The episode title is from Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.
Ant Donahue- Antonio/Anthony is the merchant in The Merchant of Venice, as well as a character in Much Ado, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar and Henry VIII. Shylock wanted a pound of flesh from Antonio when he defaults on a loan.
- Nate = Nathaniel is in Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labours Lost.
- Cynthia Sly= Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker in The Taming of the Shrew.
- Touchstone Farm = Touchstone the clown from As You Like It
- Dogberry = Dogberry from Much Ado, who gives evidence as a nightwatchman. He also confuses his words as this one does.
- Portia = Shylock's daughter in Merchant of Venice.
- The owner of the poultry farm, Dennis Regan, is a merchant as well, and deals in "pounds of flesh".
- Regan= cruel daughter character in King Lear
- Frank calls Rupert Shylock "a regular Fagin". Fagin and Shylock are both famously controversial depictions of Jewish characters in English fiction.
- Rupert Shylock is a lawyer. Shakespeare's character of the same name wanted his "pound of flesh" from Antonio, which is what some cynics say lawyers want as well.
- Stacey Lamb = Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare were the abridged version for Victorian children.
- "Grief fills the room up of my absent child" King John
- "This growing image of thy fiend-like face" Titus Andronicus
- "Thou art thy mother's glass" Sonnet 3
- "I fear I am not in my perfect mind." King Lear
- "To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores" The Winter's Tale
In Lu's kitchen, when the witness first sees the barrister (Portia), she says "Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime," which is a quote from Shakespeare's Sonnet III
In an episode whose theme is parent/child relationships:
- Cynthia Sly's quotation about grieving over a lost child is said by Constance in King John.
- "I fear I am not in my perfect mind" said by King Lear to his daughter Cordelia.
- "unpathed waters and strange shores" said to Perdita who has been long separated from her erring father.
Tessa Peake Jones stars in this episode which takes its title from the Merchant of Venice. Robson Green starred in Northern lights with Mark Benton, and Al Weaver starred in the Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino. These are links with Grantchester.
This episode features former Only Fools and Horses (1981) co-stars Denis Lill (Alan Parry) and Tessa Peake-Jones (Racquel Turner).