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leynes's Reviews > The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
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The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare which is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. This play is about a merchant in Venice (who would have guessed that, huh?) who must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender.
At one level of response The Merchant of Venice will appear to be a romantic weaving of tales without logic; Portia's father may have denied some of our concerns for a lover's freedom of choice in his beloved; the conditions of Shylock's bond may have violated most known legal codes; but the coherence of the play, the movement of the dramatic poetry, takes us beyond these doubts and cravings.
We are convinced of the essential sanity of the casket-test for Portia's suitors; we fear Shylock's bond and anticipate tragedy, however merry its terms may be; we accept the seriousness and technical gravity of the trial scene, whatever doubts the juristic side of our minds may plead; the dignity and grotesquerie in Shylock maintain a portrait of the Jew through which we assent today to the dark problems of race and racial representation in media.
These are no fairy-tale matters, though the fairy-tale tone is frequently there. It is usually unsafe to mistake Shakespeare's lightness of touch for levity, or assume that an illogicl fantasy, as early as The Merchant of Venice or as late as The Tempest, is a mere tale, a moment of relaxation.
Jewry and usury in the Elizabethan era
It is clear that The Merchant of Venice is much preoccupied with two matters of Elizabethan concern: Jewry and usury. So pervasive are these two questions that it is dangerously possible to assume that the play is about race and greed; it is all too easy to explore these Elizabethan aspects of the play in terms which refer to our present concern with racial and economic conflict. The greater, then, is our obligation to be clear about the intellectual and emotional limits within Shakespeare could have handled these questions.
It is popularly assumed that the Elizabethan attitude to Jewry was one of uniform hostility and that the execration of Lopez was wholly characteristic of the Christian rejection of all Jews. This is in many respects a false assumption. Raphael Holinshed, chronicling the coronation of Richard I in 1189, indicates an aspect of the medieval temper, condemned a riot that broke out against Jews. He goes on to admit that 'the transgessors' were not punished, since the greater number of Richard's subjects hated the Jews for their 'obstinate forwardness', though the king halted the persecution, 'and so they were restored to peace after they had sustained infinite damage'.
The treatment of usury, trade, debt, and interest is still more ambigious, for Antonio and Syhlock live in a world removed from each other. Antonio lives by trade � he exacts no interest, while Shylock thrives by no other means. Yet the ironies of the play depend on the mutual contempt for each other's way of 'thrift'. And the irony is redoubled, since each is self-justified and condemns the other on sound theological grounds.
This confrontation of principles, an argument on the moral justification or condemnation of usury, proceeds without the bland irony with which the medieval mind faced the hard facts of trade in a sinful world. The irony in The Merchant of Venice is quite different; if Antonio rejects interest, his Christian friends in Venice have no hesitation in living upon 'excess'. Indeed 16th century Venice was notable for its corruption through the covetous pursuit of trade and 'venture'.
On the other side Shylock proceeds on the assumption morally grounded, that interest on money-lending is legitimate thrift. Shakespeare's Venice, then, is nicely and justly poised between Christians on the one hand whose acquisitve practice by no means squares with their many protestations against usury, and Jews on the other whose disenchanted commercial dealings rest on the double pollars of expediency and Levitical Law.
It is useful to have a background of Elizabethan moral writing on economic matters as a foil to the dramatist's constant reprehension of usury and to estimate the social conservatism of certain dramatists, in their attitude towards an emerging capitalist society. But The Merchant of Venice bears not the least resemblance to a pamphlet on usury. Shakespeare rarely takes sides and it is certainly rash to assume that he here takes an unambiguous stand for Antonio and against Shylock.
And certainly, judging from his comedies as a whole, Shakespeare makes no simple or innocent gesture of assent towards any of the three main ways to wealth in his day � the land, foreign trade, or financial exchange.
Sources
The most immediate source for The Merchant of Venice must be assumted to be The Jew of Malta and the impetus it gave Shakespeare in the exploration of the relationships between an alien and a settled society. Shylocks 'merry bond' has sources both in fantasy and legal fact. In Eastern and Western tales we frequently find a surety in the form of a contract to give up a portion of the debtor's living flesh. The next propable source of the play is Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecorone (1558), which contains a strangely sinister version of the wooing, a very full version of the Bond, and closes with the incident of the ring. This makes Shakespeare seem a little less original, because he didn't come up with all of these clever ideas himself, but still he wrapped them up in the most beautiful verse ever written.
