Early Shakespeare
English 105A, Fall 2008, Patricia Fumerton
Notes for Class 16 (back to schedule)
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The Cost of Comedy: Or, Equity Strained
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Civilized Wealth and its Discontents

The Merchant of Venice exhibits the beneficence of civilized wealth

The first two scenes establish the gracious, opulent world of the Venetian gentlemen and of the "lady richly left" at Belmont:

  • see Salerio, 1.1.8-14 and 29-36
  • here there is no incompatibility between money and love
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The Discontent

Shylock is the kind of "stony adversary" (Duke, 4.1.4) that threatens sociable luxury.

Pp. 14-15; 1.3.1-27; Film clip of Lawrence Olivier as Shylock (1973; set in Edwardian London)

What makes Shylock "stony" and adversarial?:

  • a mechanistic view of wealth and human relations
  • a refusal to take risks.
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BUT Shylock also embodies anxieties within this culture about money.

Afterall,

  • both Shylock and Antonio seek profit
  • both Antonio and Bassanio need Shylock's money
  • and both Shylock and Portia equate their marriage partners with possessions (rings)
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Indeed, the quantification of human worth has a long tradition in Western Civilization, pagan and Christian:

  1. Roman Law - creditors could claim the body of a defaulting debtor and divide it among themselves
  2. Anglo-Saxon wergild (payment to kinsmen for killing one of their kin)
  3. Contemporary civil law cases:
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In effect, then, Shylock, while the opposite of what the Venetians are, is at the same time troublingly like them:

  • hence Olivier's skullcap lies hidden under his Edwardian top hat
  • hence Shylock's distinctively English name and Jessica's Scottish one (the diminutive of Jesse)
  • hence the Puritan connection in Macklin's costume and Shylock's speech might well elicit sympathy from Shakespeare's audience
  • hence also the uncanny similarity between the skullcap Macklin toted and the skullcap of another Christian group, Roman Catholic cardinals: for exampe, Cardinal Thomas Winning

In this light, the play may not at all be about Jew versus Christian but Christian versus Christian.

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Summary:

Shylock threatens Venetian civilized wealth and festivity, and as such must be faced and defeated.

But just as he is "native" to Venice, he is the enemy inherent in and at the heart of all they value. How can one defeat oneself? Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?

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Equity Strained:

  • Portia: "Then must the Jew be merciful."
  • Shylock: "On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.
  • Portia: "The quality of mercy is not strained" (4.1.183)

But Portia ruthlessly turns the rigor of the law against Shylock, and Antonio responds in like kind:

  • Portia instructs Shylock to "beg mercy of the Duke"
  • Antonio only pledges to restore his half of Shylock's goods after Shylock's death (they will be rendered to Lorenzo), and further stipulates that:
    • a) on his death, all Shylock's remaining goods go to Jessica and Lorenzo
    • b) Shylock convert to Christianity
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This is not unconstrained but constrained mercy.

And since Shylock and his values are already very much a part of this Christian society, the Christian world suffers for it:

Film clip from the Olivier production of the trial scene.

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A melancholy and taint hovers over the plays's final Act:

FILM CLIP from Olivier production of our return to Belmont in Act 5.

  • Bassanio and Gratiano are exposed by Portia and Nerissa as unfaithful once they return home

  • Jessica and Lorenzo banter about traiterous loves and accuse themselves of the same:

    Lorenzo. In such a night
    Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
    And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
    As far as Belmont.

    Jessica. In such a night
    Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,
    Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
    And ne'er a true one. (5.1.12-19)

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It's All Relative:

The cost of the comedy of The Merchant of Venice, more positively presented, is a new, more mature, if bittersweet, awareness of the relativity of all things human:

  • The music of the spheres plays in the heavens, says Lorenzo to Jessica in the final act, and "Such harmony is in immortal souls," "But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it" (5.1.63-65)
  • Portia on returning home to Belmont with Nerissa, notes the variability of her sense of light and sound (5,1,89-109)
    • "Nothing is good, I see, without respect" (relation)
    • That is, everything is relative.
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Gaining Perspective:

  • Jews who are opposites of Christians are in certain lights just like them.
    • To defeat the Jew is to defeat a part of yourself
  • we revisit again Holbein's The Ambassadors Portrait
    • To defeat the Jew is to to discover the skullcap in the perfect Christian picture.

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