The Merchant Of Venice was registered at the Stationers' in July,
1598, but with a special proviso, "that it be not printed without
license first had from the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain." The
theatrical company to which Shakespeare belonged were then known as
"The Lord Chamberlain's Servants"; and the purpose of the proviso was
to keep the play out of print till the company's permission were given
through their patron. The play was entered again at the same place in
October, 1600, his lordship's license having probably been obtained by
that time. Accordingly two distinct editions of it were published in
the course of that year. The play was never issued again, that we know
of, till in the folio of 1623, where the repetition of various
misprints shows it to have been reprinted from one of the quarto
copies.
_The Merchant of Venice_ also makes one in the list of Shakespeare's
plays given by Francis Meres in 1598. How long before that time it was
written we have no means of knowing; but, judging from the style, we
cannot well assign the writing to a much earlier date; though there is
some reason for thinking it may have been on the stage four years
earlier; as Henslowe's _Diary_ records _The Venetian Comedy_ as having
been originally acted in August, 1594. It is by no means certain,
however, that this refers to Shakespeare's play; while the workmanship
here shows such maturity and variety of power as argue against that
supposal. It evinces, in a considerable degree, the easy, unlabouring
freedom of conscious mastery; the persons being so entirely under the
author's control, and subdued to his hand, that he seems to let them
talk and act just as they have a mind to. Therewithal the style,
throughout, is so even and sustained; the word and the character are
so fitted to each other; the laws of dramatic proportion are so well
observed; and the work is so free from any jarring or falling-out from
the due course and order of art; as to justify the belief that the
whole was written in the same stage of intellectual growth and
furnishing.
In the composition of this play the Poet drew largely from preceding
writers. Novelty of plot or story there is almost none. Nevertheless,
in conception and development of character, in poetical texture and
grain, in sap and flavour of wit and humour, and in all that touches
the real life and virtue of the work, it is one of the most original
productions that ever came from the human mind. Of the materials here
used, some were so much the common stock of European literature before
the Poet's time, and had been run into so many variations, that it is
not easy to say what sources he was most indebted to for them. The
incidents of the bond and the caskets are found separately in the
_Gesta Romanorum_, an ancient and curious collection of tales. There
was also an Italian novel, by Giovanni Fiorentino, written as early as
1378, but not printed till 1550, to which the Poet is clearly
traceable. As nothing is known of any English translation of the novel
dating as far back as his time, it seems not unlikely that he may have
been acquainted with it in the original.
Such are the principal tributaries to the fund of this play. I cannot,
nor need I, stay to specify the other sources to which some parts of
the workmanship have been traced.
* * * * *
The praise of this drama is in the mouth of nearly all the critics.
That the praise is well deserved appears in that, from the reopening
of the theatres at the Restoration till the present day, the play has
kept its place on the stage; while it is also among the first of the
Poet's works to be read, and the last to be forgotten, its interest
being as durable in the closet as on the boards. Well do I remember it
as the very beginning of my acquaintance with Shakespeare; one of the
dearest acquaintances I have ever made, and which has been to me a
source of more pleasure and profit than I should dare undertake to
tell.
Critics have too often entertained themselves with speculations as to
the Poet's specific moral purpose in this play or that. Wherein their
great mistake is the not duly bearing in mind, that the special
proposing of this or that moral lesson is quite from or beside the
purpose of Art. Nevertheless, a work of art, to be really deserving
the name, must needs be moral, because it must be proportionable and
true to Nature; thus attuning our inward forces to the voice of
external order and law: otherwise it is at strife with the compact of
things; a piece of dissonance; a jarring, unbalanced, crazy thing,
that will die of its own internal disorder. If, then, a work be
morally bad, this proves the author more a bungler than anything else.
And if any one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from
reason, but from something within him which his reason, in so far as
he has any, necessarily disapproves: so that he is rather to be
laughed at as a dunce than preached to as a sinner; though perhaps
this latter should be done also.
