The Merchant (play) The Merchant (play) The Merchant is a 1976 play in two acts by the English dramatist Arnold Wesker. It is based on William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", and focus on the Jewish Shylock character, that play's principal antagonist. Wesker began writing the play after seeing a 1973 performance by Laurence Olivier. It premiered in Stockholm in 1976 and was later renamed "Shylock". The play was meant to premiere on Broadway in 1977, but the Broadway production was cancelled due to the death of the plays' lead, multiple Tony Award winner Zero Mostel. Wesker had high hopes that the play
Hamlet's Father Hamlet is sent to Hell for the harm he's caused and will be with his father for eternity. Orson Scott Card has modernized other Shakespeare plays, including "The Taming of the Shrew", "The Merchant of Venice", and "Romeo and Juliet", "so that modern audiences can understand them instantly and easily while still remaining "[sic]" all the flavor of blank verse in Elizabethan English." In his foreword to the "Hamlet's Father", Card says that he could never identify with Hamlet: "I have little interest in a dithering hero; nor am I much inspired by revenge plots." He wrote the story in