scholarly journals Befriending the Commedia dell'Arte of Flaminio Scala. By Natalie Crohn Schmitt . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014; pp. xiii + 328, 4 illustrations. $80 cloth, $79.95 e-book. - The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell'Arte Stage. By Rosalind Kerr . Toronto Italian Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015; pp. xiii + 216, 25 illustrations. $65 cloth, $65 e-book. - Commedia dell'Arte and the Mediterranean: Charting Journeys and Mapping ‘Others.’ By Erith Jaffe-Berg . Transculturalisms, 1400–1700. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate [now Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge], 2015; pp. xi + 174, 9 illustrations. $104.95 cloth, $104.95 e-book.

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-111
Author(s):  
Domenico Pietropaolo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Italian Studies ◽  
The Mediterranean

Richard Mackenney, Venice as the Polity of Mercy: Guilds, Confraternities, and the Social Order, c. 1250–c. 1650. Toronto Italian Studies. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2019, xiii, 471.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 551-552
Author(s):  
Thomas Willard
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Italian Studies ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Town ◽  
The University

Shakespeare is well known to have set two of his plays in and around Venice: The Merchant of Venice (1596) and The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603). The first is often remembered for its famous speech about “the quality of mercy,” delivered by the female lead Portia in the disguise of a legal scholar from the university town of Padua. The speech helps to spare the life of her new husband’s friend and financial backer against the claims of the Jewish moneylender Shylock. The play has raised questions for Shakespearean scholars about the choice of Venice as an open city where merchants of all nations and faiths would meet on the Rialto while the city’s Senate, composed of leading merchants, worked hard to keep it open to all and especially profitable for its merchants. Those who would like to learn more about the city’s development as a center of trade can learn much from Richard Mackenney’s new book.

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