Analysis of the trial scene
Though Shakespeare made elsewhere pointed and mature refernces to the subject of law, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice focuses more aspects of the matter than any other dramatist or poet succeeded in uniting in one work. The whole legal structure of the play is, of course, fallacious. No system of law permits a man to place his own person in jeopardy, for a bond like Antonio's is 'against public policy' and 'contrary to good morals'.
The dramatic structure of the fourth Act assumes a relationship between Shylock and Antonio which, described in legal terms, is grotesque in its complexity: the scene opens with Shylock as plaintiff pursuing an action for breach of contract; it ends with Antonio as plaintiff in a case which Shylock defends himself against a charge of criminal conspiracy against a Venetian citizen. The impossible change of plea, the exchange of plaintiff and defendant, the intervention of Portia, these all confound strict principles.
As the scene proceeds, forms of law are violated with a consistency and irony which argues expert knowledge on the dramatist's part and the audience's knowledgeable participation. The result unites contrary and even conflicting attitudes. There is no easy moral decision, no comfortable discrimination for the audience between gentle Christian and rapacious Jew; on the contrary it can be justly argued that the trial is rigged and our sympathies therefore enlisted on behalf of Shylock.
The quality of justice, mercy, and humility are constant Leitmotiven throughout the play. As our compassion therefore is demanded by Shylock's plight, and a profound unease experienced through the behaviour of the Christians.
What form may mercy take, if it is not to destroy the necessary rigours of justice? The conclusion of this argument, embedded within the trial scene, is ultimately Portia's conviction that if man were to receive impartial justice and no more, in the perfect clarity of divine judgement 'none of us should see salvation'. In face of this fact, human justice must do the best it can with its imperfect instruments.
There remain the spiritual penalities, Shylock shall be cured of his Jewry (yikes!), and in their several degrees we find them repugnant. But this is precisely the point at which we feel most forcibly the tragedy of the play. At the conclusion of the trial scene the props that sustain Shylock's life are removed more effectually than if he had been broken financially. He has failed to trap Antonio to his greatly desired death, he has been affronted at every point in his racial and religious pride, and he makes his exit broken as much by the apparent magnanimity of the court as by any physical adversity.
Representation of women
Portia in The Merchant of Venice is a woman of decisice action and concern for legal and social equity. She is, indeed, no simple heroine. In the first three Acts the heiress of Belmont may be seen in an almost wholly romantic light as a corrective to the darker tones of Venice. In the foruth Act she becomes a dominant figure, witty, hard even to the point of risking her quality of compassion, at certain moments a vehicle for an abstract justice which her own associates violate.
Despite Portia's lack of formal legal training, she wins her case by referring to the details of the exact language of the law. Her success involves prevailing on technicalities rather than the merits of the situation. However, the concept of rhetoric and its abuse is also brought to light by Portia � highlighting the idea that an unjust argument may win through eloquence, loopholes and technicalities, regardless of the moral question at hand � and thus provoking the audience to consider that issue.
Gay subtext
Antonio's unexplained depression � "In sooth I know not why I am so sad" � and utter devotion to Bassanio has led some critics to theorise that he is suffering from unrequited love for Bassanio and is depressed because Bassanio is coming to an age where he will marry a woman. In his plays and poetry Shakespeare often depicted strong male bonds of varying homosociality, which has led some critics to infer that Bassanio returns Antonio's affections despite his obligation to marry:
In conclusion
All that's left to say now is that this play left me completely baffled. I almost finished it in one sitting, which almost never happens with Shakespeare and me. :D The plot is captivating, the language beautiful - what more could I ask for in a play?
I have to say that a lot of the themes went completely over my head, because I am still a Shakespeare newbie, and so the most interesting thing for me is not necessarily reading his work, but researching it afterwards and seeing if I agree with common interpretations of the play, and what's more to learn about that particular piece of literature. The introduction of my edition was excellent and provided a basis for almost all of the points which I brought up in this review. So I would not only highly recommend The Merchant of Venice, but also the 'New Penguin Shakespeare' editions!
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio, the play is best remembered for its dramatic scenes, and is reknown for Shylock's famous Hath not a Jew eyes? speech, and Portia's speech about The Quality of Mercy.