As to the moral temper of _The Merchant of Venice_, critics have
differed widely, some regarding the play as teaching the most
comprehensive humanity, others as caressing the narrowest bigotries of
the age. This difference may be fairly taken as an argument of the
Poet's candour and evenhandedness. A special-pleader is not apt to
leave the hearers in doubt on which side of the question he stands. In
this play, as in others, the Poet, I think, ordered things mainly with
a view to dramatic effect; though to such effect in the largest and
noblest sense. And the highest praise compatible with the nature of
the work is justly his, inasmuch as he did not allow himself to be
swayed either way from the right measures and proportions of art. For
Art is, from its very nature, obliged to be "without respect of
persons." Impartiality is its essential law, the constituent of its
being. And of Shakespeare it could least of all be said,
"he narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."
He represented men as he had seen them. And he could neither repeal
nor ignore the old law of human nature, in virtue of which the wisest
and kindest men are more or less warped by social customs and
prejudices, so that they come to do, and even to make a merit of
doing, some things that are very unwise and unkind; while the wrongs
and insults which they are thus led to practise have the effect of
goading the sufferers into savage malignity and revenge. Had he so
clothed the latter with gentle and amiable qualities as to enlist the
feelings all in their behalf, he would have given a false view of
human nature, and his work would have lost much of its instructiveness
on the score of practical morality. For good morals can never be
reached by departures from truth. A rule that may be profitably
remembered by all who are moved to act as advocates and
special-pleaders in what they think a good cause.
The leading incidents of the play are soon told. Antonio, the
Merchant, has a strange mood of sadness upon him, and a parcel of his
friends are bending their wits to play it off. Among them, and dearer
to him than any of the rest, is one Bassanio, a gentleman who, young
and generous, has lavished his fortune. Bassanio's heart is turning
towards a wealthy heiress who, highly famed for gifts and virtues,
resides not many miles off; and from whose eyes he has received "fair
speechless messages." But he wants "the means to hold a rival place"
among her princely suitors. Antonio's wealth and credit are freely
pledged to his service. His funds, however, being all embarked in
ventures at sea, he tries his credit with a rich Jew, whose person he
has often insulted, and whose greed his Christian liberality has often
thwarted. The Jew, feigning a merry humour, consents to lend the sum,
provided Antonio sign a bond authorizing him, in case of forfeiture,
to cut a pound of flesh from whatever part of his body he may choose.
Antonio readily agrees to this, and so furnishes his friend for the
loving enterprise. Bassanio prosecutes his suit to the lady with
success. But, while yet in his first transports of joy, he learns that
Antonio's ventures at sea have all miscarried, and that the Jew, with
malignant earnestness, claims the forfeiture. Leaving his bride the
moment he has sworn the sweet oath, he hastens away, resolved to save
his friend's life at the expense, if need be, of his own.
Thereupon his virgin wife forthwith gets instructions from the most
learned lawyer in those parts, and, habiting herself as a doctor of
laws, repairs to the trial. To divert the Jew from his purpose, she
taxes her wisdom and persuasion to the utmost, but in vain: scorning
the spirit of Justice, and deaf to the voice of Mercy, both of which
speak with heavenly eloquence from Portia's lips; rejecting thrice the
amount of the bond, and standing immoveable on the letter of the law;
he pushes his revenge to the very point of making the fatal incision,
when she turns the letter of the law against him, strips him of
penalty, principal, and all, and subjects even his life to the mercy
of the Duke. As the condition of his life, he is required to sign a
deed securing all his wealth to his daughter who, loaded with his
ducats and jewels, has lately eloped with another of Antonio's
friends, and is staying at Portia's mansion during her absence. The
play winds up with the hastening of all the parties, except the Jew,
to Portia's home. When all have met, Portia announces to Antonio the
safe return of his ships supposed to be lost, and surprises the
fugitive lovers with the news of their good fortune.
* * * * *
In respect of characterization this play is exceedingly rich, and this
too both in quantity and quality. The persons naturally fall into
three several groups, with each its several plot and action; yet the
three are skilfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct
in its place, yet so drawing in with the others, that every thing
helps on every thing else; there being neither any confusion nor any
appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups, Antonio,
Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centres; while the part of
Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems nevertheless to
grow forth as an element of the original germ; a sort of inherent
superfluity, and as such essential to the well-being of the piece. But
perhaps it may be better described as a fine romantic undertone
accompaniment to the other parts; itself in perfect harmony with
them, and therefore perfecting their harmony with each other.
