The Merchant of Venice Essay

scholasticism. New roads and bridges were being built in Europe to make trade easier. The expansion of the European economy in the 13th and 14th centuries lead to an increased prosperity--- shifting interest and focus on what was becoming a new middle, merchant class. This emphasis on a newly-powerful group of people, though, was a catch-22. The medieval papacy, which had once been a dominant force in society, doling out prizes and punishments to its obedient followers, was forced to step back…

The merchants of these cities had a profitable trading relationship with China and India for 200 years via the Silk Road. When the Mongol Dynasty was overthrown by the insular Ming Dynasty they put an embargo on foreign trade. Without the infrastructure and protection provided by the Mongols, merchants were vulnerable to thieves and the dangers of the road. This made the Silk Road too dangerous to do business…

1. Describe the new social class in twelfth-century Italy called the “urban nobility.” How and why did this social class come into being and how did it affect the movement toward republican government. The urban nobility is a new social class formed by the merger of the Northern Italian feudal nobility and commercial aristocracy. The people in this class were nobles attracted by opportunities of long-distance and maritime trade, rising value of urban real estate, expanding communes etc. who…

In the poem Iphigenia by Tennyson, Alfred, Lord and the painting "The Sacrifice of Iphigenia" by Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista They explain the idea the with all of your actions come consequences and Agamemnon's consequence was the sacrifice of his daughter. They took this story and created how they saw it because told an important lesson that needs to be taught to common day people. Iphigenia was a young girl whose father upset the goddess Artemis during the Trojan war and had to be sacrificed to…

The Humanhood of Emotions Robert Kimbrough’s “Macbeth: The Prisoner of Gender” tells of the struggle of humanity to fall back into a state of being androgynous, and how this affects Macbeth and Lady Macbeth from Macbeth. According to Kimbrough, the ideas of masculinity and femininity were created by humans, with small differences fueling larger stereotypes of the two genders. Yet, from these stereotypes, came a “hierarchical: masculine first, feminine second” (175) relationship, where men being…

According to Erik Gilbert and Jonathon Reynolds, authors of Trading Tastes: Commodity and Cultural Exchange to 1750, “trade would seem to be a basic human urge” (2). It has existed throughout human history, even before written records and farming. Trade has been a critical part of life for as long as we have known. Up to the present day, trade affects the closest parts of our lives. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the toys we play with, the tools we use, and several other things we…

The Elizabethan Era 1. The Elizabethan Era was a period between 1558 and 1603 which was ruled by Queen Elizabeth. Her reign developed in literacy and expansion overseas. The term ‘Elizabethan’ meant someone who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first. People such as William Shakespeare were an Elizabethan. 2. During the Elizabethan, England’s greatest rivalries were Spain. The war took place in between the years 1586 and 1603. Since England was a Protestant country which is a…

prison in Kentucky has a program for inmates that teaches them the different works of Shakespeare. They have the opportunity to perform and share the experience with other inmates. “Vaughn and 23 other inmates became characters in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, reviewing their lines in the final moments before the curtain drew back on opening night.” (Shakespeare Behind Bars Par.3). The inmates don’t get any other reward for participating in this program other than the satisfaction of…

Stories have a weird way of changing how people think. Several stories have influenced my life. For example Shakespeare 's “Merchant of Venice” is a story that showed me that there isn’t always a bad guy and a good guy. This story taught me that the lines between right and wrong may at times be blurred. Shirley Climo’s Cobweb Christmas, which tells the story of how tinsel came about, taught me that all creatures are important no matter how small, even spiders. But some stories taught bigger,…

observations. As stated before, Lime Street contained residents who had worked together to work on their experiments; however, immigrants, or “Strangers”, were also a part of the scientific community. “The merchants, skilled craftsmen, and simple tradesmen who came from exotic locales like Venice and Antwerp made an impression on London’s English residents that was far deeper than their relatively small numbers might suggest.” As Harkness stated with the population of immigrants in the city, it…