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This article was downloaded by: [Baylor University Libraries] On: 01 October 2014, At: 12:59 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Perspectives on Political Science Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vpps20 1 Roman Virtue in a Christian Commercial Republic Timothy W. Burns Published online: 29 Sep 2014. 1 To cite this article: Timothy W. Burns (2014) Roman Virtue in a Christian Commercial Republic , Perspectives on Political Science, 43:4, 189-203, DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2014.948733 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2014.948733 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Perspectives on Political Science, 43:189 203, 2014 C Palgrave Macmillan Copyright ISSN: 1045-7097 print / 1930-5478 online DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2014.948733 Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 Roman Virtue in a Christian Commercial Republic1 TIMOTHY W. BURNS Abstract: This article focuses on the drama between Antonio and Portia. Sometimes understood to embody the Christian willingness to lay down his life for his friend, Antonio is actually practicing the pagan virtue of munificence more than Christian charity. Likewise, Portia displays virtues that on the surface appear to be Christian but underneath are more appropriate to her Roman namesake. In her cunning, deft exploitation of Antonio s plight, Portia is able to subordinate Antonio, and his affection for her husband, to her own marital bliss. In this drama between her and Antonio, we see Shakespeare transposing Roman virtues to a Christian context where private happiness can be secured against threats from the outside world. considers to be the troubling profligacy of her Christian husband s affection, she also has more in common with the preChristian Shylock, who recognizes that profligacy, than with Bassanio. More importantly, her cunning, deft exploitation of Antonio s plight permits her to subordinate him, and his affection for her husband, to her own marital bliss, and it is her pagan understanding of virtue and of law, here as in her dealings with her suitors, that directs her actions and permits her to succeed. In the drama between her and Antonio we see Shakespeare s transposing of Roman virtue to the context of a Christian, cosmopolitan world, where it is able to secure the private happiness of a couple against the threats that that world poses to it. In Rome, Antony triumphs over Brutus and Portia; in the commercial republic, Portia defeats Antony. Keywords: Antonio, Portia, Roman Virtue, Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ANTONIO AND BASSANIO The play opens with sadness and dialogic attempts to explain that sadness; it will close with a beloved woman s restoration of some joy to all concerned. Antonio is at the heart of the dialogue; he is sad but claims to know not why. The true reason, as we are subsequently led to see, is that his beloved friend Bassanio is hoping to marry (119 21), which would mean a curtailing of their deep friendship. Friendship and love and the worthiness for these, in their exclusivity and hence harshness, are the chief theme of the play. Solario and Solanio offer their explanations for Antonio s sadness: he has noble and splendid ships on the sea, to which other ships bow; he is anxious; the fleeting, temporary nature of all good things is brought home to him by images of shipwreck. These guesses fail to hit the mark, Antonio responds; he has prudently diversified his assets, risking his all on none of them. Is it love, then, they ask? He denies that it is. But the false diagnoses begin to elaborate upon the play s chief themes. Unlike the shipping of goods, devotional love or friendship does not admit of diversification; the lover is moved to devote his all to the beloved. Love entails S hakespeare chose the Christian commercial republic of Venice as the setting for his play about a merchant and his Jewish opponent. While the play s most riveting drama concerns Shylock s attempt to destroy Antonio, that drama is secondary to the broader one between Antonio and Portia. Antonio is sometimes understood to embody Christian virtue in his willingness to lay down his life for his friend Bassanio,2 but it is noteworthy that Bassanio praises Antonio for being more than anyone in Italy an ancient Roman an Antony and Antonio s own understanding of the virtue he practices toward his friends resembles pagan munificence rather than Christian charity.3 Portia, too, though careful to keep up the appearance and traditions of her pious Christian father and his wishes, displays virtues more appropriate to her Roman namesake. In her attempt to curb what she Timothy W. Burns is a Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. 