Tubal, Shylock, and the Myth of Venice
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Peter D. Usher
Peter D. Usher is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The Pennsylvania State University and a former assistant to the Director of the Penn State Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities. He holds a Masters degree in applied mathematics from the University of the Free State in South Africa, and a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University. He is the author of
Hamlet’s Universe; Shakespeare and the Dawn of Modern Science ; andShakespeare and Saturn: Accounting for Appearances (San Diego: Aventine Press, 2006).
Abstract
In Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice, Tubal’s chief function seems to be to furnish cash for Shylock’s loan to Antonio. However, I argue that when Shylock approaches Tubal for money, Tubal does not confront Shylock but vows instead to establish conditions by which to convict the moneylender of intent to harm Antonio. For this to work, Tubal needs the connivance of the Duke, which gainsays one component of the myth of Venice that holds that the city-state’s legal system is above reproach.
About the author
Peter D. Usher is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The Pennsylvania State University and a former assistant to the Director of the Penn State Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities. He holds a Masters degree in applied mathematics from the University of the Free State in South Africa, and a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University. He is the author of Hamlet’s Universe; Shakespeare and the Dawn of Modern Science; and Shakespeare and Saturn: Accounting for Appearances (San Diego: Aventine Press, 2006).
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Law and Borders: Territory, Space and Time between Diversity and Protection
- The Law and the Line: The Literary Mirroring of a Paradigm
- Half of a Yellow Sun or the Quest for (and Repression of) New Boundaries in Post-Colonial Nigeria: An International Law Analysis
- Freedom’s Frontiers: The Travails of LGBT Travelers
- Queering the Border: Walter Pater’s “Sebastian Van Storck” and the Apocalypse of the Self
- Donʼt Ask Us for Lex. Body Exhibition and Forms of Exclusion
- Research
- A Revenger’s Tragedy
- Translation, Copyright & Authority
- Semantics of Chaos: Modernity, Law and the Commons
- Tubal, Shylock, and the Myth of Venice
- Law Meets Literature: Raphael Lemkin and Genocide Studies
- Literature, Art and the Democracy to Come: A Legal Approach to The Danish Girl
- Book Reviews
- Dale Barleben: Staging the Trials of Modernism. Testimony and the British Modern Literary Consciousness
- Lucky Belder Helle Porsdam: Negotiating Cultural Rights. Issues at Stake, Challenges and Recommendations
