I am not sure that I would ever think to read Shakespeare for financial advice, and this play pretty well cemented that instinct. It’s perhaps the meanest of the comedies (well, the meanest of the comedies I’m familiar with), specifically singling out Jews and reinforcing all of the stereotypes of the day. There is, to be sure, the sympathy-inducing speech by Shylock in Act 3 (“if you prick us, do we not bleed,” and so forth), and that is in fact why I read this play to begin with: just to get some idea of how that speech fits into the larger scheme of the play. But of course - ultimately Shylock gets his comeuppance which is, naturally, a fiscal one. To add insult to injury (as it were) the device which puts Shylock in his place is just so much bigotry piled on top of bigotry. Shylock is correct, in his way, about the laws of Venice; it just turns out that those laws are flatly privileged against Jews, and thus the hero and his friends are saved. At the end of the day - this work is a rather sad blemish on Shakespeare’s reputation.