In the first entry at the Stationers', the play is described as "_The
Merchant of Venice_, or otherwise called _The Jew of Venice_." This
would seem to infer that the author was then in some doubt whether to
name it from Antonio or Shylock. As an individual, Shylock is
altogether _the_ character of the play, and exhibits more of
mastership than all the others; so that, viewing the persons
severally, we should say the piece ought to be named from him. But we
have not far to seek for good reasons why it should rather be named as
it is. For if the Jew is the more important individually, the Merchant
is so dramatically. Antonio is the centre and main-spring of the
action: without him, Shylock, however great in himself, had no
business there. And the laws of dramatic combination, not any accident
of individual prominence, are clearly what ought to govern in the
naming of the play.
* * * * *
Not indeed that the Merchant is a small matter in himself; far from
it: he is a highly interesting and attractive personage; nor am I sure
but there may be timber enough in him for a good dramatic hero, apart
from the Jew. Something of a peculiar charm attaches to him, from the
state of mind in which we first see him. A dim, mysterious presage of
evil weighs down his spirits, as though he felt afar off the coming-on
of some great calamity. Yet this unwonted dejection, sweetened as it
is with his habitual kindness and good-nature, has the effect of
showing how dearly he is held by such whose friendship is the fairest
earthly purchase of virtue. And it is considerable that upon tempers
like his even the smiles of Fortune often have a strangely saddening
effect. For such a man, even because he is good, is apt to be haunted
with a sense of having more than he deserves; and this may not
unnaturally inspire him with an indefinable dread of some reverse
which shall square up the account of his present blessings. Thus his
very happiness works, by subtle methods, to charge his heart with
certain dark forebodings. So that such presentiments, whatever the
disciples of positivism may say, are in the right line of nature:
"Oft startled and made wise
By their low-breathed interpretings,
The simply-meek foretaste the springs
Of bitter contraries."
But the sorrow can hardly be ungrateful to us, that has such noble
comforters as Antonio's. Our nature is honoured in the feelings that
spring up on both sides.
Wealth indeed seldom dispenses such warnings save to its most virtuous
possessors. And such is Antonio. A kind-hearted and sweet-mannered
man; of a large and liberal spirit; affable, generous, and magnificent
in his dispositions; patient of trial, indulgent to weakness, free
where he loves, and frank where he hates; in prosperity modest, in
adversity cheerful; craving wealth for the uses of virtue, and as the
sinews of friendship;--his character is one which we never weary of
contemplating. The only blemish we perceive in him is his treatment of
Shylock: in this, though evidently much more the fault of the times
than of the man, we cannot help siding against him; than which we need
not ask a clearer instance of poetical justice. Yet even this we blame
rather as a wrong done to himself than to Shylock; inasmuch as the
latter, notwithstanding he has had such provocations, avowedly grounds
his hate mainly on those very things which make the strongest title to
a good man's love. For the Jew's revenge fastens not so much on the
man's abuse of him as on his kindness to others.
* * * * *
The friendship between the Merchant and his companions is such a
picture as Shakespeare evidently delighted to draw. And so fair a
sentiment is not apt to inhabit ignoble breasts. Bassanio, Gratiano,
and Salarino are each admirable in their way, and give a pleasing
variety to the scenes where they move. Bassanio, though something too
lavish of purse, is a model of a gentleman; in whose character and
behaviour all is order and propriety; with whom good manners are the
proper outside and visibility of a fair mind,--the natural foliage and
drapery of inward refinement and delicacy and rectitude. Well-bred, he
has that in him which, even had his breeding been ill, would have
raised him above it and made him a gentleman.
Gratiano and Salarino are two as clever, sprightly, and voluble
persons as any one need desire to be with; the chief difference
between them being, that the former _lets_ his tongue run on from good
impulses, while the latter _makes_ it do so for good ends. If not so
wise as Bassanio, they are more witty; and as much surpass him in
strength, as they fall short of him in beauty, of character. It is
observable that of the two Gratiano, while much the more prone to
flood us with his talk, also shows less subjection of the individual
to the common forms of social decorum; so that, if he behaves not
quite so well as the others, he gives livelier proof that what good
behaviour he has is his own; a growth from within, not a piece of
imitation. And we are rather agreeably surprised, that one so
talkative and rattle-tongued should therewithal carry so much weight
of meaning; and he sometimes appears less sensible than he is, because
of his galloping volubility. But he has no wish to be "reputed wise
for saying nothing"; and he makes a merit of talking nonsense when, as
is sometimes the case, nonsense is the best sort of sense: for, like a
prime good fellow, as he is, he would rather incur the charge of folly
than not, provided he can thereby add to the health and entertainment
of his friends.