� SHYLOCK, Act III.1
At one level of response The Merchant of Venice will appear to be a romantic weaving of tales without logic; Portia's father may have denied some of our concerns for a lover's freedom of choice in his beloved; the conditions of Shylock's bond may have violated most known legal codes; but the coherence of the play, the movement of the dramatic poetry, takes us beyond these doubts and cravings.
We are convinced of the essential sanity of the casket-test for Portia's suitors; we fear Shylock's bond and anticipate tragedy, however merry its terms may be; we accept the seriousness and technical gravity of the trial scene, whatever doubts the juristic side of our minds may plead; the dignity and grotesquerie in Shylock maintain a portrait of the Jew through which we assent today to the dark problems of race and racial representation in media.
These are no fairy-tale matters, though the fairy-tale tone is frequently there. It is usually unsafe to mistake Shakespeare's lightness of touch for levity, or assume that an illogicl fantasy, as early as The Merchant of Venice or as late as The Tempest, is a mere tale, a moment of relaxation.
Jewry and usury in the Elizabethan era
It is clear that The Merchant of Venice is much preoccupied with two matters of Elizabethan concern: Jewry and usury. So pervasive are these two questions that it is dangerously possible to assume that the play is about race and greed; it is all too easy to explore these Elizabethan aspects of the play in terms which refer to our present concern with racial and economic conflict. The greater, then, is our obligation to be clear about the intellectual and emotional limits within Shakespeare could have handled these questions.
It is popularly assumed that the Elizabethan attitude to Jewry was one of uniform hostility and that the execration of Lopez was wholly characteristic of the Christian rejection of all Jews. This is in many respects a false assumption. Raphael Holinshed, chronicling the coronation of Richard I in 1189, indicates an aspect of the medieval temper, condemned a riot that broke out against Jews. He goes on to admit that 'the transgessors' were not punished, since the greater number of Richard's subjects hated the Jews for their 'obstinate forwardness', though the king halted the persecution, 'and so they were restored to peace after they had sustained infinite damage'.
The treatment of usury, trade, debt, and interest is still more ambigious, for Antonio and Syhlock live in a world removed from each other. Antonio lives by trade � he exacts no interest, while Shylock thrives by no other means. Yet the ironies of the play depend on the mutual contempt for each other's way of 'thrift'. And the irony is redoubled, since each is self-justified and condemns the other on sound theological grounds.
This confrontation of principles, an argument on the moral justification or condemnation of usury, proceeds without the bland irony with which the medieval mind faced the hard facts of trade in a sinful world. The irony in The Merchant of Venice is quite different; if Antonio rejects interest, his Christian friends in Venice have no hesitation in living upon 'excess'. Indeed 16th century Venice was notable for its corruption through the covetous pursuit of trade and 'venture'.
On the other side Shylock proceeds on the assumption morally grounded, that interest on money-lending is legitimate thrift. Shakespeare's Venice, then, is nicely and justly poised between Christians on the one hand whose acquisitve practice by no means squares with their many protestations against usury, and Jews on the other whose disenchanted commercial dealings rest on the double pollars of expediency and Levitical Law.
It is useful to have a background of Elizabethan moral writing on economic matters as a foil to the dramatist's constant reprehension of usury and to estimate the social conservatism of certain dramatists, in their attitude towards an emerging capitalist society. But The Merchant of Venice bears not the least resemblance to a pamphlet on usury. Shakespeare rarely takes sides and it is certainly rash to assume that he here takes an unambiguous stand for Antonio and against Shylock.
And certainly, judging from his comedies as a whole, Shakespeare makes no simple or innocent gesture of assent towards any of the three main ways to wealth in his day � the land, foreign trade, or financial exchange.
Sources
The most immediate source for The Merchant of Venice must be assumted to be The Jew of Malta and the impetus it gave Shakespeare in the exploration of the relationships between an alien and a settled society. Shylocks 'merry bond' has sources both in fantasy and legal fact. In Eastern and Western tales we frequently find a surety in the form of a contract to give up a portion of the debtor's living flesh. The next propable source of the play is Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecorone (1558), which contains a strangely sinister version of the wooing, a very full version of the Bond, and closes with the incident of the ring. This makes Shakespeare seem a little less original, because he didn't come up with all of these clever ideas himself, but still he wrapped them up in the most beautiful verse ever written.
