thoughts on The Merchant of Venice

This past week I have been focusing a lot of my time on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice for my Intro to Shakespeare class. We've read the play, watched the movie and are working on an online digital project where we got a page from the original folio and had to digitize its, color coding some words/ themes and adding analysis. This project made me think of this class and online publishing in particular. This made me think of online textbook publishing in particular. Digital textbooks often include hyper links and footnotes. Some key words are also highlighted in here texts.
I found The Merchant of Venice to be a nice change from the previous plays that I read which we're mostly tragedies. The happy ending (that is for everyone except Shylock) was nicer than some of the plays, most noticeably King Lear and Othello. Despite the wealth, happiness and weddings, there were still man social issues with the play.
I didn't like how Shylock was portrayed as a villain because he was being discriminated against by other characters throughout the entire play. Antonio goes as far as spitting on Shylock and verbally attacking him, but still has the audacity to ask him for money so Bassanio can go marry Portia. And speaking of Portia, she is extremely wealthy but does not help Shylock get the money he is owed for lending it to Antonio. She has the means to pay Shylock (which would be the right thing to do) but instead goest to court as a pretend lawyer to make sure Shylock never got what was rightfully his.
I think this play was about wealth and greed.
I did find the read to be engaging and it was an easier plot to understand that some of the other Shakespeare plays that I have read. But there were still just some aspects of it that I didn't like.