* * * * *
Lorenzo and Jessica, the runaway lovers, are in such a lyrical state
of mind as rather hinders a clear view of their characters. Both are
indeed overflowing with sweetness and beauty, but more, perhaps, as
the result of nuptial inspiration than of inherent qualities. For I
suppose the worst tempers are apt to run sweet while the honeymoon is
upon them. However, as regards the present couple, it may be justly
said that the instrument should be well-tuned and delicately strung to
give forth such tones, be it touched ever so finely. Even Love, potent
little god as he is, can move none but choice spirits to such
delectable issues. Jessica's elopement, in itself and its
circumstances, puts us to the alternative that either she is a bad
child, or Shylock a bad father. And there is enough to persuade us of
the latter; though not in such sort but that some share of the
reproach falls to her. For if a young woman have so bad a home as to
justify her in thus deserting and robbing it, the atmosphere of the
place can hardly fail to leave _some_ traces in her temper and
character.
Lorenzo stands fair in our regard, negatively, because he does nothing
unhandsome, positively, because he has such good men for his friends.
And it is rather curious that what is thus done for him, should be
done for Jessica by such a person as Launcelot Gobbo. For she and the
clown are made to reflect each other's choicer parts: we think the
better of her for having kindled something of poetry in such a clod,
and of him for being raised above himself by such an object. And her
conduct is further justified to our feelings by the odd testimony he
furnishes of her father's badness; which testimony, though not of much
weight in itself, goes far to confirm that of others. We see that the
Jew is much the same at home as in the Rialto; that, let him be where
he will, it is his nature to snarl and bite.
Such, in one view of the matter, is the dramatic propriety of this
Launcelot. His part, though often faulted by those who can see but one
thing at a time, materially aids the completeness of the work, in
giving us a fuller view both of Jessica and of her father. But he has
also a value in himself irrespective of that use: his own personal
rights enter into the purpose of his introduction; and he carries in
himself a part of the reason why he is so, and not otherwise: for
Shakespeare seldom if ever brings in a person _merely_ for the sake
of others. A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in
self, he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm in his
sufficiency of original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at
a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is
both ludicrous and natural. His jokes to be sure are mostly failures;
nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but they
succeed. The poverty of his wit is thus enriched by his complacency in
dealing it out. His part indeed amply pays its way, in showing how
much of mirth may be caused by feebleness in a great attempt at a
small matter. Besides, in him the mother element of the whole piece
runs out into broad humour and travesty; his reasons for breaking with
his master the Jew being, as it were, a variation in drollery upon the
fundamental air of the play. Thus he exhibits under a comic form the
general aspect of surrounding humanity; while at the same time his
character is an integral part of that varied structure of human life
which it belongs to the Gothic Drama to represent. On several accounts
indeed he might not be spared.
* * * * *
In Portia Shakespeare seems to have aimed at a perfect scheme of an
amiable, intelligent, and accomplished woman. And the result is a fine
specimen of beautiful nature enhanced by beautiful art. Eminently
practical in her tastes and turn of mind, full of native, homebred
sense and virtue, Portia unites therewith something of the ripeness
and dignity of a sage, a mellow eloquence, and a large, noble
discourse; the whole being tempered with the best grace and
sensibility of womanhood. As intelligent as the strongest, she is at
the same time as feminine as the weakest of her sex: she talks like a
poet and a philosopher, yet, strange to say, she talks, for all the
world, just like a woman. She is as full of pleasantry, too, and as
merry "within the limit of becoming mirth," as she is womanly and
wise; and, which is more, her arch sportiveness always relishes as
the free outcome of perfect moral health. Nothing indeed can be more
fitting and well-placed than her demeanour, now bracing her speech
with grave maxims of practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in
sallies of wit, or of innocent, roguish banter. The sportive element
of her composition has its happiest showing in her dialogue with
Nerissa about the "parcel of wooers," and in her humorous description
of the part she imagines herself playing in her purposed disguise. The
latter is especially delightful from its harmonious contrast with the
solid thoughtfulness which, after all, forms the staple and frame-work
of her character. How charmingly it sets off the divine rapture of
eloquence with which she discourses to the Jew of mercy!
