The Merchant of Venice

The centerpiece of Act III—and arguably the entire play—is Shylock’s speech defending his humanity as a Jew. So eloquent an assertion of one’s personhood was not generally afforded to Jewish characters in Elizabethan theater, including Barabas, the protagonist of Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. To be clear, this does not cast Shakespeare as a defender of Jewish civil rights who was centuries ahead of his time. The most likely explanation is that Shakespeare tended to imbue even his most execrable characters with human complexities, and Shylock is no exception. There are no demons or saints in Shakespeare’s plays—only messy human beings who combine good and ill qualities in varying proportions.

That said, the speech effectively puts Shylock’s grotesque and sadistic intentions in perspective. For years, Shylock has been dehumanized by Antonio and the broader mainstream Christian society in Venice. Like Jews more generally, he has been stigmatized as a vicious animal hungry for Christian flesh. Labeled a beast more times than he can count, Shylock is now content to behave like one, particularly in this instance when the law appears to give him a right to do so. This idea of responding to stigmatization by projecting the very qualities associated with that stigma can be seen throughout the history of oppressed people in Western civilization. Shylock sums up his attitude regarding his own stigmatization when he tells Antonio, “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs” (3.3.7-8).

Shylock’s speech also upsets the simple dichotomy between Christian mercy and Jewish wrath. A simplified interpretation of the differences between a Hebrew Old Testament God and a Christian New Testament God suggests that the former is vengeful while the latter is merciful. Scripture aside, however, in practice Jews in 16th-century Europe were hated and deemed deserving of retribution against them for their mythological ancestors’ supposed role in the death of Jesus Christ. Thus, Shylock convincingly argues that his vengefulness is learned behavior picked up from Christians like Antonio. At the end of his major speech, Shylock says, “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!” (3.1.67-70). Furthermore, to the extent that mercy exists in 16th-century Venice, it is a privilege for those who exercise it and a luxury Shylock believes he cannot afford as a Jew.

Another telling quote from Shylock comes when Tubal, a fellow Jew, comes with news of Jessica. Here, the audience gets a rare glimpse of how Shylock behaves within his own community. In this exchange cracks form in Shylock’s facade of the cold and cunning moneylender who cares only for material worth. For example, when Tubal tells him that Jessica traded his turquoise ring for a monkey, Shylock is crestfallen—not because of the ring’s material value but because it was a gift from his late wife Leah. This rare showing of sentimentality and vulnerability expands the audience’s understanding of Shylock and positions him as something more than an anti-Semitic cliché.

Running parallel to the drama in Venice is Bassanio’s effort to marry Portia. Bassanio succeeds where the princes of Morocco and Arragon failed, looking past mere appearances and choosing the lead casket. On its face, this suggests that Bassanio’s love for Portia is profound and worth celebrating, an idea echoed by the chorus who sing a poem rejecting more shallow forms of affection. Yet one cannot ignore the transactional nature of Bassanio’s courtship of Portia. Early in the play, Bassanio explicitly frames his marriage hopes in the context of his debts, most of which he owes to Antonio.

This is but one example that suggests Bassanio’s ultimate allegiances are to Antonio, and vice versa. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that Bassanio and Antonio’s relationship is romantic in nature. As one piece of evidence, they cite Antonio’s unexplained melancholy at the start of the play, which they attribute to his unrequited love of Bassanio. In Michael Radford’s film version, Bassanio and Antonio even share a kiss. Yet other scholars argue it would be a mistake to apply 21st-century labels to Shakespearean characters, given that men of that era—particularly within the nobility—routinely expressed platonic affection for one another through extravagant emotional displays. This isn’t to say there aren’t queer themes in Shakespeare; there is a vital branch of Shakespearean scholarship devoted to this area of analysis. In any case, audiences can at the very least appreciate poet W. H. Auden’s take on Antonio, which is that the character’s “emotional life, though his conduct may be chaste, is concentrated upon a member of his own sex.” (Auden, W. H. The Dyer’s Hand. New York: Random House. 1962.)