David Widzisz
English 378
Dr. Strickland
08-06-02
Romantic Love and Long-Term Exchange in The Merchant of Venice
A glance at the secondary literature of The Merchant of Venice suggests that
contemporary criticism is primarily concerned with the Jewish question and its
implications. Put another way, scholarship seems preoccupied with answering the
question of whether or not Shakespeare is advocating anti-Semitism.1 The thematic
divergence of this paper is not meant to downplay issues of race and religion; rather, the
aim is to illuminate the seemingly peripheral relationships in terms of “long-term” and
“short-term transactional orders.”2 I hope to illustrate how conflict and the eventual
legitimization of marriage in The Merchant of Venice are informed by tensions between
existing and evolving perceptions of exchange. In this effort, historical and
anthropological theory will be set against the relationship of Lorenzo and Jessica and also
Portia and Bassanio to reveal a contest with traditional values in the former (against
romantic love) and a friction between established long-term transactions in the latter
(marriage versus friendship).
In consequence, two operations must be made: first, a context for the play must
be founded which is mindful of both English and Venetian culture; and secondly, a
1
It appears that this concern has lent itself to arguably over-determined readings of the play. Terry
Eagleton’s Shakespeare, for instance, prefigures the production by Sobol in many respects. In Eagleton’s
treatment of the play, he defends viewing Shylock as omniscient, saying that in production “one can
imagine him waiting with a certain academic interest to see what dodge the Christians will devise to let one
of their own kind off the hook. Perhaps he throws the audience a knowing wink when Portia produces her
knockdown argument” (37-38).
2
I am borrowing the terminology of Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch in their book Money and the
Morality of Exchange. Within which, long-term transactions are defined as “an exchange of inalienable
objects between interdependent transactors,” and short-term transactions refer to “an exchange of alienable
objects between independent transactors” (8). These ideas are further explained on pages five and six.
2
general theory of exchange, which is historically specific, must be fitted to this. In
addition to being far from comprehensive, this poses a number of difficulties. For one,
Shakespeare situates his play in Venice and appears to take liberties with the cultural
context.3 Furthermore, even the more authoritative historical accounts, such as Lawrence
Stone’s The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, have been subject to
criticism. Dympna Callaghan, for example, argues that despite its merit, Stone’s
aristocratic emphasis obscures facts such as the existence of companionate marriage prior
to the seventeenth and eighteenth century (Callaghan 66-67).
To avoid these complications, I will restrict my use of Stone only to the more
assured, guiding principles that we can assume of the “lovers” and the discourse
surrounding them; yet, the slippage and early seeds of romantic, affective bonding that
Callaghan attests to will be used to situate Shakespeare’s plays within a time of emergent,
if only sporadic, traces of romantic love.
A further complication springs from the use of merchants, as opposed to
aristocracy. Yet, even though the agents in the play are merchants, and not the
aristocracy typical of England, Shakespeare certainly sets the action of the play against
the backdrop of the English, aristocratic values with which his audience would be
familiar. While intimacy with these values would vary, the play captures a clear sense of
the operation of primogeniture and also speaks to enforced marriage within social
boundaries. For example, Portia’s dead father maintains control over her marriage
through a contrived system of a choice between caskets (1.2.11-23), which, given
Bassanio’s need for a loan, seems to require a certain degree of affluence or social status:
3
In her introduction to The Merchant of Venice, Katherine Maus indicates that Shakespeare was either
ignorant or simply chose to exaggerate the “evenhanded cosmopolitanism” of the city and also the living
conditions of Venetian Jews, who, historically, were confined to ghettos (1083).
3
“O my Antonio, had I but the means / To hold a rival place with one of them [. . .]”
(1.2.173-174).
