... of the confessional divide, in a deep suspicion of, as well as a longing for, the possibilities of satisfacere , making or feeling “enough” in matters of spiritual restitution. In The Merchant of Venice , this fraught understanding of penitential experience takes special shape around the Jew Shylock. Shylock's...

... with a reading of the play as an externalization of the internal spacing by which the soul is kept at bay. Shylock, by refusing to engage in acts of signification or translation — in direct opposition to his Christian antagonists — provides a figuration of the soul, and his expulsion allows the play to retreat...

... satisfying ways. But satisfaction becomes unsatisfying in reformed accounts of sin. The Merchant of Venice explores the play’s “disavowed desire for an exact and now unavailable sys- tem of reparation.” Shylock’s bond stands for the most uncompromising, literal form of that penitential calculation...

... have counterparts in plenty of other comic spectacles of disclosure and punishment: the vanquishing of Shylock, the imprisonment of Malvolio, the pronouncements of Justice Clement in the final act of Every Man in His Humour . These early modern comedies of judgment, though they imitate the forms...

..., the Renaissance chair is less mobile in both its footprint and its uses. Affording rest and spectatorship, the noble chair supports, frames, and projects a sense of dignity through its bodily architecture. Capulet will become Brabantio, and Shylock, and even- tually Lear, all of them “men with chairs...

... and Michael Witmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 231–57. In recent work on Shakespeare and Jewish thought, Caroline Lion reads Shakespeare as striving toward a “religion beyond religions,” in Reading Shakespeare in Jewish Theological Frameworks: Shylock beyond the Holocaust (London...

.... Then, seeing ’twas he that made you to depose, Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous. (1.2.22  –  27) The first argument is reminiscent of Shylock’s shocking declaration that he cannot refrain from killing Antonio because, as he says, “I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond” (Merchant...

... and Antonio win their suit against Shylock through a similar verbal sorcery. (Some critics even argue that Portia helps Bassanio choose the correct casket through the song that plays during his deliberation.) In betraying her faith and her father, Jessica, on the other hand, echoes Medea as a “young...

... of The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock loses his goods and is forcibly converted, with Gra- ziano protesting that even that is too good for him: 288 Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies / 33.2 / 2003 In christening shalt thou have two godfathers. Had I been judge, thou shouldst have...