The play continues to trade in images of gambling and risky investments, from Shylock’s Old Testament story of sheep-breeding to his daughter Jessica’s prodigal expenditure in Genoa, ‘fourscore ducats at a sitting’ (3.1.103). And although for Karl Marx Shakespeare’s most powerful economic critique was in the morose fable Timon of Athens, perhaps he should have looked instead to The Merchant of Venice. There’s very little ‘use value’ in the commodities and persons connected through financial speculation in this play.
