Merchant of Venice: More than a Romantic Comedy

Hi Everyone! 

When we started to talk about William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, I thought about the economy of that time, so I decided to make a little research about. Finally,  I found a page full of information that I am going to share with you.

So when William Shakespeare never thought that this play would portrayed the first ideas and conceptions of Capitalism.

Yes! This economic model has its roots at the time when William Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice; England was facing an ideological conflict: the Feudalism of the Middle Age was in decadence, while the first green roots of Capitalism started to grow and develop in English lands.

But you may think that there is a problem because I am talking about England, and this play is set in Venice, there is one reason: Italian city-states included Venice were between the most developed mercantile city centers of Europe. In fact, Venice had a reputation of a free-markert environment for commerce.So most all of the mercantile relations took place in Italy and its cities.

Another important point is that the Church feared the emergence of this new socioeconomic system because they had been restricting activities of merchants, for instance, they created The Law of Just Price, in which, merchants could only earn, as much as, the poorest of knights. This law had an obvious aim: to maintain feudal social relations, instead of start using this new model.

We should pay to this information, while we read this play, to understand the context, in which, this romantic comedy took place.