The Merchant of Venice’s relation to other plays provides more evidence for these
overtones; but first, more should be said regarding the nature of upper class marriage,
specifically in terms of romantic love. According to Stone, two different family types
overlapped during the Early Modern Period, the Open Lineage Family (1450-1630) and
also the Restricted Patriarchal Nuclear Family (1530-1700). For both, family planning
acted upon three guiding principles: “the continuity of the male line, the preservation
intact of the inherited property, and acquisition through marriage of further property or
useful political alliances” (Stone 42). Added to this, the rigidity of class hierarchy
required that one marry within one’s social class. Marriage was regulated by the parents
and only rarely relied upon the child’s choice or veto of the parents’ decision (270-271).
Even in instances where the child might have some say in choosing a partner, the parents
ultimately had the final word (271).
Under the influence of the Protestant Reformation, the importance and reliance on
kin and clientage (which was supremely important for the Open Lineage Family)
decreased, while numerous factors, such as the Calvinist notion of Original Sin,4
contributed to the consolidation of a more independent Restricted Patriarchal Nuclear
Family (151-218). Yet, even in this new arrangement, the despotic nature of patriarchal
authority, legal sanction and submission of women, high mortality rates, preoccupation
with primogeniture, and other factors prevented the companionate marriages Stone
attributes to the later seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Calvinist moral theology ushered in a new concentration on the family, generating a “sense of guilt and
anxiety about salvation” (225) and also resulting in “the need for severe measures toward children to defeat
the Devil and punish wickedness [. . .]” (216).
4
4
In fact, the lack of affective bonds, particularly between parents and their
children, largely stems from short life expectancy and the immanence of death; the black
plague, for instance, routinely shut down theaters and also divested the populace of any
guarantee of life. Stone writes, “Death was a part of life, and was realistically treated as
such” (81). Added to the overriding concerns for primogeniture, these circumstances
played a hand in the disavowal of romantic love; it seems logical that in a death-ridden
and inheritance-obsessed culture, the idea of highly affective romantic love and lust could
be nothing but shunned as ephemeral and irrational (86-87).
For Stone, the growth of affect is partly due to changes in personality (221-269).
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, personalities can be characterized as more
communal, diffused, and having low gradient affect (meaning low capacity for warm and
intimate relationships). A steep gradient affect flourishes in the eighteenth century,
which precipitates more affective bonds between husband, wife, and children and also the
potential for more intimate ties in general. Though Stone resists positing an absolute
cause for this change, he implies that three factors may be accountable: confidence in
personal pursuit of happiness, an ideal of the ‘Man of Sentiment,’ and a weakening in the
power of kin and later the parents (268).
Callaghan, on the other hand, seems a little more willing to ascribe a definite
cause for the rise of the nuclear family and affect bonds (79-84). She attests that the
Protestant Reformation, and its concurrent stress on individualism and reconfiguration of
the family, impacted female subjectivity in such a way that began to displace the “crude
and economic exchange of enforced marriage” (79). It is at the time that Shakespeare is
writing his plays where notions of “freely circulating love (especially freedom of choice
5
about one’s marriage partner) and wealth” are being idealized and are informing the
affective landscape (80). The interplay and romantic love captured in Romeo and Juliet,
Callaghan argues, requires these conditions and also insists upon “inexplicable and
mutual abandonment of ‘mastery’” (81). Moreover, truly unconstrained choice “relies to
some degree on the ideological separation of psychic and monetary economies” (81).
Whether marital relations were being actualized accordingly is secondary for
present purposes; more important is that these conflicting discourses reside within the
social context itself and threaten to upset the traditional ordering of marriage. Thus, two
somewhat opposing concepts of marriage are extant and in competition, and it is this
struggle between ideologically incongruent models that complicates relationships like
that of Romeo and Juliet.
Turning attention, then, towards these complications, one can interpose socioanthropological study to reveal a unique conceptualization of systems of exchange typical
of pre-Capitalist cultures. The gift-exchange theory forwarded by Bloch and Parry,
expounded within Money and The Morality of Exchange, argues that gift reciprocity
often contrasts sharply with the purchase of commodities or their sale by means of money
(1-2). Using anthropological research, Bloch and Parry illustrate that money does not
necessarily prevent interactions that are similar to gift-exchange; rather, the cultural
framework underpinning the opposition between long-term and short-term transactional
orders determines both their proper purpose and their arrangement, each of which are
fitted to culturally specific categories (1-30).
