 In 1923 a German adaption of T"he Merchant of Venice" was made called the "Jew of Mestri" with Harry Liedtke as Bassanio.This adaptation attempts to make Shakespeare's play more similar to "Il Pecorone", one of the inspirations for "The Merchant of Venice," however, Bassanio's character is very similar to the Shakespeare version.One major difference is that in the film is that the characters in the German version have the same names as the Shakespeare characters, but in the American version the names are changed to the names in "Il Pecorone".