A look into the book

The edition at the MoneyMuseum also stands in the tradition of the play’s anti-Semitic reception history. The editor writes in the commentary that, in the character of Shylock, Shakespeare “had brought the dogged lawlessness of the Jews in his time to a bitter expression . . .. He has individualized every small detail of a degenerate Volkstum.”

This illustration represents justice to be unequivocally on the side of the Christians: The divine light shines on Portia, symbolically turning her into the mouthpiece of God, who lets justice be enacted through her.

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