"The Merchant of Venice,"1600: comedy, Shylock, a Jew who attempts to use justice to enforce a terrible, murderous revenge on Antonio, the Christian Merchant, but is foiled by Portia, in disguise as a lawyer, who turns the tables on the Jew by a legal quibble and has him at the mercy of the court.
"King Lear", 1608: For Shakespeare's contemporaries, Lear, King of Britain, was thought to have been a historical monarch. For Shakespeare, although he gave the play something of a chronicle structure, the interest lay not in political events but in the personal character of the King. The main theme is the various stage's of Lear's spiritual progress. He learns the value of patience and the worth of "unaccommodated man." He begins to realize his own faults as a King and almost understand his failure as a father.