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In the summer of 1598, the Lord Chamberlain's Men registered their right to print 'a book of the Merchant of Venice or otherwise called the Jew of Venice'. Two years later the play was published with a title page intended to whet the prospective reader's appetite: The most excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreme cruelty of Shylock the Jew towards the said Merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and the obtaining of Portia by the choice of three chests . The character of Shylock and the courtship of Portia by Bassanio were clearly considered the play's principal selling points. If The Jew of Venice was actually an alternative title for the stage, then there was a clear echo of one of the biggest box-office successes of the age, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta . What, then, of Antonio the merchant?
In no other Shakespearean play does the titular character have such a small role: Portia's is much the largest part, followed by Shylock and then Bassanio. Antonio is no more prominent in the dialogue than his friends Gratiano and Lorenzo. The part almost seems to be deliberately under-written. 'In sooth I know not why I am so sad', he begins the play. His friends suggest some possible reasons: he is worried about his merchandise or perhaps he is in love. Antonio denies both, proposing instead that to play the melancholy man is simply his given role in the theatre of the world. Intriguingly, Shakespeare gives the name Antonio to discontented characters in two other plays: one is Sebastian's nautical companion in Twelfth Night , who risks his life for his close friend only to be ignored when Sebastian finds the love of a good woman, and the other is Prospero's usurping brother in The Tempest , who has no wife or child of his own and who is again marginalized at the end of the play. Some productions have explored the sense of exclusion associated with the Antonio figures in Merchant and Twelfth Night by suggesting that they are made melancholy by unrequited homoerotic desire for, respectively, Bassanio and Sebastian.
Shakespeare often returned to a triangular structure of relationships in which close male friendship is placed at odds with desire for a woman. The pattern recurs not only in several of the plays but also as the implied narrative of the Sonnets. The Merchant of Venice begins with Bassanio seeking to borrow from his friend in order to finance the pursuit of a wealthy lover. He sets himself up as a figure from classical mythology: Jason in pursuit of the Golden Fleece. The analogy establishes Gratiano and Lorenzo as fellow-Argonauts. Jason was renowned for being clever and brave, but also selfish and materialistic. His pattern of behaviour was to gain the assistance of a woman – Ariadne, Medea – in realizing his ambitions, to become her lover and then to desert her and move on to a new adventure. With Jason as his role model, Bassanio has the potential to join the company of those other lovers in Shakespearean comedy – Claudio in Much Ado about Nothing , Bertram in All's Well that Ends Well – who are not worthy of the women they obtain.
To make such comparisons is to see that The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's darker comedies. The blurring of perspectives between the romantic and the sinister is especially apparent in the beautiful but ironic love-duet of Lorenzo and Jessica at the beginning of the final act. They compare themselves to some oft-sung partners from the world of classical mythology. But what kind of exemplary figures are these? Cressida, who was unfaithful to Troilus; Medea the poisoner; Thisbe, whose tragical fate, though comically represented in the mechanicals' play in A Midsummer Night's Dream , was identical to Juliet's; and Dido, whom Aeneas deserted in his quest for imperial glory. They are all figures in the pantheon of tragedy, not comedy.
The cleverness that Bassanio shares with the mythological figure of Jason is apparent from his choice of casket. Portia's late father has devised a simple test to find her the right husband: those suitors who choose the golden or silver caskets are clearly motivated by desire for wealth and must therefore want to marry her for her money. The man who chooses lead obviously does not care about cash, so he is likely to love Portia for herself alone. Bassanio, however, recognizes that appearances are not to be trusted. Venice, sixteenth-century Europe's pre-eminent city of commercial exchange and conspicuous consumption, has taught him that credit allows a man to display himself above his means. He does not want to look like a fortune hunter when wooing Portia, so he borrows from Antonio in order to dress like a wealthy man: 'By something showing a more swelling port / Than my faint means would grant continuance.' He chooses the lead casket because he knows from his own example that 'outward shows' may be least themselves and that the world is easily deceived 'with ornament'. Gold, he reasons, is for greedy Midas, so he spurns it – this is what he imagines Portia wants to hear. He is of course assisted by the hint she drops for his benefit: whereas Morocco and Aragon had to make their choice in silence, Bassanio's is heralded by a song that warns against trusting what appears to 'the eyes'.
Portia has been attracted to Bassanio for some time (he has previously visited Belmont in the guise of 'a scholar and a soldier' in the retinue of another suitor), but it is when he reasons against gold that love takes her over, banishing all other emotions. She responds with a beautifully articulated selfrevelation. Ignore my riches, virtues, beauty, status, she says: 'the full sum of me / Is sum of nothing, which to term in gross / Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractisèd.' On the surface, the rural estate of Belmont (literally 'beautiful mountain') is the play's version of pastoral: an Arcadian realm of ease, integrity and self-discovery that stands in contrast to the hard-nosed commerce of the duplicitous city. But the lesson of Belmont is actually a cynical one: choose wealth and you won't get it, appear to reject it and it will be yours. The Prince of Morocco, who takes things at face value, is roundly rejected. It will not be the last time that Shakespeare pits an honest Moor against a world of Italian intrigue.
