A noble but impoverished Venetian asks a friend Antonio for a loan to impress an heiress. His friend agrees but is forced to borrow the sum from a cynical Jewish moneylender Shylock & signs a chilling contract to honour the debt with a pound of his own flesh. A complex & controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice explores prejudice & the true nature of justice. ...

In Venice the merchant Antonio borrows money so his friend can woo a beautiful lady. He agrees that if he doesnt repay Shylock the moneylender Shylock can take a pound of his flesh. When Antonios ships sink & he loses his fortune Shylock insists on the gruesome payment... With Notes on Shakespeare & the Globe Theatre & Love Hate & Mercy in The Merchant of Venice. ...

York Notes Advanced offer a fresh & accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of todays A-level & undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis a range of critical perspectives & wider contexts. ...

From the Royal Shakespeare Company -- a fresh new edition of Shakespeares bittersweet comedy of courtship & ethnic tension THIS EDITION
Includes:: * An introduction to The Merchant of Venice by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate * The play -- with clear & authoritative explanatory notes on each page * A helpful scene-by-scene analysis & key facts about the play * An introduction to Shakespeares career & the Elizabethan theatre * A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. This unique edition presents a historical overview of The Merchant of Venice in performance recommends film versions takes a detailed look at specific productions &

Includes:: interviews with two leading directors & two actors -- Darko Tresnjak David Thacker Anthony Sher & Henry Goodman
- so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented & made our contemporary four centuries after his death.



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The Wordsworth Classics Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeares works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeares most popular comedies but it remains deeply controversial. The text may seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly in performance it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock though vanquished in the law-court often triumphs in the theatre. In his intensity he can dominate the play challenging abrasively its romantic & lyrical affirmations. What results is a bitter-sweet drama. Though The Merchant of Venice offers some of the traditional pleasures of romantic comedy it also exposes the operations of prejudice. Thus Shakespeare remains our contemporary. ...

The barrel should have contained books
- instead it held treasure & a severed head... Gil Cunningham & his old acquaintance Glasgow
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Midwife & healer Agatha Kyteler is regarded as a witch by the superstitious villagers of Wefford yet she has no shortage of callers from the humblest villein to the most elegant & wealthy in the area. But when Agatha's body is found frozen & mutilated in a hedge one wintry morning there seems to be no clues as to who could be responsible. Not until a local youth runs away & a hue & cry is raised. Sir Baldwin Furnshill Keeper of the King's Peace is not convinced of the youth's guilt & soon manages to persuade his close friend Simon Puttock bailiff of Lydford Castle to help him continue with the investigation. As they endeavour to find the true culprit the darker side of the village with its suspicion & jealousy emerges. & what is driving the young foreigner son of a nobleman to disappear down towards the moors? ...

During World War 2 the Merchant Navys main task was to run the German blockade bringing essential food fuel & materials to a besieged nation. The civilian crews came from all parts of the Empire & beyond
- more than one in six were killed. Even less is known about the part played by merchantmen in evacuations from countries that were overrun. They saved over 90 000 troops from Dunkirk & went on to rescue more than 200 000 troops & civilians from other parts of France. When Singapore fell the Merchant Navy again helped many to escape. They moved men & materials for the landings of Madagascar North Africa & the Mediterranean coast of Europe. A British government press release reported that 50 000 volunteer British merchant seamen manned over 1 000 ships for D-Day. They also manned salvage ships rescue tugs & other specialist craft. Merchantmen in Action tells the story of these other achievements. Chapters include Singapore; the Norwegian campaign; Dunkirk; the Channel Islands; Greece & Crete; Sicily & Italy; the Normandy landings; the South of France Gibraltar etc with detailed ship listing & human stories.
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These are turbulent times in the world of book publishing. For nearly five centuries the methods & practices of book publishing remained largely unchanged but at the dawn of the twenty-first century the industry finds itself faced with perhaps the greatest challenges since Gutenberg. A combination of economic pressures & technological change is forcing publishers to alter their practices & think hard about the future of the books in the digital age. In this book
- the first major study of trade publishing for more than 30 years
- Thompson situates the current challenges facing the industry in an historical context analysing the transformation of trade publishing in the United States & Britain since the 1960s. He gives a detailed account of how the world of trade publishing really works dissecting the roles of publishers agents & booksellers & showing how their practices are shaped by a field that has a distinctive structure & dynamic. This new paperback edition has been thoroughly revised & updated to take account of the most recent developments including the dramatic increase in ebook sales & its implications for the publishing industry & its future.

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The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health environmental science & issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT tobacco smoke acid rain & global warming. But at the same time a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists & scientific advisers with deep connections in politics & industry ran effective campaigns to mislead the public & deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably the same individuals surface repeatedly
- some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer coal smoke to acid rain & CFCs to the ozone hole. " Doubt is our product " wrote one tobacco executive. These experts supplied it. Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway historians of science roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community showing how ideology & corporate interests aided by a too-compliant media have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era."
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