(Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 2008-08) Rinesi, Eduardo
The Merchant of Venice was written by Shakespeare as a romantic commedy, but it is much easier for us to read it and understand it as a tragedy: as the tragedy of two lonely men in an unfair and cruel world. This is so because we can’t accept what is
necessary to accept to make it work as a commedy, but also because –as it is always the case in Shakespeare– the text is full of
tragic elements living together whith the comic ones. In this article it is suggested that the decission about how is it to be read this drama –or any other shakespearean drama– is less an aesthetic decission than a political
one, and that political theory may be enriched by a reflection on this kind of problems.