Christopher Webber wrote: >"The Merchant of Venice" is an excellent case in point. Many theatrical >practitioners feel (I would be one of them) that the play is unperformable >nowadays without offending against either (a) aesthetic or (b) ethical >integrity. It is impossible to avoid nailing your colours to one of these >twin masts. You can't choose both. I think I attended a performance where the director successfully walked that tight rope recently here in Washington. Shylock was shown as a social outcast for being a Jew, his daughter a disillusioned bride upon realizing that she had been induced into an elopement simply to fill her suitor's coffers and to gratify his desire to further humiliate her father, all of which was presented without losing sight of the horror of Shylock's planned revenge. But to keep this post musical, I must remind all that Shakespeare's *Merchant* must be preserved as the source of the text for Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Serenade to Music". Walter Meyer