Personally, I enjoyed more watching the ‘Merchant of Venice’ play by Shakespeare than reading it. The reason is that I had a hard time understanding the book because of the Early Modern English Shakespeare used.
While reading the book I had to stop several times and look up what certain words meant because there were words that I haven’t heard before and that I didn’t understand. Also, I had to re-read the majority of the passages because I didn’t quite comprehend what was happening. That is something that really bothered me because half of the time I didn’t know what was happening in the play. Watching the film really help me understand the play, which had a very interesting plot and highlighted religious discrimination in society.