William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice

Such malevolence should settle our loyalties. Yet it is not as simple as that. Shylock’s exclusion from the glittering society of the play brings him strangely closer to the audience. Comedy conventionally distances so as to highlight large-scale patterns and social groupings. But Shylock, alienated by voice and profession, race and religion, stands nearer to a century equally uncertain about the values of Renaissance civilisation. And the play’s refusal to become his tragedy isolates him further: not a tragic Jew, but one despoiled, cheated, deprived of dramatic weight, robbed finally of any function in a play which proceeds calmly without him. If Antonio is not to be the lamb for the slaughter, then Shylock must be the scapegoat. There is always a cost: even comedy must expel its dissidents.

Thus the final Act retreats doggedly into a beautiful but brittle fantasy world where lovers unite, fathers relent, games conclude, and ships come home. The play which began with ‘a lady richly left’ ends aptly with the news of a deed of gift ‘from the rich Jew’. The symmetry is ironic. Reduced by the triumphant Portia into an off-stage benefactor Shylock becomes part of the mechanism of the comic world. But that world will never be quite the same again. Unlike Fanny, we cannot but be much affected.

Venice. A street.

[Enter ANTONIO , SALERIO , and SOLANIO .]

Antonio

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me

That I have much ado to know myself.

Salerio

Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

There where your argosies, with portly sail –

Or as it were the pageants of the sea –

Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

As they fly by them with their woven wings.

Solanio

The better part of my affections would

Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,

Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads;

Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt,

Would make me sad.

Salerio

My wind, cooling my broth,

Would blow me to an ague when I thought

What harm a wind too great might do at sea.

But I should think of shallows and of flats,

And see my wealthy Andrew dock’d in sand,

Vailing her high top lower than her ribs

To kiss her burial. Should I go to church

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

Which, touching but my gentle vessel’s side,

Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

That such a thing bechanc’d would make me sad?

But tell not me; I know Antonio

Antonio

Believe me, no; I thank my fortune for it,

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

Upon the fortune of this present year;

Solanio

Why then you are in love.

Antonio

Fie, fie!

Solanio

Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad

Because you are not merry; and ’twere as easy

For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,

Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time:

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,

And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;

And other of such vinegar aspect

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

[Enter BASSANIO , LORENZO , and GRATIANO .]

Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well;

We leave you now with better company.

Salerio

If worthier friends had not prevented me.

Antonio

Your worth is very dear in my regard.

I take it your own business calls on you,

And you embrace th’ occasion to depart.

Salerio

Bassanio

Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say when.

You grow exceeding strange; must it be so?

Salerio

We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours.

[Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO .]

Lorenzo

My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.

Bassanio

I will not fail you.

Gratiano

You look not well, Signior Antonio;

You have too much respect upon the world;

Believe me, you are marvellously chang’d.

Antonio

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano –

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

Gratiano

Let me play the fool.

And let my liver rather heat with wine

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Why should a man whose blood is warm within

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster,

By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio –

I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks –

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say ‘I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark’.

That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.

But fish not with this melancholy bait