189 Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 190 a willingness to give up on all other good things, promising at the same time to compensate for their loss or their fleeting nature. In the end Solanio gives up on his guesses: you must, he concludes, be one of those creatures who is simply by nature sad, as strange a fellow as one who laughs at bagpipes. But this too misses the mark: Antonio is not by nature sad. Yet however mistaken his companions guesses, they have shown us incidentally both that Antonio is a great merchant and that his friends are all classically trained. They depart quickly when Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Gratiano appear, perhaps anxious to leave this sad man to others. Perhaps what they would do to make Antonio merry cannot be done in the presence of these others, particularly of Bassanio? Lorenzo, knowing the friendship of the others, offers to leave. But Gratiano addresses Antonio before he does so. He remarks on how changed Antonio looks and attributes the change, as had the others, to too great a concern for worldly affairs. That concern will be the death of Antonio, he predicts. But Antonio again rebuffs this explanation and now offers a different one of his own: the world is a stage, on which every man must play his part, and his is a sad one. He is resigned to play a script. There is some great difficulty, he suggests, for some people that simply cannot be overcome or escaped and to which he clearly attempts to be resigned. The garrulous Gratiano, whom Lorenzo thinks hardly worth listening to, proposes (perhaps because of the metaphor) that Antonio s sadness is all an act, intended to convey to the world, as he says with open disdain, wisdom, gravity, profound conceit (92). He takes Antonio s expressions of sadness as bombast intended to give the appearance of depth of soul. To appear cheerful risks appearing light-headed or shallow, untroubled because ignorant, na ve, sheltered; so to appear wise, Gratiano concludes, Antonio is appearing sad, grave. He fishes for the opinion of wisdom with the pretense of gravity. Fish not, Gratiano admonishes (101 02). While there are undoubtedly such people as Gratiano claims, Antonio is not one of them: there is a good reason for his sadness. Gratiano thus appears immediately to us as too cheerful: he fails to see that there are reasons for sadness in life, if not also for joy. He is light or thin-souled. When Gratiano and Lorenzo depart, we learn what is troubling Antonio: Bassanio has planned a pilgrimage to a lady, Portia, to overcome the effects of his prodigality. He has a plan to clear himself of all the debts this vice has brought him, and Portia is the key to it. Antonio asks to know the plan (135 40). He could of course simply give money to Bassanio but, we must infer, this would destroy their friendship, the friendship of equals; Bassanio s honor would be lost were he to become indebted in this way to Antonio. Aware of this, Antonio is driven to become part of the scheme to restore a self-sufficiency to Bassanio, who gingerly suggests his plan (with a metaphor from archery [146 52]). Antonio is, however, insulted by the gingerly nature of Bassanio s request for money; his wallet is ever open to his friend (153 60). The plan is to win over the very wealthy Portia, and for this, Bassanio needs to be a prince and hence needs a loan. But who is Portia? Antonio is eager to know. She is fair, of wondrous virtue, nothing undervalu d / To Cato s daughter, Perspectives on Political Science Brutus Portia, declares Bassanio (165 66). Shakespeare thus points us back emphatically to Rome and to the virtue of Rome s women, to the wife of Rome s most celebrated champion of republicanism. He points us back to the virtuous republic but to its private virtue, the virtue of Portia, who rested her claim to know the conspiratorial thoughts of her troubled husband on the basis of her lineage from noble Roman men, of her legal marriage to Rome s worthiest citizen, and of her constancy. 4 What is left of public virtue in the commercial republic is, or is most visible as, wealth. The description of Portia immediately shifts to ancestral Greece: she has many suitors, many Jasons coming for her golden fleece. As we know, according to myth, Jason, son of a Greek king who had been expelled by his brother, had returned and reclaimed his kingdom. The usurper agreed to step down if Jason could bring back the golden fleece from the Hellespont (Colchis), where Phryxos left it as a gift to his father-in-law. It is the fleece of a golden ram, sent by the gods. Jason sails with the Argonauts (Theseus, Herakles, etc.) to win the fleece and succeeds because the king s daughter, Medea, a sorceress, falls in love with him and therefore helps him obtain the fleece. But Jason then betrays her and marries the queen of Corinth. The upshot of the allusion to this myth is that Bassanio is simply out for Portia s money. If it is meant to comfort Antonio, it fails: he would be in the position of Medea. Antonio is willing, however, to put up the money. Because his assets are not liquid at the moment they are tied up in his investments at sea he offers his credit, and all that remains is to find a creditor. The two therefore end up at the house of Shylock, who lends money at interest. Antonio, perhaps still sad, is