Word: merchant
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Timeless and all embracing as Shakespeare seems, he sometimes shows himself to be, unmistakably and unattractively, a man of his times. The Merchant of Venice is so bluntly anti-Semitic that most modern directors infuse their staging with irony, distorting the play into a covert dissent against bigotry. Just as problematic is The Taming of the Shrew, which treats women as economic or sexual prizes and delights in detailing how one husband breaks his wife's spirit through starvation, humiliation, irrationality and hints of violence. Most contemporary renditions warp the play into a feminist satire...
...least one Square merchant said he wouldwait until the tax sets in before worrying...
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century, Britain became famous for its merchant adventurers, bold entrepreneurs who sailed to the ends of the earth in search of wealth. If that wealth happened to be taken from a Spanish treasure fleet, or if there was a whiff of privateering and freebootery about their operations, that was all part of the game...
...cherish it as a vivid, visible symbol of their faith. Further, it is a cultural artifact representative of its time and thus has historical validity. Finally, it is inappropriate to revise a work of art according to contemporary attitudes. Jews are depicted hardly less stereotypically in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice or Richard Strauss's opera Salome. It is hard to see how any version can ever satisfy all. One possible solution, briefly bruited in 1977, is to revert to Ferdinand Rosner's 1750 version, which makes Satan Christ's principal enemy...
...first the deal sounds like a bad perestroika joke: How many bottles of Pepsi can a Soviet citizen buy with a merchant ship and a case of vodka? But the barter agreement that PepsiCo and the Soviet Union signed last week is worth a serious $3 billion. In the largest deal ever struck with an American company, the Soviets will trade ships and spirits for expanded Pepsi production. The complex barter system was necessary because the ruble is not readily convertible to Western currency. PepsiCo, which currently produces 40 million cases of soft drinks in the U.S.S.R. each year, will...