the inherited text”; criticized the unconvincing depiction of Belmont; and thought the opening words about Venetian persecution of the Jews were unnecessary (161). He disliked the presentation of Portia (including many cuts in her lines); found the way she was presented in the trial scene effective but said that nothing had prepared us for her performance there; noted that the role of Gobbo had been cut; and praised Radford for cutting Shylock’s speech about Laban and his sheep (162). Regretting, however, some other cuts in the text, Coursen also criticized the ways the various suitors are depicted; called the film “stultifying” (163); sometimes praised but mostly faulted Pacino’s performance; and compared and contrasted this production with other filmed versions. He was willing to accept the eventual exclusion of Antonio and Shylock from Venetian society but considered the final depiction of Jessica’s ring unconvincing (164). He concluded by calling this version good but recommended Olivier’s as perhaps the best (165).

In an essay from 2010 titled “Rethinking Shylock’s Tragedy: Radford’s Critique of Anti-Semitism in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’” Frank P. Riga wrote that by “[f]ollowing the theatrical tradition established in the 19th century, Radford has made a choice to interpret the play mainly for its tragic potential, using anti-Semitism as the context and situation out of which the tragedy will grow. And while Shylock is saved from being a stereotypical, Jewish stage villain,” Riga thought, “the darker complexities of the other characters, including Antonio, Bassanio, Jessica, and Portia, are explored before the film resolves itself in a less than comic reconciliation. Belmont is shown to be of a piece with Venice, since the ethos of both is too narrow to accommodate the value and dignity of all of their inhabitants” (109).

L. Monique Pittman, in her 2011 book Authorizing Shakespeare (57–76), wrote that this film implies that Shakespeare was “a liberal humanist, a non-racist,” and not an antisemite; that it “thoroughly … ignores or fails to pursue the settler discourse of racism articulated by the play and centered on Portia herself, who constructs the world in racialized categories”; and that it tends to “locate the author function in the character of Portia” (58), so that in the very long courtroom scene Portia functions as “a stand-in for the author himself.” Pittman therefore thought that “Portia’s centrality to this moment of meta theater requires that her incipient racism throughout the play be ignored, rendered humorous, or explained away.” Suggesting that Radford tries to make us identify with people of the past (59) and offering a detailed discussion of the film’s opening minutes (59–60), Pittman argued that “[b]ecause the film singles out fanaticism as the cause of racial cruelty in the play, it inadvertently allows the quieter injustices that also brutalize and maim humanity to go undetected, diagnosed, and uncured” (60). Thus, although in this play, “as directed by Radford, Shylock becomes a great Shakespearean voice pleading across the ages for social justice,” this interpretation depends on cuts to Shakespeare’s text, and, in addition Portia’s intense performance sometimes undercuts Radford’s interpretation (62). Moreover, Pittman thought that in general Radford diminishes our sense of Shylock’s complexity; discussed one way Radford tries to create sympathy for Shylock (63); and contended that the “film labors to characterize Shylock with unambiguous sympathy and in so doing insists that Shakespeare intended to use the powers of language to preach the perils of racism and the need to disregard difference in light of common human experience” (64–65). Pittman felt that, “[f]aced with the textual problem of Portia’s often barely concealed racism, Radford suppresses dissonant possibilities and tunes scenes to foreground the comedic potential of her lines” (65), so that she is more complex in the play than in the film, especially in her treatment of, and remarks about, the suitors (65). Pittman asserted that the various suitors are initially shot from above, which diminishes them in several ways (65–66); that Morocco is presented in ways that are mocking and stereotypical (66); that the film omits Portia’s disparaging comment about Morocco’s complexion; that Aragon’s unfitness as a mate is similarly “linked to his nationality and ethnic identity”; and that all the suitors are stereotyped (67).

Pittman contended that Shylock does not actually condemn slavery but instead uses his famous speech merely to defend his right to a pound of flesh; that “Radford naively turns this passage into yet more evidence of Shakespeare’s liberal-humanist intentions” (68); that in the courtroom scene “Radford’s film repeatedly places Portia in a position of visual dominance”; that the camera often shoots her from below, thus emphasizing her centrality; and that in this scene in general the focus is definitely on Portia (69). In contrast, Shylock is shot in ways that diminish his importance and is “made to seem the victim of Venetian racism rather than of Portia’s personality” (70). Reporting that in Radford’s DVD commentary about the film he insists that Shakespeare was not an antisemite (70), Pittman responded that such claims are undercut or complicated by the fact that Portia shows no mercy to Shylock (71). Citing various ways in which Radford and Collins try to defend Portia against charges of cruelty (71–72) and noting ways in which Radford tries to exempt Shakespeare himself from the kind of antisemitism common in the Renaissance, Pittman contended that Radford “fails to deal with the far richer possibilities of a text that dramatizes prejudice in a range of registers and that in its unsettling ambiguity problematizes the very notions of absolute authority that the film chases with such vigor” (72). She concluded that “Radford’s film resists acknowledging the possibility that [the] cultural icons we cling to for a kind of secular salvation cannot offer fully satisfying answers to our human ills, cannot propose a wholly viable solution to conflict, and, quite humanly, still may be implicated in the limitations of their own cultural moment.” She suggested that “[p]erhaps admitting such limitations —that there are some things we cannot know—is the better and desperately needed antidote to the perils of fundamentalism in our own time” (73).

