Welles was fascinated for his entire life by the role of Shylock. He played the part onstage at the theater, he recorded it on an album, and he played it both on film and for television. The film shows the degree to which Welles concentrated on certain topics and issues, constantly developing variants. Here, various materials where Welles recites the words of Shylock have been compiled: the recording of an album (1938), an appearance on a television show (1967), a fragment from a film adaptation of the play (1969), and several unused clips of the Shylock monologue from a staging in France (1971) and in Spain (1973). The sound was digitally remastered, without any changes in the original voice modulation. In regard to the visual material, the dropouts were decreased and the asynchronous points in the editing were eliminated. No corrections were made to color or image quality. The drawing by Welles that was edited in was taken from the volume The Merchant of Venice, originally published at the same time as the album.

Stefan Droessler