In this model, the long-term transactional order is defined as an economic
exchange that is “concerned with the reproduction of the long-term social or cosmic
6
order,” where “cultural recognition is also explicitly given to a cycle of short-term
exchanges associated with individual appropriation, competition, sensuous enjoyment,
luxury, and youthful vitality [. . .] that is variously the world of commerce, wage labor
and brigandage and is often identified with exchange between strangers” (24). According
to Bloch and Parry, these cycles often work in tandem, for “the short-term individualistic
transactions [. . .] are morally acceptable so long as they remain subordinated to, and do
not compete with, the long-term restorative cycle” (24-25).
Problems arise, however, when the short-term order supercedes or threatens the
long-term order:
There is always [. . .] the possibility that individual involvement in the
short-term cycle will become an end in itself which is no longer subordinated to
the reproduction of the larger cycle; or, more horrifying still, that grasping
individuals will divert the resources of the long-term cycle for their own
transactions. (26-27)
Superficially, Shakespeare’s treatment of romantic love deals with its implied
threat to the long-term restorative cycle that often grounds and generates conflict. While
plays like Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Merchant of Venice all
weave the passions of romantic love into the long-term cycle of marriage, the older
system displays or betrays unease over the new development.
The opposition in these systems is captured in Kristeva’s discussion of Romeo
and Juliet. She argues that, in regard to marriage, “the law [. . .] produces a coherent set,
a mainstay of reproduction, of production, or simply the social contract” (297), which one
could say speaks to the long-term cycle. Conversely, romantic love is characterized as
short-term: “The time of love would be that of the present moment (no sorrow can
‘countervail the exchange of joy that one short minute gives me in her sight’ – 2.6.4-5),
7
and marriage, as continuity, is its opposite” (300). Further evidence for this comes from
the Friar, who, in chiding Romeo’s obsession with Juliet, claims: “These violent delights
have violent ends. / And in their triumph die like fire and powder, / Which as they kiss
consume” (2.5.9-11).
Capulet also articulates his interest in maintaining the traditional long-term order.
The “heightened sense of mortality” (Kahn 180) he feels following Tybalt’s death
compels him to insist upon Juliet’s marriage (3.4.1-35), whereas before he allowed her
some say (1.3.1-107). This shift is, at its root, motivated by his desire to ensure the
passing on of inheritance; thus, in the Q2 manuscript, Capulet claims: “Earth hath
swallowed all my hopes but she, / She’s the hopeful lady of my earth” (1.2.14-15)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream also informs the contest between older and newer
relations by opening with Egeus imploring Theseus to enforce his “right” to marry his
daughter to Demetrius. In opposition, the play presents the amorous desire of Lysander
and Hermia and also Demetrius and Helena, to effectuate a dance-like presentation of
lovers in the ephemeral throws of passion (Barber 128).
In The Merchant of Venice, the conflict over marriage comes most clearly through
the marriage of Lorenzo and Jessica, where the dismay of Shylock at their union and the
loss of wealth comes through his second-hand lines given by Solanio: “‘My daughter! O,
my ducats! O, my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! O, my Christian ducats’” (2.8.2.8.1516). In all three plays, then, allegiance to the old system of marriage not only surfaces in
the parents’ desire to control their children’s marriage, but also in the anxiety focalized
on romantic arrangements; there is, in effect, an implied, negative connotation applied to
8
romantic love stemming from the fear that money may be taken out of the family, thereby
impeding the operation of primogeniture.