Discussing the Radford film in his book Small-Screen Shakespeare (101–3), Peter Cochran called it “dense and moving”; admired the way the lines are naturally spoken; appreciated that they are literally understated; commended how much of Shakespeare’s text is retained; and praised Fiennes for his “inwardness and deliberation” and the camera work for creating “a great sense of intimacy and urgency” through close-ups, especially in the trial scene (101). Praising the costumes, setting, number of extras, and fidelity to Shakespeare (101), Cochran extolled Pacino’s performance, which he said makes Shylock both sympathetic and off-putting, adding that he alienates both the Christians and the Jews this production depicts. Cochran found this Portia credible; said that Antonio is a threat to Portia’s marriage (102); called the ring episode genuinely moving; and concluded by calling this “[o]ne of the best Shakespeare films there are” (103).

In her 2019 book Screening Gender in Shakespeare’s Comedies (37–68), Aleksandra Cieslak often compared the film to the play and also drew on comments from many other critics. Although she suggested that the “Renaissance Venetian setting helps explain the play’s interest in anti-semitism” (37–38), she said that the “setting is mainly decorative and ornamental, not essential; it appeals to our senses” (39). Arguing that “Radford’s film diminishes the crudely materialistic aspect of Portia’s subplot by focusing on the possibility of a true romance,” she wrote that Venice is portrayed as materialistic, Belmont as idealistic (42) and that the film “tricks the viewers into dismissing the problematic gender policy underlying the casket trial and the economy of Portia’s marriage” (43) and makes Portia seem less “scheming” than she might have been (44).

Cieslak thought that Radford’s film implied that “only calculation and manipulation can put a woman in a position to negotiate her future happiness” (54); that the film “offers a particularly sensitive reading of Jessica by complicating both Portia’s ultimate happiness and Jessica’s potential lack of it” (57); that the film “succeeds in presenting Jessica with great empathy without demonizing or victimizing Shylock, because her elopement and conversion” result from “abusive social circumstances, not a domestic crisis” with her father (59); and that Jessica is caught, at the end, between two possible worlds and ways of living (62). Noting how many characters are isolated as the movie concludes (63–64), she suggested that the film “depoliticizes the play’s subordination of women” (65); that it “presents a problematic conclusion, unlike the play’s more happy ending” (66); and that “all the key characters in Radford’s film are invested with emotional depth and complexity [so that] the film necessarily departs from any affinity to a comedy,” with its ending instead “stressing human longings, nostalgias, disappointments, and losses” (67).

In an essay from 2022 titled “‘Hath Not a Jew Eyes?’ On Film and Stage,” Christopher Baker reported that in this film “two friends are standing a step above Pacino, and this, combined with his own short stature, makes him look up slightly at them; his physical posture reinforces his subordinate position in Venice. Pacino uses no Jewish accent; his appearance is disheveled, and his unruly hair sticks out from beneath a floppy red hat.” Baker continued that the “verbs in the speech’s first section (disgraced, hindered, laughed, etc.) are given urgent, heavy stress leading up to the shouted ‘I am a Jew.’ No one in Hollywood,” according to Baker, “can rant like Pacino, and the sections of this speech have a certain sameness in all being harangued at a constant level” (136–37).

In another article from 2022 (“The 2004 Film of The Merchant of Venice: A Survey of Reviews”), Robert C. Evans provided an overview of numerous newspaper and magazine assessments of the film, ranging from negative, to mixed, to positive. Only two of the quoted reviews were clearly negative; nine were negative-to-mixed or mixed; three were mixed-to-positive; five were positive; and three were especially positive.

Tanya Sokolova, et al., in their 2023 overview of The Merchant of Venice for the Shakespeare in Performance series (297–304), reported that first “responses [to the Radford film] in the UK were mixed though generally positive” (298). They wrote that “the story is streamlined and disambiguated, told through the rich visual language of heritage film” (299); that one recurring feature is expressive “hands in close-up” (300); that the Venice presented here “is a decadent, sexualised, and aggressive place”; and that the “characters’ animosity (mutual in Shakespeare’s text) is here more one-sided, evident in Antonio’s ugly act of spitting on Shylock,” although both men are “portrayed as similarly isolated and chronically depressed” (301). They suggested that the “roles of Portia (Lynn Collins) and Jessica (Zuleikha Robinson) match modern expectations of female agency” and that Portia is depicted as “a blond beauty styled after Botticelli’s Primavera” (303).

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