ABSTRACT This article reads Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice through a framework of critical whiteness studies, addressing the invisibility by which whiteness operates as a racial formation. Using the Aarne-Thompson taxonomy of folk-tale types, it analyzes the structural parallels between Merchant and the hyperbolically Orientalist 1924 silent film The Thief of Bagdad, with which it shares the archetypal plot motif of the Suitor Test. In articulating the unacknowledged debts of both the silent film and the Shakespeare play to Islamic folklore, the article opens up a reading of Merchant in which Portia and Bassanio are made visible as figures of white feminine virtuousness and masculine entitlement. It argues that whiteness in The Merchant of Venice is dramatized as a way of being, a set of values and behaviors (hazarding with others’ resources, re-casting good luck as moral virtue) rewarded and celebrated in the text. The article culminates in a new reading of Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech as an apologia for nascent ideologies of whiteness in Shakespeare.

中文翻译：

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白度：巴格达的小偷和威尼斯的商人

摘要本文通过批判性的白度研究框架阅读了莎士比亚的《威尼斯商人》，探讨了白度作为种族形态的隐形性。它使用民间故事类型的Aarne-Thompson分类法，分析了商人与夸张的东方主义1924年无声电影《巴格达的小偷》之间的结构相似之处，它与《欲望测试》的原型情节主题息息相关。在阐明无声电影和莎士比亚戏剧对伊斯兰民俗的欠债方面，这篇文章开启了对商人的解读，其中波蒂亚和巴萨尼奥被视为白人女性的贤惠和阳刚之气的象征。它认为，《威尼斯商人》中的白化被戏剧化为一种存在方式，一套价值观和行为（危害他人的资源，重新铸造好运为道德美德）在文本中得到了奖励和庆祝。这篇文章最终以重新解读波西亚的“仁慈品质”演讲作为莎士比亚新生白人意识形态的道歉。