Shylock is one of the great figures of world literature, and of world mythology. Is he villain or victim?; tragic or comic? John Gross traces the elements that made up Shakespeare's portrait, and follows Shylock's fortunes in the theatres and at the hands or writers and critics. He ranges from the Bible to the Venetian ghetto, from Elizabethan money-lenders to Nazi Germany, and from Karl Marx to C.S. Lewis. The book won both the "Yorkshire Post" Book of the Year Award and the Royal Society of Literature Award in 1992.