Further yet, romantic love’s subversion is attacked on the grounds that its shortterm, acquisitive ends risk supplanting the long-term exchange or might even employ the
long-term cycle of marriage to meet short-term ends. In The Merchant of Venice, this
infringement appears in both of the principle relationships. Though both parties unite and
participate in the long-term restorative cycle of marriage, there is a concurrent threat that
Lorenzo and Bassanio may be seeking the fulfillment of immediate, economic gains
(short-term orders) through the exploitation of the long-term cycle (marriage). In the
case of Bassanio and Portia, for example, Bassanio tells Antonio that his “chief care / Is
to come fairly off from the great debts” he owes (1.1.127-128). His intended financial
gain also is clearly communicated when speaking directly of his plan to marry Portia:
O my Antonio, had I but the means
To hold a rival place with one of them,
I have a mind presages me such thrift
That I should questionless be fortunate. (1.1.173-176)
Lorenzo also hints at the same impetus during his scheming to steal Jessica away
from her father. Though the connection is not as explicit, one can impute an economic
motivation from his conversations. For example, when confiding his plans to Graziano,
Lorenzo implies that in telling him everything (“I must need tell thee all” [2.4.29]) the
means of exchange and the acquisition of her wealth are most important: “She hath
directed / How I shall take her from her father’s house, What gold and jewels she is
furnished with [. . .]” (2.4.29-31). In fact, in this discussion he is far from displaying a
highly affective bond that one might expect from a seeming instance of romantic love.
Only later, and after he receives his “dowry,” does he extol his love and affection for
9
Jessica (2.7.52-57); but even this is in question, for later evidence in the play reveals that
he may have been misleading Jessica all the while:
In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
And ne’er a true one. (5.1.17-20)
Though the entire opening exchange between Lorenzo and Jessica in 5.1 is rather
strange and is interrupted before its conclusion, one might infer that the initial stories of
forsaken love (Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Dido) and the allusions to
broken promises in their own relationship speak to a similar transience of love that befits
the period. This transience also surfaces in Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. In Romeo and Juliet, it is Romeo who seems blithely and completely to forget of
Roseline following his encounter with Juliet; his first exchange with Juliet, in fact, comes
in the form of a sonnet (1.5.90-104). With the help of intervening spirits, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream accomplishes the same precipitous portrayal of unconscious romantic
passion; thus, the lovers of the forest, including the Queen of the Fairies, become
possessed by a largely impersonal force that draws them together for no particular reason
(Barber 130).
Yet, it would be improper to characterize the relationships in any one of these
three plays as based solely on the pursuit of short-term or the subversion of long-term
cycles; for, as stated, the infractions against the traditional order eventually culminate in
marriage. The degree to which they conform, however, is debatable. In Romeo and
Juliet, for instance, the union of the couple never allows for primogeniture, though it does
seem that the families form a political bond. In The Merchant of Venice, the marriage of
10
Lorenzo and Jessica also subverts the traditional order; but, in the end of the play, the
court legitimates their union.
This “legitimizing,” in fact, stands as one of the most peculiar trends in the three
plays discussed. In all of the plays Shakespeare appears to negotiate the rift between
long-term and short-term cycles; and, as the plays repeatedly demonstrate, what first
looks to be typical of the short-term order becomes authorized through the approval of
those in power. Thus, Prince Escalus and the primary families in Romeo and Juliet, Duke
Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the Duke of Venice and the court in The
Merchant of Venice all sanction the romantically struck bonds in one way or another.
Prince Escalus’s insistence on peace between the Capulets and Monagues (1.1.74-96)
meets the bonding of families in 5.3.295-301: “O brother Montague, give me thy hand. /
This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more / Can I demand” (5.3.295-297). In A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, the lovers’ unions made in the forest are so pleasing to Duke
Theseus that he invites the couples to be married at his own marriage ceremony: “For in
the temple by and by with us / These couples shall eternally be knit. –” (4.1.177-178).
And beyond Shylock’s forced conversion (which somewhat levels the two families’
social status in itself), Antonio arranges Shylock’s additional penalty to include a
retention of half his goods, which—upon Shylock’s death—will be released to Lorenzo
and Jessica along with his remaining estate. Though somewhat unclear in Romeo and
Juliet, the transference of inheritance and/or the sanction of marriage are reached in all
three plays.5
5
There are a number of additional parallels among the three plays that, in the interest of time and space,
could not be elaborated on here. Some of these include Kristeva’s assertion that clandestine and dangerous
elements fuel lovers’ passions (298), hatred's immanent presence in love (305), Kahn’s observation that the
force of family feuds and socialization into patriarchy complicate lovers’ desires (173), and several others.
