"The Merchant of Venice", one of William Shakespeare's best-known plays, gets the graphic novel treatment, courtesy of Campfire Classics, adapter John McDonald, and illustrator Vinod Kumar. The play offers a carefully crafted and extremely clever plot and several strongly-developed characters, including Shylock the Jewish money-lender and Portia the beautiful, rich and intelligent heiress. It would be a matter of debate as to whether the play is best characterized as a romantic or a tragic comedy.
As the story opens, the merchant Antonio agrees to lend his spendthrift friend Bassanio enough money to woo the rich heiress Portia of Belmont. As Antonio's funds are tied up in several trade ventures at sea, he borrows the money from Shylock, a man whom he openly despises as a moneylender who charges interest. Shylock, no friend of Antonio, inserts a potentially cruel penalty clause in the contract, which Antonio agrees to.
Bassanio will hurry on to Belmont to woo Portia. To succeed, he must face a challenging test of judgement devised by Portia's departed father. On the heels of that test will come news that Antonio has forfeited his bond to Shylock, and faces a difficult day in court. There, his life will depend on the skill of a young and unknown lawyer and his law clerk.
"The Merchant of Venice" includes a number of sub-plots which add to the comedy and to the romance of the basic story. The artwork of this graphic novel is quite good, and it is generally easy to follow the story. This particular version of the play has adapted Shakespeare's Elizabethan English into modern English, which removes an element of the grace inherent in several famous speeches. A second questionable adaptation is the blurring of Shylock's identity as a Jew, which also blurs the rather disturbing anti-Semiticism of the original play and robs the plot of some of its meaning, and its controversy. Cautiously recommended.
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