The Merchant and the Jew: A Fourteenth-Century French Analogue to The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE ASSERTED that in comparison to the rest of the Shakespeare canon the sources of The Merchant of Venice are quite well established,' there remain several questions for scholars seeking to trace the play's lineage. The immediate source, for example, cannot be precisely determined, although many possibilities have been suggested. The lost play referred to in 1578 by Stephen Gosson as The Jew is a leading candidate, with much speculation as to its exact nature. One critic, S. A. Small, has even tried to reconstruct the play,2 although scholars such as C. Knight and T. M. Parrott have argued that no playwright of 1579 could have brought the Bond Plot and the Casket Plot together. John Russell Brown, in his introduction to the Arden edition, has expressed doubts about The Jew as a source-play, arguing that it is possible that Shakespeare simply adapted the story as found in Giovanni Fiorentino's II Pecorone of 1558. Geoffrey Bullough traces many earlier sources for the plots in The Merchant of Venice, most of which are, of course, unlikely to be Shakespeare's sources. Bullough cites a tale in the Mahabharata, for example, as well as one in the Talmud. Bullough also mentions the Twelve Tables of Roman Law.3 Chris-