The Merchant of Venice: Some thoughts | a-levels | CIE| Shakespeare | Shylock

 The first question that The Merchant of Venice raises :

o What kind of play is this? Is it a comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy (a play that starts
tragically but ends like a comedy), or what?

 Written in the mid-1590s, when Shakespeare’s art was rapidly maturing, it shows the
playwright experimenting with a variety of forms.

o He had just written the three plays of his lyric period: a comedy, A Midsum-mer
Night’s Dream; a romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet; and a history play chronicling
the rise and fall of King Richard II.

 Some aspects of The Merchant of Venice derive from all three of these plays:

o its beautiful lyric poetry, found, for example, in Lorenzo’s monologues in act 5;

o the comic antics of the clown, Lancelot Gobbo; and the downfall of Shylock.

 For modern audiences, however, the play raises certain issues that have led some critics to
regard this play as a problem play; that is, a drama that raises significant moral questions
that it fails satisfactorily to resolve, as in Shylock’s forced conversion at the end of act 4,
scene 1.

 Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice at a time when few Jews lived in England, from
where they had been forcibly expelled in 1290 by Edward I.

 The trial and execution of Queen Elizabeths physician, Dr. Roderigo Lopez, in 1594;

o the revival of Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta;

o and other events aroused renewed anti-Semitism in England and may have led
Shakespeare to contemplate writing about a rich Jewish moneylender who, like
Barabas in Marlowe’s play, acts the role of a villain.

o But unlike Marlowe, Shakespeare endowed his villain Shylock with some very human
qualities that evoke much sympathy. The result is an ambivalence toward Shylock
that makes his role one of the most dramatically complex and compelling among all
of Shakespeare’s characters, and one that reinforces the sense of this work as a
problem play.

o Shylock, of course, is not the only important character in The Merchant of Venice,
which takes its title from Antonio, the Venetian merchant who borrows from Shylock
to help his friend, Bassanio.

 Portia, the rich heiress whom Bassanio courts, is another major character, and the
relationship between her and her suitors also raises important moral issues.

o Is Bassanio mainly after Portia’s money, or is there a genuine love between the two?

o How does Bassanio’s friendship with Antonio complicate his relationship with
Portia? These are questions that the play raises and tries to resolve.

 Shakespeare’s main source for The Merchant of Venice was a sixteenth-century Italian
novel, Il Pecorone (The Dunce) by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino.
 o In this story, Ansaldo, godfather to Gianetto, finances the young man’s attempts to
win the Lady of Belmonte, a rich widow who requires her suitors to consummate
their love before she agrees to wed them, or lose everything they have brought with
them.

o Twice Gianetto fails the test, because of a drink that has been drugged, until the
third time, when one of the lady’s waiting-women, taking pity on the young man,
warns him not to drink.

o Meanwhile, to subsidize this third voyage, Ansaldo has had to borrow funds from a
Jewish moneylender and forfeit a pound of his flesh if the debt is not repaid on time.

o Enjoying his good fortune, Gianetto forgets all about the loan until it is too late, but
then hurries back to Venice with more than enough money from his wife to repay
the debt and save his godfather.

o The lady, in disguise as a lawyer, follows close behind. When the Jew refuses ten
times the amount of the debt and insists on having his pound of flesh, the lady saves
the day by requiring the Jew to take exactly one pound without a single drop of
blood. Frustrated, the Jew tears up the bond and leaves without so much as the
principal allowed to him.

o The young couple then return to Belmonte, where Ansaldo weds the waiting-woman
who had aided Gianetto.

 One immediately notices certain differences between Shakespeare’s play and his main
source.

o For example, while the moneylender is foiled in his plan to kill Antonio, he is not
forced to convert to Christianity at the end; he is only deprived of the money he has
lent.

o Another important difference is the test that Gianetto undergoes as compared with
the three caskets in The Merchant of Venice from which Portia’s suitors must
choose.

o For this part of the plot, Shakespeare had recourse to a story in the Gesta
Romanorum, where a young woman must choose the right casket before the king
will approve the marriage to his son.

o Perhaps Shakespeare preferred to complicate the plot, introduce more characters,

and suggest a significant moral element by having Portia’s suitors tested with a
choice of caskets.

o Through the casket plot the characters of Portia and Bassanio are also more fully
developed than their coun-terparts in Il Pecorone.

o But the ring plot, through which Portia tests the loyalty of Bassanio at the end of the
trial scene, derives from Il Pecorone and is used in the same way.

o Still disguised as a lawyer, Portia gets Bassanio to give her the ring she had given him
earlier and he had promised never to relinquish.

