《威尼斯商人》是莎士比亚早期剧作中最富于现实主义气息的一部喜剧。它既满怀热情地歌颂了作者的人文主义理想,又以现实主义方法揭示了当时社会的一些矛盾冲突,通过揭示和批判,同样从另一个侧面深沉地表达了作者的美好理想和愿望。同莎士比亚其它许多剧作一样,《威尼斯商人》也是作者对于底本的精心的再创造。作者所依据的底本原是一部名叫《呆子》的意大利短篇小说,小说讲述一个威尼斯青年出 The Merchant of Venice is the most realistic comedy of Shakespeare’s early plays. It enthusiastically praised the author’s ideal of humanism and revealed some contradictions and conflicts of society at that time by means of realism. From the perspective of revealing and criticizing, it also deeply expressed the author’s good ideals and aspirations from another perspective. Like many other plays in Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice is also an elaborate re-creation of the author. The author is based on the original is a “fool” Italian short story, the novel tells a Venetian youth out