Howard Jacobson: Shylock is My Name (2016)

Howard Jacobson: Shylock is My Name, one of the Talks and Screenings at the Folger, was held in the Elizabethan Theatre on Monday, March 14, 2016 at 7:30 pm.

Launched in October of 2015, the Hogarth Shakespeare series has offered 21st century readers modern-day re-imaginings of Shakespeare’s most renowned plays, authored by writers including Jeanette Winterson, Anne Tyler, and Margaret Atwood. On October 11, 2016, Hogarth Shakespeare released another installment in this celebrated series, Shylock is My Name, a re-telling of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Howard Jacobson.

This conversation with the writer was moderated by playwright/director Aaron Posner, whose new work District Merchants, a retelling of The Merchant of Venice set in Reconstruction-era Washington, was part of the 2015-2016 Folger Theatre season.

Copies of Shylock is My Name were available for purchase and signing at the event.

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson.

Howard Jacobson has written fourteen novels and five works of non-fiction. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question and was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for his novel, J. Howard Jacobson’s first book, Shakespeare’s Magnanimity, written with the scholar Wilbur Sanders, was a study of four Shakespearean heroes. Now he has returned to the Bard with a contemporary interpretation of The Merchant of Venice.