What happens in The Merchant of Venice

I’m not the biggest fan of The Merchant of Venice. Except for that impossibly moving speech by Shylock, it’s a very hard play to love. I’m hopelessly unqualified to comment on the anti-Semitism that is rampant in the text. I grew up Catholic, nothing I know about Judaism and anti-Semitism is lived experience, and I’m not even a real student of Shakespeare. But it’s rampant. The blood libel. The forced conversion to Christianity. The feminizing of the outsider. The pitting of a sympathetic que...