now doing something for his beloved friend. PORTIA When we meet Portia, she too appears to have troubles; she is a parallel of sorts to Antonio, and as we have already been led to see, his rival for Bassanio s affections. She is not sad but claims to be weary of this great world. Her servant Nerissa offers an explanation: surfeit, which is as bad as starving. The mean or middle, it seems, is best. But Portia will soon have the chance to use some of her unmiddling, indeed great, wealth to obtain the object of her desire. In the meantime, she calls Nerissa s advice good but not something she will follow. It is, she notes, not so easy to part with money, which offers security and many consolations, of a sort, for a life of miseries.5 The reasoning of Nerissa, Portia adds, is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. She will not settle for a middling man. But she cannot choose a husband in any case. Her father s last will and testament prescribes a test of suitors of three caskets of gold, silver, and lead stipulating that he who chooses the correct casket wins Portia. She finds this lawful arrangement cruel, while Nerissa defends the arrangement on the ground that Portia s father was virtuous and holy, and so the casket lottery scheme he designed as he approached death will no doubt work out; the one Portia should rightly love will choose correctly (27 33). Portia gives no evidence, however, of finding her father s holiness, nor the Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 trust in providence that it seems to bespeak, to be a sufficient ground for accepting his cruel scheme. The father s scheme is, to say the least, risky. An unsuitable suitor could by accident choose correctly, and Portia s lifelong companion be thereby made the source of her lifelong misery. Her holy father must have been driven to it through mistrust of Portia s own judgment. Perhaps his daughter is too taken with outward appearances and therefore apt to choose a suitor who is similarly misled. In any event, Portia may be cleverer than the old man reckoned when devising his scheme. She may find a way around it. As the remainder of the scene suggests, she certainly has decided opinions of what she does not want in a suitor what she finds defective or repulsive. And so by contrast we learn what she would find attractive in a prospective husband. The first of seven suitors she and Nerissa discuss is the Neopolitan prince, who is like a racecar driver but one who fixes the engines and changes the tires himself. He likes horses, and Portia explains this predilection by saying that his mother had a dalliance with a mechanic, a horseshoe smith. She does not want someone in the menial arts but wants a leisured gentleman, who shares her tastes for the high use of leisure. And she traces vice to the parents blood or genes. The second suitor, the County Palantine, is a weeper or sad man precisely what Antonio had appeared in the opening to be. Portia declares that she does not want such a one even if he is a philosopher in old age. A weeping philosopher, one who is preoccupied with the sufferings and sorrow that nature holds in store for man, or who is inclined to be resigned to nature s austerity, is not her type. She seeks someone who is festive, merry, happy. This does not mean, however, an empty-headed Gratiano. It could mean, as she subsequently discloses, a scholar. The third suitor is Monsieur Le Bon, whom Portia describes as every man in no man. He is never steadily himself but is an actor, a drama king, a chameleon, a Robin Williams. In dismissing him, Portia reveals, however, a certain act of her own: I know, she tells Nerissa, it is a sin to be a mocker: but . . . Portia honors the Christianity she professes, it seems, in the breach. She winks at her sins, and unlike her father, lives as a human being, not as a saint. Here as in the rest of the scene, Portia shows no inclination to follow the teachings of Christianity. Falconbridge, the fourth suitor, a British baron, is a dumb show. He can t speak Latin, French, or Italian (and Portia can). He is an empty suit, but an Italian, French, or German suit. He is as we might say the perfect multiculturalist, that is, a fraud, a would-be cosmopolitan who mistakes the superficial manifestations of particular ways of life clothing, and so on for the full and serious devotion to any one of them and so finds them easily adapted or assimilated to his speechless ways. He possesses no genuine way of his own. His behavior or mores are bought everywhere. He is a nonconversant clotheshorse, with Armani ties, Yves St. Laurent pants, and John Lobb shoes. He is, in short, another boaster. The fifth suitor is a Scottish Lord, and Portia proves to be repulsed by his pugnacity. She doesn t want a scrapper, a man so unsure of his own worth, so thin-skinned or short-wicked, 191 as to challenge every apparent affront to his dignity. She is looking for a more self-assured and therefore genuinely gentle man. Finally, she expresses her contempt for the German Duke a drunk. She wants a man not indebted to