“We Are the Jasons, We Have Won the Fleece”: Antonio's Plot (and Shakespeare's) in The Merchant of Venice (What Really Happens in the Play)

Abstract

This essay argues that the many allusions to the golden fleece motif in The Merchant of Venice provide us with the key to unlocking the meaning of its plot, one that Shakespeare has deliberately shrouded in mystery but at the same time has made available to us.

Notes

I would like to thank Stephen Fallon, Peter Holland, David O'Connor, and Catherine Schlegel for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1. The Oxford editors give as their title, “The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice” (see The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. [New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997], 1090). As they acknowledge, however, “The title The Jew of Venice does not appear in any printed text of the play” (1089). Indeed, there is an unbroken tradition, manifested in all printed versions, according to which the play is entitled The Merchant of Venice. The Oxford editors think that “The Jew of Venice” is an acceptable alternative title because it was used when the play was entered into the Stationer's Register in 1598 by Shakespeare's theatrical company (1089). The argument that I pursue in the present essay suggests that the proper title of the play is indeed The Merchant of Venice, not The Jew of Venice, and that in adopting The Merchant of Venice as a title Shakespeare was subtly but explicitly differentiating himself from Marlowe.

2. All citations from The Merchant of Venice and other Shakespeare plays are from The Norton Shakespeare.

3. “The symmetry between the explicit venality of Shylock and the implicit venality of the other Venetians,” writes Girard in his essay “To Entrap the Wisest: Sacrificial Ambivalence in The Merchant of Venice and Richard III,” “cannot fail to be intended by the playwright.” René Girard, A Theatre of Envy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 244.

4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Complete Works, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 427.

5. See C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (Cleveland, OH: Meridian, 1963).

6. The note to Antonio's speech in The Norton Shakespeare is utterly confused and manages to make a hash of what he is saying. The editor writes: “Antonio's conditions are unclear, because ‘quit’ in line 376 (requite) could mean ‘pardon’ or ‘make him pay,’ and ‘in use’ (line 378) could mean either ‘in trust’ or ‘for my own purposes.’ But the arrangements for Shylock's property later in the scene suggest that Antonio succeeds in getting Shylock's penalty reduced: Shylock retains half of his wealth, and Antonio holds the other half in trust for Jessica and Lorenzo until Shylock dies, at which point they inherit the whole estate” (1136n). First of all, “quit” in line 376 does not mean “requite” (“compensate” or “satisfy”); in this context, the line very clearly means “be satisfied with accepting one half of Shylock's goods as the fine.” Secondly, “in use” in line 378 does not mean “either ‘in trust’ or ‘for my own purposes’”: it means both at once! The point is that Antonio will receive “the other half” of Shylock's remaining wealth (i.e., remaining from what Jessica and Lorenzo had already stolen), and will use it for his own purposes (i.e., as venture capital) while holding it in trust for Jessica and Lorenzo. Finally, though the editor refers darkly and vaguely to additional “arrangements” for Shylock's property that are made “later in the scene,” no such arrangements are indicated or can be found! The scene is rounded out with two incidents. First, Bassanio offers to give Balthasar (that is, the disguised Portia) “[t]hree thousand ducats due unto the Jew” (4.1.407) for achieving his acquittal; the money is refused, and so Bassanio or Antonio gets to pocket it—and this, of course, is the very sum that Shylock had loaned. Then finally, we have the business of the ring that Balthasar (Portia) asks Bassanio to give her.