Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) to an individual's sexual identity but only to specific sexual acts any individual might engage in. As Bray writes: "To talk of an individual of this period as being or not being 'a homosexual' is an anachronism and ruinously misleading. The temptation to debauchery, from which homosexuality was not clearly distinguished, was accepted as part of the common lot ... homosexuality [as understood in 15th-century England] was a sin 'to which men's natural corruption and viciousness [were] prone' " (16–17, Rainolds qtd. in Bray, 17). Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of
Riverside Shakespeare Company in this country. In October 1983, the Riverside Shakespeare Company launched The Shakespeare Project, New York City's first major residency of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company – with Edwin Richfield (of the RSC's highly acclaimed "The Greeks"), Heather Canning (of Paul Scofield's "Macbeth"), Christopher Ravenscroft (from the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Nicholas Nickleby", Jennie Stoller and John Kane (the later two from Peter Brook's landmark production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream") – conducting workshops and seminars and performing "The Merchant of Venice", Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", and the New York premiere of D. H. Lawrence's "The Tarnished Phoenix", with