"I'll hold thee any wager,
When we are both accoutred like young men,
I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
And wear my dagger with the braver grace;
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride; and speak of frays,
Like a fine-bragging youth; and tell quaint lies,
How honourable ladies sought my love,
Which I denying, they fell sick and died,--
I could not do withal;--then I'll repent,
And wish, for all that, that I had not kill'd them:
And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell;
That men shall swear I've discontinu'd school
Above a twelvemonth. I've within my mind
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,
Which I will practise."
Partly from condition, partly from culture, Portia has grown to live
more in the understanding than in the affections; for which cause she
is a little more self-conscious than I exactly like: yet her character
is hardly the less lovely on that account: she talks considerably of
herself indeed, but always so becomingly, that we hardly wish her to
choose any other subject; for we are pleasantly surprised that one so
well aware of her gifts should still bear them so meekly. Mrs.
Jameson, with Portia in her eye, intimates Shakespeare to have been
about the only artist, except Nature, who could make women wise
without turning them into men. And it is well worth the noting that,
honourable as the issue of her course at the trial would be to a man,
Portia shows no unwomanly craving to be in the scene of her triumph:
as she goes there prompted by the feelings and duties of a wife, and
for the saving of her husband's honour and peace of mind,--being
resolved that "never shall he lie by Portia's side with an unquiet
soul"; so she gladly leaves when these causes no longer bear in that
direction. Then too, exquisitely cultivated as she is, humanity has
not been so refined out of her, but that in such a service she can
stoop from her elevation, and hazard a brief departure from the
sanctuary of her sex.
Being to act for once the part of a man, it would seem hardly possible
for her to go through the undertaking without more of self-confidence
than were becoming in a woman: and the student may find plenty of
matter for thought in the Poet's so managing as to prevent such an
impression. For there is nothing like ostentation or conceit of
intellect in Portia. Though knowing enough for any station, still it
never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which
Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would
therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not
see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but
would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in
her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of
poetry and the solidities of philosophy, all for use, nothing for
show; she has fairly domesticated them, has naturalized them in her
sphere, and tamed them to her fireside, so that they seem as much at
home there as if they had been made for no other place. And to all
this mental enrichment she adds the skill
"So well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."
Portia's consciousness of power does indeed render her cool,
collected, and firm, but never a whit unfeminine: her smooth command
both of herself and of the matter she goes about rather heightens our
sense of her modesty than otherwise: so that the impression we take
from her is, that these high mental prerogatives are of no sex; that
they properly belong to the common freehold of woman and man; and that
the ladies of creation have just as good a right to them as the lords.
Some of her speeches, especially at the trial, are evidently
premeditated; for, as any good lawyer would do, she of course prepares
herself in the case beforehand; but I should like to see the masculine
lawyer that could premeditate any thing equal to them. It is to be
noted withal that she goes about her work without the least misgiving
as to the result; having so thoroughly booked herself both in the
facts and the law of the case as to feel perfectly sure on that point.
Hence the charming ease and serenity with which she moves amid the
excitements of the trial. No trepidations of anxiety come in to
disturb the preconcerted order and method of her course. And her
solemn appeals to the Jew are made in the earnest hope of inducing him
to accept a full and liberal discharge of the debt. When she says to
him, "there's thrice thy money offer'd thee," it is because she really
feels that both the justice of the cause and the honour of her husband
would be better served by such a payment than by the more brilliant
triumph which awaits her in case the Jew should spurn her offer.
