Merchant of Venice, The

American  

noun

1. a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.

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The Merchant of Venice Cultural  

1. A comedy by William Shakespeare. The most memorable character is Shylock, a greedy moneylender who demands from the title character “a pound of flesh” (see also pound of flesh) as payment for a debt.

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Example Sentences

Since McNulty’s long-winded hit piece references “The Merchant of Venice,” the character Gratiano in that great play has a line that best describes McNulty: “You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”

From Los Angeles Times

Stumbling upon a tweet from Ivanka Trump that quoted a Bible verse on Sunday — the day when politicians and their enablers get their holiness on — I was moved to respond with a line from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”: “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

From Los Angeles Times

Long cast as outsiders and scapegoats, Jews have often been portrayed with derogatory characteristics: The greedy, if complicated, moneylender Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”; the cunning Jew who tricks German royalty in “Jud Süss,” a 1940 film ordered up by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; and the 16th century painting “Christ Among the Doctors” by Albrecht Durer, which portrays a glowing, innocent Renaissance Jesus surrounded by craven and disfigured Jewish scholars.

From Los Angeles Times

They discuss Miller’s new production of The Merchant of Venice, the director going on to predict the “slow disintegration” of English theatre.

From The Guardian

Pacino, 78, and Radford are reuniting with producer Barry Navidi following their critically acclaimed The Merchant of Venice, the visually sumptuous 2004 film in which Pacino played Shylock.

From The Guardian