The Merchant of Venice (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)

In The Merchant of Venice the penniless but attractive Bassanio seeks and finally wins the hand of the fabulously wealthy Portia. But even as the play provokes laughter it also provokes something disturbing as Bassanios courtship is actually financed by the magnificent villain Shylock the moneylender -- the focus of anti-Semitic sentiment and one of the most controversial yet strangely sympathetic of Shakespeares characters whose actions and whose treatment in the play are still debated to this day.