11
Even still, where a traditional Shakespearean comedy, like A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, often ends after such resolution, the so-called The Comical History of The
Merchant of Venice, Or Otherwise Called the Jew of Malta supplies its audience with an
entire additional Act. This addition, however, has led some scholars to rather anemic
conclusions. For John Russell Brown, the “last Act is a fitting sequel to the discord of
the trial scene where love and generosity confront hatred and possessiveness; it suggests
the way in which love’s wealth may be enjoyed continually” (170). Arguably, the
insights of exchange theory afford a more synoptic view of the play, making the
dynamics of the last scene consonant with the inter-personal relationships throughout the
rest of the play.
To arrive at this, I would first like to take a step backward and interrogate how
Bassanio’s questionable motives become diffracted by the contest between same-sex and
heterosexual bonds. Although speaking of Romeo and Juliet, Joseph Porter’s analysis of
frictions between lovers and friends speaks directly to The Merchant of Venice. In
Shakespeare’s Mercutio, Porter claims that “mercantilism and insipient colonialism give
urgency to love and friendship by raising prominence of distinctions between gift
exchange and commodity exchange” (145). Seemingly, Porter points directly to the
anthropological research cited earlier, for Bloch and Parry both identify short-term,
commodity exchange as having the capacity, though not absolutely so, to sever “the
relationship between producer and product,” depersonalizing social relationships (4-6).6
6
When suggesting these ideas, Bloch and Parry are actually arguing against the absolutism attributed to
money by writers like G. Simmel, who seems to suggest that money may even be somewhat responsible for
the severing of ties between kinship and the family (5). Although Bloch and Parry do admit to these
possibilities, they maintain that the use of money and its implications are context dependent (28).
12
Gift exchange, conversely, is said to resonate with the personality of the giver and marks
a transference that is inalienable and permanent (8).7
For Porter, the urgency given to friendship and love emerges in Romeo and Juliet
as a rivalry for the affections of Romeo. Though the argument extends past the scope of
this paper, Porter argues that Mercutio feels threatened by the growing rift in his
friendship to Romeo, which mostly stems from Romeo’s new proclivity for women.8
Speaking of Romeo and Juliet and also The Merchant of Venice, Porter asserts that both
plays highlight “a tug of war in which men and women compete for the affections of
men” (151).
In The Merchant of Venice, this is apparent in that a tension similar to that found
between Romeo and Mercutio erupts between Antonio and Bassanio. In the latter
relationship, the very opening dialogue between the two bespeaks extreme, seemingly
unconditional, friendship: “[Antonio] My purse, my person, my extremest means / Lie
all unlocked to your occasions” (1.1.138-139). Their relationship also involves a
formerly established debt, which differs—primarily in the relation to long and short-term
orders—from the loan struck between Shylock and Antonio. The loan Shylock gives to
Antonio attempts to splice both long-term and short-term transactional orders; for, on the
one hand, Shylock gives Antonio an interest-free loan under the pretense that a long-term
friendship may be acquired:
I would be friends with you, and have your love,
Forget the shames that you have stained me with,
Supply your present wants, and take no doit
7
See also Footnote #2.
Porter places heavy emphasis on the homoerotics that underlie Romeo and Mercutio’s relationship, and he
seems to imply the same for Bassanio and Antonio’s relationship in The Merchant of Venice (150-151); yet,
for present purposes, the specifics of this argument will not be so important as the illustration of competing
commitments to same-sex and heterosexual relationships.
8
13
Of usance for my moneys; and you’ll not hear me.
This is kind I offer. (1.3.133-137)
On the other hand, the bond precludes, a priori, any such transaction because of its
stipulation for a pound of flesh, not to mention Shylock’s underlying hatred and desire
for Antonio’s death (1.3.36-47).
