for me it is still brutally misogynistic).

To be honest, now that I've started on my rant, Even The Merchant of Venice seems soiled to me because of the arrogant nastiness of Antonio towards Shylock - the easy acceptance by all the play's 'positive' characters of the 'naturally' lower place of the Jewish money-man.
I suppose this is what comes of bringing a mind brought up in the late twentieth century into contact with an oeuvre from the late sixteenth..


You are not alone in this assessment, sunshine. I loathed the MoV, and railed long and hard against its Anti-Semitism to my English teacher, providing him with the sort of world-weary amusement you described earlier. The Shrew was beyond me, as I could not stomach the way that it celebrated misogyny, as if it were the only right and proper way to treat women. The first time I read it I was bewildered, unable to understand how any 20th century minds could enjoy it.