Shakespeare, Jonson, and Venice: Crossing Boundaries in the City

This essay discusses the cultural geography of Venice and its impact on the three plays The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Volpone, in the attempt to assess how much of a cultural context can be alluded to and eventually “imported” into the actual texts. The Venice of Shakespeare and Jonson is a city whose traditional openness to trade, foreign visitors, merchants, and religious beliefs is counterbalanced by the establishment of geographical, social, and psychological boundaries. The chapter investigates the way these boundaries are related to the social conditions of historical Venice at the turn of the seventeenth century, highlighting the fact that Venice as a piece of imaginary geography and country of the mind often conflates with the “real” place as the setting and crossing of borders of the city is both historically documented and dramatically transposed.