One of theater’s most enduring and perennially fascinating characters, Shylock was a breakthrough for Shakespeare, an early realization of the Bard’s power to create dramatic voices that speak for hidden, unconscious, even inhuman impulses—characters larger than the plays that contain them. But what explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare’s plays? Kenneth Gross posits in this daring and revisionist book that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself.
Read the press release for Shylock Is Shakespeare.