intoxication for his sociability or one who is fundamentally sober. And she discloses now that she is not above thoughts of trickery in the business of the caskets: put some Rhenish wine near a wrong casket, she tells Nerissa, and the German Duke will go for it. He and the other unsuitable suitors are leaving, and as Portia says, I pray God grant them a fair departure. Her piety contains, at the very least, a dose of irony. Nerissa now mentions Bassanio, a Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier. He is a citizen of Portia s own city, a learned man, and brave or valorous. She finds him deserving, too, of a fair lady in his looks. This last condition is not, as it turns out, least in Portia s judgment, as we learn from her rejection of the Prince of Morocco (1.2.130ff.). Portia is moved by looks, and she is unattracted to Moors or Arabs for this reason. Perhaps this is why her Christian father mistrusted her judgment. She is in any event frankly determined in her judgments by national characteristics and national vices and by a predilection for the cosmopolitan virtues of one who is at the same time a handsome Venetian. SHYLOCK Modern sensibilities have decried Shakespeare s presentation of Shylock as a reprehensible slur upon Jews, second perhaps only to that of Marx in On The Jewish Question. While we know that the presentation is historically inaccurate Shakespeare had no direct experience of Jews, because they were excluded from England it is, as we will see, at least as much a condemnation of Christians as it is of this Jew. It is also such as to suggest a certain superiority of Judaism to Christianity. Antonio is, as Bassanio has informed Shylock, to provide the bond on a loan, at interest, of 3,000 ducats. Shylock declares Antonio a good man, that is, good for his money though he indicates that he knows Antonio s money is tied up in five perilous voyages. Shylock expresses the wish to speak with Antonio, and Bassanio offers to have dinner with both of them. This prompts Shylock to deliver these famous lines: Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjur d the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you (1.3.33 37). Shylock knows the Christian scriptures, and hence that the Christian way of life, is at odds with the Mosaic law by which he directs his life. The limited means to overcoming the fundamental differences between him and Bassanio is commerce, but it is means enough for what Bassanio purposes. Just how limited the means are is suggested when Antonio appears, and we hear, in an aside, of Shylock s hatred of him, spawned by Antonio s contempt a hatred that will inform Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 192 all of Shylock s deeds. Shylock hates Antonio for being a Christian but hates him more for his simplicity, his stupidity in drawing down interest rates in Venice. Antonio s simplicity in this appears low to Shylock: the cleverness of maintaining the conditions for profit making is by contrast high because the profit is needed for high ends, for a high or dignified life. The obliteration of the distinction between high and low that would follow from the leveling, indiscriminate lending practiced by Antonio would destroy the material basis for the high. And the high life as Shylock conceives it is a life bound up with service to his sacred nation and hence to its God; his ancient grudge has its roots in Antonio s hatred of (and Shylock s love of) our sacred nation. For the universalism of Christianity, its deprecation of the particular, must deny above all the perduring sacred character of Shylock s particular nation; its universalism rests on this denial. Antonio has, moreover, railed at Shylock, at his lending practices at his well-won profits. For this, Shylock vows, on the sacredness of his tribe, that he will never forgive Antonio never practice the Christian virtue of forgiveness: his deepest devotion is not to his profits but to his nation and its dignity. And as he lets out, he has been waiting for his chance to strike and avenge his grudge. His provoked hatred directs him, consumes him, and even distracts him from the business at hand: though he has twice repeated the term of the loan, he asks to be reminded of it. While he too lacks the 3,000 ducats at the moment, he declares that Tubal, a Hebrew of my tribe, will provide them apparently without interest (1.3.54 57). The first words of the arriving Antonio confirm the essential difference to which Shylock has alluded: Antonio declares that he is breaking his custom, law, nomos never to lend or borrow at interest. He does so to supply his friend s ripe wants. He has in the past mercilessly abused Shylock for lending at interest (106 29), and Shylock now brings that dispute to a head, justifying his practice by reference to the practice of Jacob, from our holy Abram . . . the third possessor. He mentions the device through which Jacob managed to get all the strongest ewes to conceive spotted sheep for him that is, how he outwitted Laban, who had been cheating him.6 Jacob saw a way to thrive, Shylock concludes, and