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
The Maori Merchant of Venice in 2002, while Waihoroi Shortland won the film award for best actor at the New Zealand Film and TV Awards in 2003. "The Merchant of Venice" is not the only Shakespearian play to have been adapted to Māori themes, though it is the only one to have been released as a feature film. Adaptations of "Othello", using a Māori cast and usually set during either the Musket Wars or New Zealand Land Wars of the nineteenth century, have been performed on numerous occasions since the late 1990s, most notably at Christchurch's Court Theatre in 2001. The Maori Merchant of Venice