 Another difference that Shakespeare introduced involves the subplot of Lorenzo and Jessica.
 o Here he probably drew on Marlowe’s play, where Barabas’s daughter, Abigail, falls
in love with a Christian and wishes to marry him.

o Barabas foils their hopes, first by having Abigail’s lover killed and then by killing his
daughter, who has converted to Christianity and entered a nunnery.

o Shakespeare did not follow these unfortunate details but turned instead to another
Italian novel, Masuccio’s fifteenth-centur Il Novellino, story 14, in which an old miser
has a lovely young daughter whom he carefully sequesters at home.

o Nevertheless, she successfully elopes with a clever young nobleman, despite all the
precautions her father has taken. After the couple are happily married and the bride
becomes pregnant, a feast is held to which the old father is invited and becomes
reconciled with his daughter and her husband.

o In this story, unlike Shakespeare’s adaptation of it, no question of an interfaith

marriage is raised.

 Shakespeare reshaped them to fashion what is essentially a new and more complex
rendering.

o The whole issue of conversion to Christianity is a new element in Shakespeare’s

representation, but equally important though in a different way are the dramatic
construction, the characterisations, and the poetry of The Merchant of Venice, to
which we must now turn.

Devices:

1. LYRICAL PASSAGES

 Despite its controversial or problematic nature, The Merchant of Venice contains some of
the most lyrical and lovely passages in all of Shakespeare.

o Many of these passages, like Portia’s famous lines on the quality of mercy (4.1.181-
99) or Lorenzo’s on music and the beauty of the night (5.1.54-65), are worth
committing to mem-ory.

o These set speeches, as they are sometimes called, like the arias in a Verdi opera,
delight audiences even as they help develop the dramatic action. But Shakespeare’s
prose is also important, and we sometimes forget that he was not only a
consummate poet but an excellent prose writer as well.

o Shylock’s defense of himself at 3.1.50-69 is one of the most spirited and vigorous
pieces of prose ever constructed. Taken out of context, it is often used as a
vindication of Shylock’s humanity, but in context it works not only as that but as a
criticism of Christian behavior. Like Portia on mercy, this is one of the most
memorable speeches in the play.

2. BLANK VERSE:

 Although Shakespeare at first followed his predecessors among Tudor dramatists in using a
great deal of rhymed couplets, by the time he wrote The Merchant of Venice blank verse had
become the mainstay of poetic drama.
 o It continued to be used throughout Elizabethan drama and during the reign of James
I, gaining in strength and virtuosity while it ever more closely resembled the spoken
language of men and women.

 Blank Verse basically consists of ten-syllable, unrhymed lines with alternating stresses on the
second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables.

o The stresses may vary—sometimes a good deal— for a number of reasons.

o For example, when the author wishes to bring emphasis to a word that might not
otherwise be accented, or when he simply wishes to avoid falling into too regular a
pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, which can become monoto-nous.
Occasionally, to signal the end of a scene as at 1.1.184-85, or a stretch of sententiae
(proverbial wisdom), Shakespeare used rhymed couplets, often varying the meter at
the same time, as at 2.7.65-73.

3. SONGS:

 Songs also are important in Shakespeare’s plays. The Merchant of Venice contains only one
song, but it is a very important one.

 It appears in Act 3 Sc2 as Bassanio approaches the caskets to make his choice.

o Critics have commented on how the first three lines all rhyme with “lead.”

o They argue that this song seems to be a clue Portia gives Bassanio, directing him
how to choose the right one, especially since no such song appears in the other
casket scenes with the Prince of Morocco or the Prince of Aragon.

o Be that as it may—Bassanio does not seem to hear the song, and Portia’s integrity
would be seriously damaged if it is true—the song provides a pleasant interlude and
preparation for the theme of Bassanio’s speech, “So may the outward shows be
least themselves” (3.2.73)

3. IMAGERY AND METAPHOR:

 One might expect in a play about merchants that much of the language derives from
commercial transactions, even when it may appear rather inappropriate, as when Portia
addresses Bassanio after he has chosen the leaden casket:

o You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am. Though for myself alone I
would not be ambitious in my wish To wish myself much better, yet for you I would
be trebled twenty times myself, A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
more rich, That only to stand high in your account I might in virtues, beauties,
livings, friends Exceed account. But the full sum of me Is sum of something which, to
term in gross, Is an unlessoned girl. . . . (3.2.149-59)

o Nerissa and Graziano’s phrasing in the speeches that follow soon after, when they
announce their wish to be married too, re-emphasize the commercial aspect of the
transaction.

o Nerissa comments that they have seen their wishes “prosper” (3.2.187), and
Graziano speaks of the “bargain” of the faith that Portia and Bas-sanio have pledged
to each other (32.193).
 o Near the end of this part of the dialogue, when Graziano proposes a bet, “We’ll play
with them the first boy for a thousand ducats” (3.2.213), money once again becomes
a pronounced consideration.

