Imagine going out to see The Merchant of Venice one evening with the full expectation that Shylock, as on so many previous nights, would be played for laughs. Then, imagine your surprise at seeing Shylock performed seriously, with real menace. Danny O'Quinn walks us all through another episode of Strange Shakespeares at the Folger Shakespeare Library blog. And while you're there, catch up on David F. Taylor's "Macbeth and the Even Weirder Sisters," with reflections on the way the witches were and are about "defusing the power of what threatens us because it’s not like us."