In contrast, Bassanio’s bond to Antonio stands as one which is intimately
connected to their long-term, irreducible bond as friends. Thus, as Antonio implores
Bassanio to “Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall be racked even to the
uttermost [. . .]” (1.2.180-181), Bassanio reciprocates in the trial scene by subordinating
his marital obligations to Portia: “[To Antonio] But life itself, my wife, and all the world
/ Are not with me esteemed above thy life” (4.1.279-280).
It is chiefly this abjuration which necessitates the last Act of the play and gives
the ring, the focalizing symbol of Bassanio and Portia’s marriage, much of its
importance. Portia’s acute understanding of exchange, which has been honed during her
subjection to her father’s mercantilesque control over her marriage, is harnessed to
manipulate and reorder Bassanio’s allegiance to his newly made bond to her. She is,
perhaps, aware of Bassanio’s short-sightedness and his misunderstanding of long-term
exchange; and therefore, she orchestrates the trial in Act Four to cement Bassanio’s
obligation to her, while displacing the one to Antonio.
Put another way, the long-term restorative cycle of marriage, encapsulated in the
gift exchange of the ring, meets the conflicting long-term arrangement of friendship
between Antonio and Bassanio. The resulting friction between long-term cycles not only
mirrors the struggle between same-sex and heterosexual relationships (Porter), but also
prevents the resolution that typifies Shakespearean comedy. So, while Jessica and
14
Lorenzo’s marriage is legitimated in the trial by Act Four, Portia and Bassanio’s
marriage—apart from lacking consummation—is still suspended between conflicting
orders.
Portia, upon becoming aware of Bassanio’s misaligned commitment (first during
the receipt of the letter from Antonio [3.2.231-324] and later during the quoted trial scene
[4.1.279-280]), uses the previously established promise with the ring to undo Bassanio’s
confusion over long-term orders:
I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. (3.2.171-174)
One might conclude that Portia, who increasing becomes aware of Bassanio’s bond to
Antonio, prolongs the trial scene to serve two alternate purposes: one, to test Bassanio’s
allegiance to Antonio; and secondly, to build her own ethos as Antonio’s savior, bringing
him to the edge of death (“Therefore lay bare your bosom” [4.1.247]) only vicariously to
fulfill Bassanio’s life-pledge to Antonio (“[Bassanio] This is the man, this is Antonio, /
To whom I am so infinitely bound” [5.1.133-134]). Earlier yet, Antonio’s elevated status
is proved most explicitly through convincing Bassanio to part with the ring: “My lord
Bassanio, let him have the ring, / Let his deservings and my love withal / Be valued
‘gainst your wife’s commandement” (4.2.445-447).
Once Portia “lays bare” Bassanio’s contradictory promises (both through eliciting
his promises to Antonio and acquiring the ring), she demands a transformation of
Bassanio’s irreconcilable duplicity: “Swear by your double self, / And there’s an oath of
credit” (5.1.243-244). And to meet this end, it is again Antonio who commands
authority over Bassanio’s loyalty and allows his release:
15
I once did lend my body for his wealth
Which, but for him that had your husband’s ring,
Had quite miscarried. I dare to be bound again,
My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord
Will never more break faith advisedly. (5.1.248-252)
With this action, Portia is allowed to reenact the exchange of the ring, which can now
amiably serve as both an intimation of its giver and a symbol of an inalienable bond
between interdependent people.
Thus, upon subordinating the relationship of Antonio and Bassanio to that of
Portia and Bassanio, Act Five makes space for the former marriage vows which were
formerly impossible in the context of Bassanio’s existing, overriding obligation. In
effect, The Merchant of Venice captures the external forces that problematize Jessica and
Lorenzo’s union and also the internal oppositions between long-term orders in Portia and
Bassanio’s marriage, and it manages to validate them both through first upsetting, then
reconfiguring/reconciling long-term cycles. The negative connotations applied to
romantic love, which come in descriptions more appropriate of the short-term order, meet
the sanction of patriarchal law; and, concurrently, the overlapping of same-sex and
heterosexual unions grate in such force to necessitate the subalternation of seemingly
homoerotic tensions to the sublimation of heterosexual, ideologically enjoined long-term
cycles.
16
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