Thus her management of the trial, throughout, is a piece of consummate
art; though of art in such a sense as presupposes perfect integrity of
soul. Hence, notwithstanding her methodical forecast and preparation,
she is as eloquent as an angel, and her eloquence, as by an
instinctive tact, knows its time perfectly. One of her strains in this
kind, her appeal to the Jew on the score of mercy, has been so often
quoted, that it would long since have grown stale, if it were possible
by any means to crush the freshness of unwithering youth out of it.
And I hope it will not be taken as any abatement of the speaker's
claim as a wise jurist, that she there carries both the head and the
heart of a ripe Christian divine into the management of her cause. Yet
her style in that speech is in perfect keeping with her habitual modes
of thought and discourse: even in her most spontaneous expressions we
have a reflex of the same intellectual physiognomy. For the mental
aptitude which she displays in the trial seems to have been the
germinal idea out of which her whole part was consistently evolved; as
the Poet's method often was, apparently, first to settle what his
persons were to do, and then to conceive and work out their characters
accordingly.
It has been said that Shakespeare's female characters are inferior to
his characters of men. Doubtless in some respects they are so; they
would not be female characters if they were not; but then in other
respects they are superior. Some people apparently hold it impossible
for man and woman to be equal and different at the same time. Hence
the false equality of the sexes which has been of late so often and so
excruciatingly advocated. On this ground, the Poet could not have made
his women equal to his men without unsexing and unsphering them; which
he was just as far from doing as Nature is. The alleged inferiority,
then, of his women simply means, I suppose, that they are women, as
they ought to be, and not men, as he meant they should not be, and as
we have cause to rejoice that they are not. He knew very well that in
this matter equality and diversity are nowise incompatible, and that
the sexes might therefore stand or sit on the same level without
standing in the same shoes or sitting in the same seats. If, indeed,
he had not known this, he could not have given _characters_ of either
sex, but only wretched and disgusting medlies and caricatures of both.
How nicely, on the one hand, Shakespeare discriminates things that
really differ, so as to present in all cases the soul of womanhood,
without a particle of effeminacy; and how perfectly, on the other
hand, he reconciles things that seem most diverse, pouring into his
women all the intellectual forces of the other sex, without in the
least impairing or obscuring their womanliness;--all this is not more
rare in poetry than it is characteristic of his workmanship. Thus
Portia is as much superior to her husband in intellect, in learning,
and accomplishment, as she is in wealth; but she is none the less
womanly for all that. Nor, which is more, does she ever on that
account take the least thought of inverting the relation between them.
In short, her mental superiority breeds no kind of social
displacement, nor any desire of it. Very few indeed of the Poet's men
are more highly charged with intellectual power. While she is acting
the lawyer in disguise, her speech and bearing seem to those about her
in the noblest style of manliness. In her judge-like gravity and
dignity of deportment; in the extent and accuracy of her legal
knowledge; in the depth and appropriateness of her moral reflections;
in the luminous order, the logical coherence, and the beautiful
transparency of her thoughts, she almost rivals our Chief Justice
Marshall. Yet to us, who are in the secret of her sex, all the
proprieties, all the inward harmonies, of her character are
exquisitely preserved; and the essential grace of womanhood seems to
irradiate and consecrate the dress in which she is disguised.
Nor is it any drawback on her strength and substantial dignity of
character, that her nature is all overflowing with romance: rather,
this it is that glorifies her, and breathes enchantment about her; it
adds that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such
winning beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the
"rich-souled creature" that Schlegel describes her to be. Therewithal
she may be aptly quoted as a mark-worthy instance how the Poet makes
the several parts and persons of a drama cohere not only with one
another but with the general circumstances wherein they occur. For so
in Portia's character the splendour of Italian skies and scenery and
art is reproduced; their spirit lives in her imagination, and is
complicated with all she does and says.
* * * * *
If Portia is the beauty of this play, Shylock is its strength. He is a
standing marvel of power and scope in the dramatic art; at the same
time appearing so much a man of Nature's making, that we can hardly
think of him as a creation of art. In the delineation Shakespeare had
no less a task than to fill with individual life and peculiarity the
broad, strong outlines of national character in its most revolting
form. Accordingly Shylock is a true representative of his nation;
wherein we have a pride which for ages never ceased to provoke
hostility, but which no hostility could ever subdue; a thrift which
still invited rapacity, but which no rapacity could ever exhaust; and
a weakness which, while it exposed the subjects to wrong, only
deepened their hate, because it kept them without the means or the
hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of national sufferings,
national sympathies, national antipathies. Himself an object of bitter
insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom he is
at once too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no
life among them but money; no hold on them but interest; no feeling
towards them but hate; no indemnity out of them but revenge. Such
being the case, what wonder that the elements of national greatness
became congealed and petrified into malignity? As avarice was the
passion in which he mainly lived, the Christian virtues that thwarted
this naturally seemed to him the greatest of wrongs.
