The Merchant of Venice: A Tragic Play In my opinion the play The Merchant of Venice is a tragic one which is discised as being comic. Many factors of this play are derived from the current voice of situation. The Merchant of Venice could be looked at as more tragic because of the negative intents from some of the characters in the play. Greed and deception are just a couple of the main features from where many of the decisions are derived. For example, revenge was an intent that Sylock had against for Antonio, only to say the least for, greed... Antonio is being a set victim for revenge because of his deception against Shylock, and also for prior intent to do. If