imagine...: Season 29, Episode 1

29 - 1: Shylock's Ghost

Alan Yentob travels to the ghetto in Venice with award-winning novelist Howard Jacobson as he embarks on a retelling of Shakespeare's most performed play, The Merchant of Venice. Through a series of lively -often fiery - interviews, they examine the charge of anti-Semitism against Shakespeare, whose character Shylock remains one of the most odious and divisive fictional Jews in history.

How did the moneylender from Venice become such a useful propaganda tool in Nazi Germany? And how much of a liberty will Jacobson be taking when he uproots the action to modern-day Alderley Edge, and audaciously reinterprets the infamous 'pound of flesh'?

Interviewees include Antony Sher, Anthony Julius and Stephen Greenblatt.