The Merchant of Venice "The Merchant of Venice" and "Othello" in his 2014 comic novel "The Serpent of Venice", in which he makes Portia (from "The Merchant of Venice") and Desdemona (from "Othello") sisters. All of the characters come from those two plays with the exception of Pocket, the Fool, who comes from Moore's earlier novel based on "King Lear". Naomi Alderman's "The Wolf in the Water" is a radio-play first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2016. The play continues the story of Shylock's daughter Jessica, who lives in an anti-semitic Venice and practices her Jewish faith in secret. Part of the BBC's
Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) ultimately stems from medieval archetypal plots and characters. The Christian in love with a Jewess appears frequently in "exemplum" from the 13th to the 15th century. Beatrice D. Brown, in her 1929 article, "Mediaeval Prototypes of Lorenzo and Jessica", finds the most direct match in "… MS. Royal 7 D. 1, a collection of theological pieces probably compiled by a Dominican friar at or near Cambridge in the thirteenth century." It contains a spendthrift Christian lover, the fair Jewess, the rich old father, the lovers robbing the father, and the father's conflicted grief over his daughter's betrayal and the loss