Orem Library

This is one of Shakespeare's darkest comedies, for the romantic story of a young man, Bassanio, who has squandered his fortune and must borrow money to woo the wealthy lady he loves is set against the most disturbing story of the Jewish moneylender Shylock and his demand for the "pound of flesh" owed him by the Venetian merchant, Antonio, who has fallen into Shylock's debt. Here pathos and farce combine with moral complexity and romantic entanglement...

A young woman's elopement with a dark-skinned foreigner. An evil manipulator, dead set on bloody revenge. A noble warrior, fatally consumed by jealousy. Shakespeare's play about the Moor who "loved not wisely but too well," comes to life in this intensely thrilling and beautifully illustrated retelling.

"Othello, a Moorish general in the service of Venice, has married Desdemona, beautiful daughter of a Venetian Senator. But Iago, Othello's malignant ensign, is determined to destroy their happiness"--Container.

Shylock has grown wealthy through money-lending, the only profession open to Jewish businessmen of the time, but faces indignity and danger when he ventures beyond the Jewish quarter. In the same city, though in a different world, lives Antonio, a Christian merchant beset by worry over the fate of his trading vessels and his increasing isolation from his best friend Bassanio. The younger man has fallen in love with the beautiful Portia, and seeks...

Shylock loans money to a man he despises, the merchant Antonio, only if a pound of Antonio's flesh will be due, in a court of law, upon default. Antonio borrows the money so that his friend Bessanio can travel to woo the woman he loves, Portia, whose freedom to marry is bound up in a fairy-tale decree of her father's.

To overcome the emotional scars of her own past, Vanessa Fullerton recounts her mother Serena's extraordinary life and tragic death.

A millionaire pretends to be dying and summons three former mistresses to his bedside in Venice. He then lies back to enjoy their greedy scramble to inherit his fortune. One of them suddenly dies mysteriously, and an elaborate murder scheme unfolds.

Based on the novella by Thomas Mann, this late masterpiece from Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the allure of beauty, and the inescapability of death. Setting Mann's story of queer desire and bodily decay against the music of Gustav Mahler, it is one of cinema's most exalted literary adaptations.

A married couple takes an extended trip to Venice following a family tragedy. While in that elegantly decaying city, they have a series of inexplicable, terrifying, and increasingly dangerous experiences.