was blest: / And thriving is blessing, if men steal it not (89 90). As he presents it, Jacob did not break the letter of his agreement yet used his skill as a shepherd to get the better of Laban. Antonio, who might have cited other Hebrew scriptures against usury (see, e.g., Psalm 15.5) instead counters that Jacob had served for his reward (91 95) and that it was not in his power to bring the reward to pass: blessing is from the hand of heaven. The devil, he warns the Christian Bassanio, can quote scripture, and he likens Shylock to a smiling villain. With this insult, the long-standing acrimony between the two rises to the surface, as Shylock reminds Antonio of his past reviling and cruel contempt of him for his usury and his misbelief, of his spitting on his Jewish gabardine and on his beard (106 13). Shylock has borne it all patiently, For suffrance is the badge of all our tribe. Patient endurance is not an exclusively Christian virtue. Shylock s patience like Jacob s before him7 is prudent: He asks if, hitherto reviled, Perspectives on Political Science he should now bow low like a slave and grant their request for a loan: simple reciprocal justice is on the side of his dignity in denying it, a justice that stands against Christian humility.8 Shylock s stance has the remarkable effect of bringing out how un-Christian Antonio has been and remains in his deeds. Antonio denies none of the contemning deeds and, asserting that he is likely to do them again, requests that the money be lent by Shylock not in friendship but rather to thine enemy. He is determined to remain Shylock s enemy not on the basis of Christian faith which, after all, commands love of one s enemies but rather on the classical ground that usury is against nature. [F]or when, he asks, all but quoting the pagan Aristotle rather than any Christian source, did friendship take / A breed for barren metal of his friend? 9 It is true that when Shylock offers, in feigned friendship, to have but a pound of Antonio s flesh as bond, in merry sport, Antonio finds that [t]he Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind (178). But Antonio himself has not even a pretense to Christian charity; he simply accepts the terms of the bond, confident that his ships will come in. PORTIA WITH MOROCCO While Antonio is thus getting himself into trouble, Portia is avoiding it. At the announced arrival of the Prince of Morocco she had remarked, saucily, that if his soul be saintly but his complexion devilish (black), I had rather he should shrive me than wive me (12.129 31). However attractive it may be to God, saintliness is not attractive to Portia, at least when measured against looks. Her Christian father s casket scheme rests on the separation of appearance and worth, but Portia finds them inseparable. Not that looks are everything to her; as we have seen, she has a list of disqualifying vices and hence of qualifying virtues. But looks trump virtues in being a sine qua non for her husband. So when Morocco who claims to have in spite of his looks (about which he worries) outstanding courage or valor chooses wrongly and departs, Portia muses, may all of his complexion choose me so (2.7.79).10 She does nothing, moreover, to dispel Morocco s high opinion of his own worth and consequent regret that fortune will determine the outcome, though her doing so would have mitigated fortune s role in that outcome. LAUNCELOT Shylock had described Launcelot his servant as an unthrifty knave (13.176). Launcelot s opening soliloquy is no less harsh to Shylock. It is a dialogue on conscience, which Christianity calls a faculty of the soul and which Shakespeare is ever careful to have only Christians speak about. Launcelot would run away from Shylock s house, but his conscience opposes it, counseling honesty. The devil, on the other hand, admonishes him to be brave, that is, to act fearlessly for his own good and depart. To Launcelot as to Hamlet, conscience goes together with cowardice.11 If he does what is right and stays, he will be ruled by a devil (Shylock); if he leaves, he will do so at the behest of the devil. With no good choice, he observes that the devil offers friendly advice against the hard, Christian advice (of patiently enduring wrong). But Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 once Launcelot has decided in this way to run from Shylock, his blind father appears, and he deceives him, in a send-up of the biblical story of Isaac and Jacob in which the details of the biblical account are comically turned on their head.12 Finally, Launcelot convinces his father to give the gift of doves he has brought for the Jew Shylock to the Christian Bassanio, who is fitting out rare new liveries, and when Bassanio happens by, father and son stumble over one another to plead for a new job for Launcelot. As it happens, Shylock has already offered Launcelot to Bassanio, and so the latter accepts him into his service in the livery of a jester. It is significant that Shylock could not himself so use Launcelot. There is a lack of jesting, of cheer, in his life; his only merry