Analysis of the trial scene
Though Shakespeare made elsewhere pointed and mature refernces to the subject of law, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice focuses more aspects of the matter than any other dramatist or poet succeeded in uniting in one work. The whole legal structure of the play is, of course, fallacious. No system of law permits a man to place his own person in jeopardy, for a bond like Antonio's is 'against public policy' and 'contrary to good morals'.
The dramatic structure of the fourth Act assumes a relationship between Shylock and Antonio which, described in legal terms, is grotesque in its complexity: the scene opens with Shylock as plaintiff pursuing an action for breach of contract; it ends with Antonio as plaintiff in a case which Shylock defends himself against a charge of criminal conspiracy against a Venetian citizen. The impossible change of plea, the exchange of plaintiff and defendant, the intervention of Portia, these all confound strict principles.
As the scene proceeds, forms of law are violated with a consistency and irony which argues expert knowledge on the dramatist's part and the audience's knowledgeable participation. The result unites contrary and even conflicting attitudes. There is no easy moral decision, no comfortable discrimination for the audience between gentle Christian and rapacious Jew; on the contrary it can be justly argued that the trial is rigged and our sympathies therefore enlisted on behalf of Shylock.
The quality of justice, mercy, and humility are constant Leitmotiven throughout the play. As our compassion therefore is demanded by Shylock's plight, and a profound unease experienced through the behaviour of the Christians.
What form may mercy take, if it is not to destroy the necessary rigours of justice? The conclusion of this argument, embedded within the trial scene, is ultimately Portia's conviction that if man were to receive impartial justice and no more, in the perfect clarity of divine judgement 'none of us should see salvation'. In face of this fact, human justice must do the best it can with its imperfect instruments.
There remain the spiritual penalities, Shylock shall be cured of his Jewry (yikes!), and in their several degrees we find them repugnant. But this is precisely the point at which we feel most forcibly the tragedy of the play. At the conclusion of the trial scene the props that sustain Shylock's life are removed more effectually than if he had been broken financially. He has failed to trap Antonio to his greatly desired death, he has been affronted at every point in his racial and religious pride, and he makes his exit broken as much by the apparent magnanimity of the court as by any physical adversity.
Representation of women
Portia in The Merchant of Venice is a woman of decisice action and concern for legal and social equity. She is, indeed, no simple heroine. In the first three Acts the heiress of Belmont may be seen in an almost wholly romantic light as a corrective to the darker tones of Venice. In the foruth Act she becomes a dominant figure, witty, hard even to the point of risking her quality of compassion, at certain moments a vehicle for an abstract justice which her own associates violate.
Despite Portia's lack of formal legal training, she wins her case by referring to the details of the exact language of the law. Her success involves prevailing on technicalities rather than the merits of the situation. However, the concept of rhetoric and its abuse is also brought to light by Portia � highlighting the idea that an unjust argument may win through eloquence, loopholes and technicalities, regardless of the moral question at hand � and thus provoking the audience to consider that issue.
Gay subtext
Antonio's unexplained depression � "In sooth I know not why I am so sad" � and utter devotion to Bassanio has led some critics to theorise that he is suffering from unrequited love for Bassanio and is depressed because Bassanio is coming to an age where he will marry a woman. In his plays and poetry Shakespeare often depicted strong male bonds of varying homosociality, which has led some critics to infer that Bassanio returns Antonio's affections despite his obligation to marry:
BASSANIO: But life itself, my wife, and all the world Are not with me esteemed above thy life; I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil, to deliver you. (IV.1)
In conclusion
All that's left to say now is that this play left me completely baffled. I almost finished it in one sitting, which almost never happens with Shakespeare and me. :D The plot is captivating, the language beautiful - what more could I ask for in a play?
I have to say that a lot of the themes went completely over my head, because I am still a Shakespeare newbie, and so the most interesting thing for me is not necessarily reading his work, but researching it afterwards and seeing if I agree with common interpretations of the play, and what's more to learn about that particular piece of literature. The introduction of my edition was excellent and provided a basis for almost all of the points which I brought up in this review. So I would not only highly recommend The Merchant of Venice, but also the 'New Penguin Shakespeare' editions!
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March 17, 2017
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April 13, 2017
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April 13, 2017
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