Economy of Love as Manifested in William Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Merchant of Venice
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Abstract
This paper tries to make a study of William Shakespeare’s above plays with reference to his contemporary period’s views on money and love. Economy is inadvertently linked with love as we find during the time of Shakespeare. Two of the most important plays of Shakespeare – King Lear (1606) and The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598) shows how love is tested by economic considerations and how relationships get complicated when the two collide with each other. Market economics of the public sphere questions the love of the private sphere. Here love is equated to lust. This acquisitiveness is characteristic of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age with commerce and trade flourishing and the age itself being termed as the Golden Age. Gender roles are redefined in such a mercantile situation and the place of women in such society become endangered.
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End Notes:
Gupta,Jayati ed. Reading Poems: An Annotated Anthology. Calcutta, Macmillan India Limited,2002,p.43,LL-12
Ibid.
Jonson,Ben. “Come my Celia” Source: Web
Kermode,Frank ed. King Lear:A Casebook
Gill,Roma ed. The Merchant of Venice. India, Oxford University Press,1995. All the quotations of the above book are taken from this book.
Muir,Kenneth ed. King Lear. London, Methuen,1977. All the quotations of the above play are taken from this book.
Muir,Kenneth ed. King Lear. London, Methuen,1977,p.xxix-xxx
Hamilton,Edith ed. Mythology. USA, Penguin Books,1969
Jones,Katherine Duncan ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Delhi, East West Press,1998
Works Cited:
Gill,Roma ed. The Merchant of Venice. India, Oxford University Press,1995.
Gupta,Jayati ed. Reading Poems: An Annotated Anthology. Calcutta, Macmillan India Limited,2002,p.43,LL-12
Hamilton,Edith ed. Mythology. USA,Penguin Books,1969
Jones,Katherine Duncan ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Delhi,East West Press,1998
Jonson,Ben. “Come my Celia” Source: Web
Kermode,Frank ed. King Lear:A Casebook
Muir,Kenneth ed. King Lear. London, Methuen,1977
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