 Since Shakespeare was writing for a largely literate audience and not merely for the masses
that also populated his theater, he felt free also to use many classical allusions.

o Graziano combines both kinds of language when he greets Lorenzo and Jessica at
3.2.239:

o “We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.”

o Here he compares Bassanio and himself to the ancient argonaut Jason on his
dangerous voyage to Colchis on the Black Sea in quest of the golden fleece, one of
the most famous prizes in classical literature.

o The speeches of the Prince of Morocco in 2.1 are studded with classical allusions,
although he gets some of them wrong, an indication of the way Shakespeare makes
fun of his pretentiousness. For example, the prince confuses the story of Hercules
and Lichas playing at dice with another story of Hercules thrown into a rage by the
shirt of Nessus. Shakespeare’s audience would have picked up the allusions and
understood how Morocco mixed them up.

 Shakespeare’s audience was also steeped in biblical lore.

o With the advent of the Bishops’ Bible and the Geneva Bible and other English
translations made available under Elizabeth I’s Protestant rule, more and more
English people read Scripture on their own, besides hearing it read to them in church
every Sunday.

o Shakespeare could count on his audience therefore to grasp the allusions made
directly, as in Shylock’s account of Jacob and Laban in 1.3, or indirectly, as at 3.1.80-
81 where Shylock alludes to the curse upon his people mentioned in Matthew 27.25
and Luke 13.34-35.

o Like metaphors, these allusions extend the frame of reference and thus help provide
a broader context for the play than might at first seem apparent.

 Although no single strand of imagery pervades The Merchant of Venice in the way that
imagery of blood pervades Macbeth or imagery of disease pervades Hamlet, the frequent
suggestion of music contributes significantly to the play’s atmosphere.

 The two great moments of emotion and romance—Bassanio’s casket scene and especially
Lorenzo and Jessica’s evening scene in 5.1—are dominated by music.

 Lorenzo summons musicians to play while he and his wife await Portia’s return,
commenting, “Soft stillness and the night/Become the touches of sweet harmony” (56-57).

 He is then moved to remark on the music of the spheres, the heavenly harmony that exists
in “immortal souls” (60-65). But as the music begins to play, Jessica says she is never merry
when she hears sweet music.

 She means that music puts her into a mood of contemplation, and in a long speech Lorenzo
explains the reason for that, alluding to the poet Orpheus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
 The point of those passages, in part, is to restore the play to the realm of romantic comedy,
disturbed as it was by the events of the trial scene in the immediately preceding act.

 It also looks forward to what happens at the end of the scene: the reunions and
reconciliations of the other two married couples and the good news that Portia delivers to
Antonio, Lorenzo, and Jessica.

 As elsewhere in Shakespeare, music is the symbol of harmony. By contrast, in act 2, where a

good deal of music and revelry is suggested, Shylock declares his antipathy to masques and
music (2.5.28-36), one of many contrasts the play develops between Shylock and his
antagonists. Many poetical images appear throughout The Merchant of Venice consistent
with the lyrical spirit that pervades much of the play.

o Salarino’s pageant of argosies at 1.1.9-14 is one such example.

Using an elaborate simile, he compares Antonio’s state of mind to his sailing ships
tossing on the ocean, an image he continues in his next speech.

o Jessica’s comments on her embarrassed disguise as a boy as she prepares to elope

with Lorenzo is delightfully witty, as she comments on the nature of love, invoking
the image of blind Cupid, the little love god:

 I am glad ’tis night, you do not look on me.

For I am much ashamed of my exchange.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies they themselves
commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to
a boy. (2.6.34-39)

o Antonio’s description of himself as a “tainted wether of the flock” (4.1.113-15) is a

rather different example. It shows how Antonio interprets his state of mind in the
final scene before Portia enters;

 he then vises another image to reveal further the depth of his despondency.