Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) critics have historically viewed the character negatively, highlighting her theft of her father's gold, her betrayal of his trust, and her apparently selfish motivations and aimless behaviour. In her 1980 survey, "In Defense of Jessica: The Runaway Daughter in "The Merchant of Venice"", Camille Slights calls out Arthur Quiller-Couch's opinion in the 1926 "The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare" as an extreme but representative example: Slights sees this as a consequence of sympathetic readings of Shylock, where the play is seen primarily as exposing Christian hypocrisy, and his actions merely natural responses to ostracism and prejudice. In such a reading Jessica's
Timeline of Shakespeare criticism Jonson's concept of Shakespeare as the "child of nature." Bevill Higgons: From the preface to the revision of "The Merchant of Venice" (1701) by George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne. Here, Shakespeare is made both to recognize his own lack of sophistication and to approve the neoclassical polish added by Granville. Joseph Addison, 1712: "Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch... his reader's imagination, and made him capable of succeeding, where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his