The Banished Heart

Why did Shakespeare write The Merchant of Venice? What went on in the rehearsal room as Shakespeare, James and Richard Burbage, and the company's clown, Will Kempe, raced to get their play about a Jew on stage - before the trial of the Jew Rodrigo Lopez, who was being accused of attempting to poison Elizabeth I, came to its tragic conclusion?      For Paul Hoffmann, a Jewish student at the University of Berlin in 1933, finding the answers to these questions isn't just academic - it could mean the difference between life and death.