- All quotes and cites from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice are from the Arden Shakespeare Series, John Russell Brown, ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).
- The key to Portia's teaching role in Bassanio's casket trial is her gentle but confident insistence to him that he runs a real risk of choosing wrongly if he does not first listen carefully to her warnings. The images and music through which she speaks to him converge effortlessly on the priority of “sacrifice,” as in “I stand for sacrifice.” (III,i,57) She is not any material object, not even precious gold or valuable silver or any other reward but a partner in a cooperative marriage requiring his initial totally unselfish sacrifice. Thus he should go forth heroically like Alcides (Hercules) to redeem her, but motivated by love alone (sacrifice) and not any promised material reward. Portia also calls to him through the music of “dulcet sounds…that creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear/and summon him to marriage.” (III,i,30–31) She continues to call him in this romantic mode where she takes the lead (rhymes with deed, not “dead!”) through the revealing song played for him alone while he chooses. The song confirms and reminds that what is attractive to the eye and head is deceptive and fleeting, but what comes from the heart is real. The five rhymes on “lead” in themselves might go unnoticed. But coming as the conclusion of a succession of images suggesting Bassanio listen very carefully before he leap, they ensure his rejecting otherwise overwhelming temptations.
- Richard Weisberg, Poethics, and Other Strategies of Law and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 94–109.
- Toby B. Lelyveld, Shylock On The Stage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 3–95.
- As Lelyveld puts it: “The play, which is made to end abruptly with the trial scene on the line ‘to bring thee to the gallows, not the font,’ is in the tradition of many of his [the actor Booth's] predecessors. The four-act version was the rule rather than the exception in this period. As early as 1836…it had been advertised as ‘concluding with the trial scene.’ American audiences of Booth's generation had never seen Act V…” Id., at 71.
- Lelyveld, once again:“…it was not until 1879 when Henry Irving demonstrated that Shylock could be played, not as a sinner, but as a man sinned against, that the stage Jew finally attained dignity. For the first time in the long and varied history of the character, the sympathy of the general audience had been enlisted and secured.” Id., at 91.
- E.E. Stoll, “Shylock” (1927), reprinted in The Merchant of Venice, Signet Classic Shakespeare, Kenneth Myrick, ed. (New York: New American Library, 1965), pp. 157–172.
- Id., at 165.
- Lawrence Danson, “The Harmonies of “The Merchant of Venice,” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), Chapter 4.
- I am indebted to Danson's elegantly written and patiently argued historical/literary approach to The Merchant of Venice, for helping me overcome my most extreme and deeply felt suspicions regarding Portia's motives both in the casket trial and the Venetian trial scenes. As of 1993, Danson's Harmonies is the only full-length literary study of Merchant published. A.D. Moody's monograph-length Shakespeare: “The Merchant of Venice” (London: Edward Arnold. Ltd., 1964) is regrettably out of print. Moody is perhaps the 20th century pioneer of the Dissenting (Dis-harmony) Report, discerning the consistently ironic pattern and the darker side of the play's romantic exterior.
- Danson, supra note 9, “The Problem With Shylock,” Chapter 4.
- An early version of this material on Act I, scene iii, was read at a Law and Humanities Institute Salon in 1983. A revised version was read at the Missouri Philological Society, Drury College, March 17–19, 1988.
- The most repeated prayer in the Anglican Church emphasizes the necessity for forgiving other people their trespasses:
- And forgive us our trespasses
- As we forgive those who trespass against us.
- Saying the prayer does not make it easy! But disregarding it causes inevitable repercussions. The Apostle Paul also emphasizes the spirit of reconciliation in this letter to the Corinthians:
- Therefor if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are becoming new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us unto himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation…Now then we are ambassadors of Christ, as though God did beseech you by us…(II Corinthians, 5:17 ff.)
- In the vocabulary of the casket trial's “giving and hazarding all” and the Biblical injunction of Paul to Christians to become not merely passive examples, but active, risk-taking ambassadors of Christ, Antonio's mission to Shylock remains in court to defend him against his (Antonio's) own worst prejudices viz., the anti-Jewish discrimination made legal in the form of the alien statute.
- This graphic, repulsive, depiction of the vile Jewish moneylender Genutus appears in Appendix II of the Arden Shakespeare, supra note 1 at at 153:
- In Venice Towne not long agoe a cruell Jew did dwell, Which lived all in Usurie, as Italian writers tell.
- Genutus called was the Jew, which never thought to die, Nor never yet did any good to them in streets that lye.
- His life was like a Barrow Hogge, that lived many a day, Yet never once did any good, until men will him slay.
- Or like a filthy heape of dung that lyeth in a hoord; Which never can doe any good, till it be spread abroad.
- his heart doth think on many a wile how to deceive the poore; his mouth is almost full of mucke, yet still he gapes for more…
- Matthew 5:22–4; 34–37.
- Matthew 6.
- Contrary to the spirit of most Harmonizing reports, the New Testament does not claim that Christ forgives and forgives and goes on forgiving offenses regardless of the Christian's opportunity to reconcile them. Antonio's problem is that he remains blind to the injuries he commits against this man. Even when he approaches Shylock (III,iii) to ask for forgiveness, when he is rebuffed he concludes the problem between them is entirely the Jew's fault:
- Let him alone, I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers He seeks my life, his reason well I know; I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures Many that have times made moan to me, Therefore he hates me. (III,iii,319–24, emphasis added.)
- See, the Merchant of Venice, Arden Shakespeare Series, supra note 1 at 116.
- See, Deuteronomy 32:35, 41.
- Weisberg, Poethics, supra note 3 at 94–104.
Law & Literature
Volume 5, 1993 - Issue 1: A Symposium Issue on The Merchant of Venice