With these strong national traits are interwoven personal traits
equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely Jewish, he is not more a Jew
than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy intellectuality, and his dry,
mummy-like tenacity of purpose, with a dash now and then of biting
sarcastic humour, we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out
of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by
accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of
neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he
treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance
cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him:
when he has not provoked them, he has been forced to bear them; and
now that he does provoke them, he is hardened against them. In a word,
he may be broken; he cannot be bent.
Shylock is great in every scene where he appears, yet each later scene
exhibits him in a new element or aspect of greatness. For as soon as
the Poet has set forth one side or phase of his character, he
forthwith dismisses that, and proceeds to another. For example, the
Jew's cold and penetrating sagacity, as also his malignant and
remorseless guile, are finely delivered in the scene with Antonio and
Bassanio, where he is first solicited for the loan. And the strength
and vehemence of passion, which underlies these qualities, is still
better displayed, if possible, in the scene with Antonio's two
friends, Solanio and Salarino, where he first avows his purpose of
exacting the forfeiture. One passage of this scene has always seemed
to me a peculiarly idiomatic strain of eloquence, steeped in a mixture
of gall and pathos; and I the rather notice it, because of the
wholesome lesson which Christians may gather from it. Of course the
Jew is referring to Antonio:
"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 his 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? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge: if a
Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian
example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute; and
it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
I have spoken of the mixture of national and individual traits in
Shylock. It should be observed further, that these several elements of
character are so attempered and fused together, that we cannot
distinguish their respective influence. Even his avarice has a smack
of patriotism. Money is the only defence of his brethren as well as of
himself, and he craves it for their sake as well as his own; feels
indeed that wrongs are offered to them in him, and to him in them.
Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains,
insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a
Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer;
hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian,
one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's
heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his
precious, precious jewels? Thus his religion, his patriotism, his
avarice, his affection, all concur to stimulate his enmity; and his
personal hate thus reinforced overcomes for once his greed, and he
grows generous in the prosecution of his aim. The only reason he will
vouchsafe for taking the pound of flesh is, "if it will feed nothing
else, it will feed my revenge"; a reason all the more satisfactory to
him, forasmuch as those to whom he gives it can neither allow it nor
refute it: and until they can rail the seal from off his bond, all
their railings are but a foretaste of the revenge he seeks. In his
eagerness to taste that morsel sweeter to him than all the luxuries of
Italy, his recent afflictions, the loss of his daughter, his ducats,
his jewels, and even the precious ring given him by his departed wife,
all fade from his mind. In his inexorable and imperturbable hardness
at the trial there is something that makes the blood to tingle. It is
the sublimity of malice. We feel that the yearnings of revenge have
silenced all other cares and all other thoughts. In his rapture of
hate the man has grown superhuman, and his eyes seem all aglow with
preternatural malignity. Fearful, however, as is his passion, he comes
not off without moving our pity. In the very act whereby he thinks to
avenge his own and his brethren's wrongs, the national curse overtakes
him. In standing up for the letter of the law against all the
pleadings of mercy, he has strengthened his enemies' hands, and
sharpened their weapons, against himself; and the terrible Jew sinks
at last into the poor, pitiable, heart-broken Shylock.
The inward strain and wrenching of his nature, caused by the revulsion
which comes so suddenly upon him, is all told in one brief sentence,
which may well be quoted as an apt instance how Shakespeare reaches
the heart by a few plain words, when another writer would most likely
pummel the ears with a high-strung oration. When it turns out that the
Jew's only chance of life stands in the very mercy which he has but a
moment before abjured; and when, as the condition of that mercy, he is
required to become a Christian, and also to sign a deed conveying to
his daughter and her husband all his remaining wealth; we have the
following from him:
"I pray you, give me leave to go from hence;
I am not well: send the deed after me,
And I will sign it."
