The Merchant of Venice 3
The interlocking plots and how
they mean
The two sides of the play and their
relation to one another
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The “tragedy of Shylock” is one side, one
that cannot, should not be downplayed.
But the “comedy of Portia and Bassanio” is
the other.
The “comedy” rests in both casket plot
and ring plot.
Challenge is seeing the interlocking
character of all this, how the play is also a
play of ideas.
Antonio’s melancholy
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“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/
I am to learn.“
“I hold the world but as the world,/ A
stage, where every man must play a part,/
And mine a sad one.”
Is there melancholy in the very condition
of his being a merchant?
Money makes the world go ‘round
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Is anyone free in the play?
Antonio bound to the condition of trade.
Bassanio bound to his need of money.
Portia bound the will of her dead father.
Antonio bound to Shylock.
Shylock locked into the system of money
and usury.
Venetian state bound to its laws and need
for trade.
Portia’s melancholy
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“By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of
this great world.”
Nerissa: you should be weary of the world if
your miseries were equal to your good fortunes.
But “fortunes” is also “a fortune” – too much
money.
Fortune locks her into the nightmare of the
casket choice.
“Poor little rich girl” plot.
“Your father was ever virtuous . ..”
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Nerissa’s faith in a meaning in casket plot:
“. . . and holy men at their death have
good inspirations.”
Just a lottery by the “heavy” father, or an
extension of a father’s protection?
A fairy tale element in the choice of three?
What does each casket “mean”?
“Going for the gold”
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Morocco quite pleased with his strength
and valor: II, 2, 24ff.
“Who chooseth me shall gain what many
men desire.”
“A golden mind stoops not to shows of
dross.”
“Oh hell . . . A carrion death . . .”
The melancholy of gold?
Silvery Aragon: “I will assume
desert”
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“Who chooseth me shall get as much as
he deserves.”
Aragon as the quintessential aristocrat: II,
9, 22ff.
[Hamlet to Polonius: “Treat every man
according to his desert and who shall
scape whipping?”]
Silver smokes out the egocentricity of
Aragon.
The portrait of a blinking idiot!
“If you do love me, you will find me
out”
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Desire matching desire.
“Tell me where is fancy bred.”
Bassanio’s reading of the caskets.
Caskets as mirror of self, of marriage?
Why was choosing the lead casket
necessary for Portia’s suitor?
She gives up everything with the ring.
Bassanio’s vow in accepting the ring.
Portia v. Shylock
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Completion of bond means Antonio’s
death.
“Then must the Jew be merciful.”
“The quality of mercy . . .” and the quality
of justice.
Bassanio’s valuing of Antonio: IV, 1, 280ff.
Shylock’s defeat and “conversion.”
“And for your love, I’ll take this ring
from you.”
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The ring’s significance.
Can Bassanio not give the ring?
Belmont v. Venice?
Bassanio’s defense of giving the ring: V, 1, 215ff.
A potential nightmare – like the nightmare of
Antonio’s threatened death? 223ff.
Antonio’s being bound a second time for
Bassanio: 249ff.
Antonio the agent who takes and gives the ring.
“Manna in the way of starv’d
people”
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The dilemma of the ring plot
What do Bassanio, Gratiano learn from the
dilemma?
The quality of mercy once again?
What is it in regard to friendship, love,
marriage, civil society?
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Is the melancholy of Antonio dispelled by
the conclusion?
But perhaps not for us, for whom the
history of the 20th century has induced
even more melancholy.
We don’t have the luxury to take Shylock
figuratively.
And so the melancholy of his Jewishness
remains, and broods over the play?