For all their fine words, both Bassanio and Portia are engaged in 'practice', a word that the Elizabethans associated with the figure of Machiavelli, archetypal Italianate schemer for selfadvancement. Bassanio is the gold-digger he pretends not to be, while Portia has no intention of letting any man become 'her lord, her governor, her king' in the way that she says she will. At the end of her submission speech, she gives Bassanio the ring (symbol of both wealth and marital union) that will later be the device whereby she tricks him and thus establishes her position as the dominant partner in the relationship. She may speak about giving him all her property – which is what marriage meant according to the law of the time – but when she returns from Venice to Belmont at the end of the play she continues to speak of ' my house' and the light 'burning in my hall'.
As for Portia's claim that she is 'unlessoned' and 'unschooled', this is wholly belied by her bravura performance in the cross-dressed role of Balthasar, interpreting the laws of Venice with forensic skill that reduces the duke and his magnificoes to amazement. On leaving Belmont, she says that she and Nerissa will remain in a nunnery, the ultimate place of female confinement, until Bassanio's financial difficulties are resolved. She actually goes to the public arena of the Venetian court, moving from passive (the woman wooed) to active (the problem-solver). In the robes of a lawyer instead of those of a nun, she excels in the art of debate, deploying a rhetorical art calculated to delight Queen Elizabeth, who loved nothing more than to outmanoeuvre courtiers, diplomats and suitors in the finer points of jurisprudence and theology.
'The quality of mercy is not strained': the quality of Portia's argument (and Shakespeare's writing) unfolds from the several meanings of 'strained'. Mercy is not constrained or forced, it must be freely given; nor is it partial or selective – it is a pure distillation like 'the gentle rain from heaven', not the kind of liquid from which impure particles can be strained out. As in Measure for Measure , Shakespeare explores the tension between justice and mercy, here interpreted in terms of the opposition between the Old Testament Jewish law of 'an eye for an eye' and Christ's New Testament covenant of forgiveness. When Shylock refuses to show mercy and stands by the old covenant, Portia's art is to throw his legal literalism back in his face: the corollary of his demand for an exact pound of flesh is that he should not spill a drop of Venetian blood. But if the quality of mercy is not strained, then neither should be that of conversion: a bitter taste is left when Shylock is constrained to become a Christian.
Commerce, with which Venice was synonymous, depends on borrowing to raise capital. Christianity, however, disapproved of usury, the lending of money with interest. The Jewish moneylender was early modern Europe's way out of this impasse. Venice was famous for its ghetto in which the Jews were constrained to live, even as they oiled the wheels of the city's economy. Shakespeare does not mention the ghetto, but he reveals a clear understanding of how the system worked when Shylock refuses Antonio's invitation to dinner: 'I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.' There is sociability and commerce between different ethnic and religious groups, but spiritual practices and customs are kept distinct. Shylock will not go to dinner because his religion prevents him from eating pork, but ultimately he regards questions of business as more important than those of faith: he hates Antonio 'for he is a Christian, / But more, for that in low simplicity / He lends out money gratis and brings down / The rate of usance here with us in Venice.'
It is the Christians who act according to raw prejudice. Shylock is spat upon simply because he is a Jew. Barabas, the Jew of Malta in the play written by Marlowe a few years before, answers to the stereotype of the Jew in love with his money-bags (though he does also love his daughter), whereas Shylock famously appeals to a common humanity that extends across the ethnic divide:
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what's the reason? 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?
In Elizabethan England the test for a witch was the pricking of her thumb: if it did not bleed, the woman was in league with the devil. Shylock's 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?' is a way of saying 'do not demonize the Jews – we are not like witches'. 'The villainy you teach me I will execute', he continues: if you do demonize me, then I will behave diabolically. The alien, the oppressed minority, sees no alternative but to fight back: 'And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' This is the point of parting between the Jewish law of 'an eye for an eye' and the Christian notion of turning the other cheek and showing the quality of mercy.
The representation of Shylock as monstrous villain has played a part in the appalling history of European anti-Semitism. But such a representation necessarily occludes the subtler moments of Shakespeare's characterization. A ring is not only the device whereby Portia and Nerissa assert their moral and verbal superiority over their husbands, but also the means by which Shylock is humanized through the memory of his dead wife:
TUBAL One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.
