Merchant may be one of Shakespeare's more challenging works for the modern reader. The obvious anti-semitism that underlies much of the plot and language and the forceable conversion of Shylock to Christianity near the end of the play is difficult to reconcile in our own age.
Nevertheless Merchant is categorized as a comedy and despite some of it's darker elements retains the classic comic devices of disguises , crossdressing and the denoument of festivity and multiple marriages.
What seperates this from some of the other comedies is the relatively unsympathetic characters of the major protaganists. As they celebrate their weddings and the fact that all is set right in the world the reader is left to wonder about the fate of the ostensibly evil character of Shylock. While the Merchant Antonio's fortunes are restored, Shylock is left without means. A statement perhaps regarding the practice of usury , but to me Antonio's enterprise and his willingness to commit to a bond with the moneylender when it suits him implies that Shylock has earned a rightful place in the economic world of Venice. It is his insistance on the strict adherence to his bond that ultimately leads to his undoing.
As Portia provides an idyllic description on the quality of Mercy, she and her circle dispense no mercy to Shylock in their judgement of him. Would Shylock , in an alternate ending, realizing his stubborness and forgiving the bond and being restored to his place in the community provided a more satisfying result in a comedy?
Merchant is as a result of Shakespeare's choice of ending one of if not the most controversial of his major works and is a play that leaves one in doubt regarding an appropriate reaction to it's ending.

"Merchant" is categorized among Shakespeare's comedies, primarily because of the romantic subplot that ends --as most of the Bard's comedies do-- in serial weddings. But, of course, it is far more than a typical romantic comedy. Shakespeare ostensibly intended to write about the complicated theme of exterior versus interior. The value of gold and money against the value of friendship and loyalty. Shylock, the Jewish moneylender is portrayed as greedy and more concerned about his money than he is about his own daughter.

But modern readers have a hard time sympathizing with Antonio the Merchant and his superficial and hateful friends, Bassanio, Gratiano, et al. They are racist, quick to judge, wasteful, and unconcerned about others. They are delighted to treat Shylock like a dog and to invent phony excuses for their own nasty behavior. Shylock is no innocent victim. Indeed, he brings about his own ruin. But in a play whose key passage is Portia's courtroom discourse on the quality of mercy, mercy and justice are hard to find in any character. Shakespeare's language is as powerful as ever in this play, but the unlikeable Shylock and the venom doled out to him by his sordid persecutors makes this play a stomach-churning challenge.