This project attempts to illuminate Shakespeare's characters and their interrelationships by allowing you (the reader) to participate in an interactive staging of the pivotal scene of the play, Act 4.1.  You will play the role of a young merchant on the scene of Antonio's trial.  There, you can observe the principal characters of the play, discuss various topics with them when they are not otherwise occupied, and observe the drama as it plays out before you.

To play through the story, you will need to have the Java run-time environment installed on your computer.  On the off-chance that you do not have it already, you can acquire it from http://java.sun.com.  You will want to download and install "J2SE 5.0" for your computing platform of choice.

Please take a moment to read the instructions page before attempting to interact with the story.