Early in the play, when Shylock is bid forth to Bassanio's supper, and
Launcelot urges him to go, because "my young master doth expect your
reproach," Shylock replies, "So do I his." Of course he expects that
reproach through the bankruptcy of Antonio. This would seem to infer
that Shylock has some hand in getting up the reports of Antonio's
"losses at sea"; which reports, at least some of them, turn out false
in the end. Further than this, the Poet leaves us in the dark as to
how those reports grew into being and gained belief. Did he mean to
have it understood that the Jew exercised his cunning and malice in
plotting and preparing them? It appears, at all events, that Shylock
knew they were coming, before they came. Yet I suppose the natural
impression from the play is, that he lent the ducats and took the
bond, on a mere chance of coming at his wish. But he would hardly
grasp so eagerly at a bare possibility of revenge, without using means
to turn it into something more. This would mark him with much deeper
lines of guilt. Why, then, did not Shakespeare bring the matter
forward more prominently? Perhaps it was because the doing so would
have made Shylock appear too steep a criminal for the degree of
interest which his part was meant to carry in the play. In other
words, the health of the drama as a work of _comic_ art required his
criminality to be kept in the background. He comes very near
overshadowing the other characters too much, as it is. And Shylock's
character is _essentially tragic_; there is none of the proper timber
of comedy in him.
* * * * *
_The Merchant of Venice_ is justly distinguished among Shakespeare's
dramas, not only for the general felicity of the language, but also
for the beauty of particular scenes and passages. For descriptive
power, the opening scene of Antonio and his friends is not easily
rivalled, and can hardly fail to live in the memory of any one having
an eye for such things. Equally fine in its way is the scene of Tubal
and Shylock, where the latter is so torn with the struggle of
conflicting passions; his heart now sinking with grief at the account
of his fugitive daughter's expenses, now leaping with malignant joy at
the report of Antonio's losses. The trial-scene, with its tugging
vicissitudes of passion, and its hush of terrible expectation,--now
ringing with the Jew's sharp, spiteful snaps of malice, now made
musical with Portia's strains of eloquence, now holy with Antonio's
tender breathings of friendship, and dashed, from time to time, with
Gratiano's fierce jets of wrath, and fiercer jets of mirth,--is hardly
surpassed in tragic power anywhere; and as it forms the catastrophe
proper, so it concentrates the interest of the whole play. Scarcely
inferior in its kind is the night-scene of Lorenzo and Jessica, bathed
as it is in love, moonlight, "touches of sweet harmony," and
soul-lifting discourse, followed by the grave moral reflections of
Portia, as she approaches her home, and sees its lights, and hears its
music. The bringing in of this passage of ravishing lyrical sweetness,
so replete with the most soothing and tranquillizing effect, close
upon the intense dramatic excitement of the trial-scene, is such a
transition as we shall hardly meet with but in Shakespeare, and aptly
shows his unequalled mastery of the mind's capacities of delight. The
affair of the rings, with the harmless perplexities growing out of it,
is a well-managed device for letting the mind down from the tragic
height whereon it lately stood, to the merry conclusion which the play
requires. Critics, indeed, may easily quarrel with this sportive
after-piece; but it stands approved by the tribunal to which Criticism
itself must bow,--the spontaneous feelings of such as are willing to
be made cheerful and healthy, without beating their brains about the
_how_ and _wherefore_. It is in vain that critics tell us we ought to
"laugh by precept only, and shed tears by rule."
I ought not to close without remarking what a wide diversity of
materials this play reconciles and combines. One can hardly realize
how many things are here brought together, they are ordered in such
perfect concert and harmony. The greatness of the work is thus hidden
in its fine proportions. In many of the Poet's dramas we are surprised
at the great variety of character: here, besides this, we have a
remarkable variety of plot. And, admirable as may be the skill
displayed in the characters individually considered, the interweaving
of so many several plots, without the least confusion or
embarrassment, evinces a still higher mastership. For, many and
various as are the forms and aspects of life here shown, they all
emphatically live together, as if they all had but one vital
circulation.