Explain the title of The Quality of Mercy.

The title of Faye Kellerman’s novel about William Shakespeare is a quotation from his play The Merchant of Venice. “The quality of mercy” is a key element of a speech that the protagonist, Portia, gives while disguised as a male lawyer, Balthazar, during a trial. In Merchant, a Jewish moneylender named Shylock is trying to recover a debt that Antonio owes him. In helping to decide the case, Balthazar argues that mercy should be taken into consideration when dispensing justice, pointing out that bestowing it is even better than receiving it. Kellerman’s novel is based on an actual court case during the reign of Elizabeth I that involved a Jewish defendant, Roderigo Lopez, who has been suggested as the person on whom Shakespeare modeled Shylock. A further plot complication involves Lopez’s daughter, Rebecca, who spends part of the book disguised as a man but also has an affair with Shakespeare.