The Merchant of Venice

Cafe Society
1

When I used to have to study Shakespeare’s plays when I was still in high school, I suppose it was kind of a chore. But a couple years ago, on my father’s recomendation, I voluntarily studied a play on my own: “The Merchant of Venice.” After I had studied it a little, I viewed the video of it–the 1973(?) version with Lawrence Olivier as the evil Shylock. What follows is a short summary of the play. And, yes, please feel free to see the play on your own!

*“The Merchant of Venice” * by William Shakespeare is a unique play about mercy and justice and how they suddenly “collide” with one another. There is a subplot about greed and avarice. And the play touches a little bit on hypocrisy too (“The Merchant of Venice” is where we get the famous line “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose”.) More on hypocrisy later.

Antonio, the merchant of Venice, is in need of some money. So he goes to Shylock, the heartless moneylender. When Shylock asks why he would go to him, who he often berated for being a loathsome Jew. [Some parts of the play might be considered antisemitic by our today’s standards. But if you read the entire play, you see Shakespeare handles this and other subjects quite well.] When Antonio says it is really better from a business standpoint to lend to an enemy, Shylock agrees–under one condition. It Antonio defaults on the loan he must pay Shylock one pound of flesh. He agrees. And due to unforseen circumstances, Antonio defaults.

In the final courtroom scene Portia, a wealthy heiress, defends Antonio. She has to come to court dressed as a man, because women weren’t allowed such roles in real life back then. The Duke, who presides, it assured “I never knew so young a body with so old a head”, so he allows it.

Portia pleads with Shylock to be merciful. Shylock is promised many times the original amount, in fact, if he just will spare poor Antonio’s life. But Shylock asks Portia why on earth he should be merciful. Portia answers him:

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,–
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,–
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute of awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,–
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, …
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,–
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy:
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.”

This is the most beautiful speech in the entire play. “Strain’d” is a contraction of “constrained” meaning “constrained, compelled”. But really the speech touches on just about every aspect of mercy in justice, skillfully including just about every debate there was up to that point in history–and long after.

Shylock answers forget mercy, what he craves is the law! So Portia gives it to him. She uses his strict adherence to the letter of the law against him.

Now Shylock is at the mercy of the law. Penniless and possibly facing death, the Duke tells him to reform his ways and leave fair Venice, never to return again.

I really enjoyed this play. Did anyone else ever see it?

TTFN:D

2

Jim, there are a number of Shakespearian scholars and many Shakespeare fans who are members of this board and I think most if not all like Merchant of Venice when it is performed well, and some who are especially entertained by it when it is performed badly.

3

Well, actually, rather than banishment, Shylock’s punishment is that he has to convert to Christianity and give half of his property to Lorenzo, who stole away and married his daughter, as well as willing the rest of the property to Lorenzo and Jessica upon his death.

4

But note the significant ellipses in the quotation: the word “Jew” has been removed. Mercy may be a fine thing, & this is indeed a remarkable & eloquent speech, but let’s not ignore that the opposition between “justice” and “mercy” is an explicit, highly weighted reference to the opposition between Judaism and Christianity (it’s also significant that this sentence, which contains the pointedly belittling reference to Shylock as “Jew”, is the first to turn to an explicitly Christian vocabulary of salvation & redemption which as a Jew Shylock of course would not use).

5

I read the play way back in high school (or maybe i just read the Cliff’s Notes, who knows). But from what i remember from the play, Antonio makes a deal with an enemy of his, Shylock, who is a money-lender: lend me money, if i don’t pay it back, you get to kill me. The words in the contract are “a pound of flesh” which is just a nice way of saying “death” and is understood by both parties. But, when time for payment comes around, Antonio wants to renege on the deal, so he uses loopholes in the law to interpret the line “pound of flesh” as an exact payment, rather than what was understood by both of them.

Antonio should have died. I hated the play. It is a lawyer’s dream. Antonio is scum. That bitch Portia is just the equivalent of a modern day ambulance-chaser. She should have died, too.

If i misinterpreted any facts in the play, please correct me, because that’s only what i gleaned off of it in a Sophomore English class.

6

You know, Portia’s courtroom plea is not the only good quote from the play that I like. There is another one about the devil being able to cite scripture for his purpose. I suspect some people might think this is a jab against religion. Actually it is meant as a speech by Antonio against hypocrisy. What follows is the quote in its entirety. Enjoy!

Act I, Sc. 3, cvi-cxi.

As I’ve already said, I really enjoyed this play and would highly recommend it. There are many other good quotes in it, like Shylock’s famous “Hath not a Jew eyes?..”, and “All that glisters is not gold…” and probably too many by Portia alone to enumerate in the limited space here.

Captain Amazing, I guess you know the play better than me. I should point out, though, that when I said Shylock mended his ways, I meant that he converted to Christianity. Religion and morality were pretty inseparable back then. Perhaps I should have made myself more clear on this point. Thank you for your input, though.

TTFN:D

7

I was an English major and I always prefaced the first exam with a new professor with:
""The quality of mercy is not strain’d,–
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,–
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
Always got me extra brownie points.

8

Cool thread.

Lawyers love TMOV because it gives us a chance to quibble about whether a trial without lawyers would have happened, whether Portia didn’t have a conflict of interest in acting as judge, whether the Common Law/Equity would ever have enforced a contract of death (kinda against public policy as we say nowadays) and whether a civil trial would ever have morphed into a criminal trial for another party.

Here’s a competing viewpoint on the justice/mercy issue, using the law as a shield for conscience, and acknowledging that relying on “mercy” as implemented by flawed humans may not be a good thing (Shylock didn’t get much mercy, huh?):

“And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he broke the law!” (on an evil man escaping punishment)

“I’d cut down every law in England” to get at the Devil!"

“And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide?”

That’s Thomas More, as per Robert Bolt in A Man for All Seasons.