SHYLOCK Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
PLOT: Antonio, the merchant of Venice, lends three thousand ducats to his friend Bassanio in order to assist him in his wooing of the wealthy and beautiful Portia of Belmont, an estate some distance from Venice. But Antonio's own money is tied up in business ventures that depend on the safe return of his ships from sea, so he borrows the money from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender whom he has previously insulted for his high rates of interest. Shylock lends the money against a bond whereby failure to repay the loan on the agreed date will entitle Shylock to a pound of Antonio's flesh. Portia's father has decreed that she will marry whichever suitor makes the correct choice when presented with three caskets, made of gold, silver and lead. Where wealthy suitors from Morocco and Aragon fail, Bassanio succeeds by choosing lead. His friend Gratiano marries Portia's lady-in-waiting Nerissa at the same time. News arrives that Antonio's ships have been lost; he is unable to pay his debt. Shylock's claim to his pound of flesh is heard in the law court before the duke. Unknown to their husbands, Portia disguises herself as a young male lawyer acting on behalf of Antonio, Nerissa as a clerk. Portia's ingenious defence is that Shylock is entitled to his pound of flesh but not to spill any of Antonio's blood; she argues that the Jew should forfeit his life for having conspired against the life of a Venetian. The duke pardons Shylock on condition that he gives half his wealth to Antonio and half to the state. Antonio surrenders his claim on condition that Shylock converts to Christianity and leaves his property to his daughter Jessica, whom he has disinherited for running away with her Christian lover Lorenzo. Portia and Nerissa then assert their power over Bassanio and Gratiano by means of a trick involving rings that the men have promised never to part with. Finally there is good news about Antonio's ships.
MAJOR PARTS: ( with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage ) Portia (22%/117/9), Shylock (13%/79/5), Bassanio (13%/73/6), Gratiano (7%/58/7), Lorenzo (7%/47/7), Antonio (7%/47/6), Lancelet Gobbo (6%/44/6), Salerio (5%/31/7), Morocco (4%/7/2), Nerissa (3%/36/7), Jessica (3%/26/7), Solanio (2%/20/5), Duke (2%/18/1), Aragon (2%/4/1), Old Gobbo (1%/19/1).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 80% verse, 20% prose.
DATE: Registered for publication July 1598 and mentioned in Francis Meres' 1598 list of Shakespeare's comedies; reference to a ship called the Andrew suggests late 1596 or early 1597, when the Spanish vessel St Andrew , which had been captured at Cadiz after running aground, was much in the news. ·
SOURCES: There are many ancient and medieval folk variations on the motif of a body part demanded as surety for a bond. The setting of the story in Venice, the pursuit of 'the lady of Belmonte' as the reason the hero needs the money, the bond being made by a friend rather than the hero himself, the identification of the moneylender as a Jew, and the lady disguising herself as a male lawyer, coming to Venice and arguing that the bond does not allow for the shedding of blood all come from a tale in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's collection Il Pecorone ('The Dunce', in Italian, published 1558 – no English translation). A lost English play of the 1570s called The Jew may have been an intervening source. The character of Shylock and the elopement of his daughter with a Christian are strongly shaped by Christopher Marlowe's highly successful play The Jew of Malta (c.1590). The choice between three caskets as a device to identify a worthy marriage partner is another ancient motif; the closest surviving precedent is a story in the medieval Gesta Romanorum (translated by Richard Robinson, 1577, revised 1595 with use of the rare word 'insculpt', which is echoed in Morocco's speech).
TEXT: Quarto 1600: a good quality text, apparently set from a fair copy of the dramatist's manuscript; reprinted 1619, with some errors and some corrections. Folio text was set from a copy of the first Quarto, making some corrections, introducing some errors and apparently drawing on a theatrical manuscript for stage directions, including music cues. We follow Folio where it corrects or modernizes Quarto, but restore Quarto where Folio changes appear to be printers' errors. The only serious textual problem concerns the Venetian gentlemen known in the theatrical profession as the 'Salads'. They are initially identified in entry directions and speech headings as 'Salarino' and 'Solanio' (variously abbreviated, most commonly to 'Sal.' and 'Sol.'), but never named in the dialogue, so are unidentified from the point of view of a theatre audience. Folio reverses their speech headings at the beginning of the opening scene, probably erroneously. In Act 3 scene 2 'Salerio' arrives in Belmont as 'a messenger from Venice'; he is named in the dialogue, so identifiable to the audience. Is this a third character, a composite of the first two, or – more probably – has Shakespeare forgotten that he began with 'Salarino'? In the following scene, Quarto has 'Salerio' back in Venice with Antonio and Shylock, which must be an error – he has only just exited from Belmont with Bassanio. Folio intelligently corrects the Act 3 scene 3 entry direction to 'Solanio'. In Act 4 scene 1, 'Salerio' has returned with Bassanio. Some editions and productions have retained Salarino, Solanio and Salerio, but it seems more likely that Salarino and Salerio are intended to be the same character: we have followed this assumption.