Dr. Jennifer Wells, former Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, takes us through the social, economic, and political landscape of Elizabethan England as Aaron Henne, the writer and director of our latest work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad, and artistic director of theatre dybbuk, illuminates that history's impact on our interpretation of Shakespeare's Merchant.

This episode is presented in collaboration with the George Washington University Department of History. 

This is the third and final episode in our series connected to concepts that intersect with The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other.”