sport is the deadly deceit through which he is attempting to secure a pound of Antonio s flesh. Or, stated positively, there is a sobriety to Shylock s life and a parsimony that contrasts with the cheerful, spendthrift ways of Bassanio. Shylock makes his way in a tough world by his wits and by adhering to the law of his tribe. While Bassanio appears to be growing closer in friendship with him my best esteem d acquaintance, Bassanio calls him (172) and even to have won his agreement to dine (!) at his home, it is as we soon learn all part of an effort on Shylock s part to exploit Bassanio s great profligacy to ruin him. That Christian profligacy is not confined to money matters begins to be suggested in the sequel, in which Gratiano enters and demands to go with Bassanio to Belmont. The provisos that Bassanio makes to the invitation that he now offers Gratiano explain why Gratiano had not hitherto been invited: he must be less wild, rude, bold, and liberal with his words; he will have to be politic and appear modest, lest he be misunderstood. That is, while Bassanio himself enjoys Gratiano as he is, he fears that his taking of liberties will give offense to strangers. Gratiano agrees to be sober in dress, respectful in speech, pious, demure, civil, like one well studied in a sad ostent, so that even his grandmother would approve. He will in other words lose his youthful liberality, pretending to be like Shylock. His normal behavior welcome to the Christian Bassanio is a foil for what is missing in Shylock s life: festive merriment, as will now be confirmed by Shylock s daughter. JESSICA AMONG THE CHRISTIANS Jessica tells the departing Launcelot that her father s house is a hell, which the merry devil Launcelot alone had made bearable. As he is leaving, tearfully, so she too will leave, her secret intention being to convert to Christianity and marry Lorenzo. This, she expects, will end the strife in her heart: Christianity does not demand the honoring of one s father if it stands in the way of heaven.13 As Launcelot who here equates being a Jew with being a pagan (11) followed what seemed the easier way, so does Jessica. She sends a letter with Launcelot to Lorenzo, who, with Gratiano, Salerio, and Solanio, is pushing a hastily cooked-up conspiracy to take her away during the evening s masquerade. To Lorenzo s joy, the letter discloses Jessica s intent to steal away from her father s house with gold and jewels. 193 Whether leaving Shylock s house is wise is the question raised in the next scene. Shylock warns Launcelot that life with Bassanio will be worse for him: he will be unable to eat, sleep, snore, and wear out clothes as he has been doing in Shylock s house. Shylock has a good opinion of his treatment of Launcelot, and we see clearly what guides the latter s life: his body and especially his stomach. Launcelot for his part rejoices in his newfound freedom to say and do things without the bidding of Shylock, but he will of course have another master. Shylock prepares now to depart for Bassanio s dinner in hate, to feed upon / the prodigal Christian (14 15). And when he hears of the planned masque, he similarly warns Jessica not to go out to gaze on Christian fools with varnish d faces / . . . Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter / My sober house (33 36). The sobriety that marks this follower of Jacob by whose staff he swears (36) stands again in marked contrast with Christian prodigality and merriment. It would seem that, in Venice at least, Christianity s emphasis upon the next world has made Christians improvident in this one. To Shylock this improvidence is hateful, and he now lets out that he has agreed to let Launcelot go into Bassanio s service to have him help to waste his borrowed purse (50). Jessica would appear, then, to be justified in leaving one so eaten up with malice. But is she? If Shylock goes too far here in his hatred and he does we must nonetheless wonder about the Christians who, improvident, cruelly drive him to his hatred of their ways by and while condemning his sobriety and parsimony. The brief discussion of love between Salerio and Gratiano that opens the next scene, occasioned by the late arrival of Lorenzo, certainly does nothing to dispel this wonder. Salerio contrasts, on one hand, the speed or zeal with which Venus pigeons fly, to, on the other, their uneasy fidelity once they are sworn to each other. Gratiano agrees and extends the thought from love to all appetites even those of animals and inanimate things attributing the changed disposition of successful pursuers to their disappointed satiety. All things that are / Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. Life is prodigal, a leaky sieve; we hunt pleasures, but end up disappointed. The man who proclaims this is about to promise his undying affection to Nerissa. Here then is the downside of those who chase merriment, pleasure, diversions: their desire for a thrilling change from their present discontent can never be settled but must ever be renewed. They are neither steady nor reliable nor trustworthy, and they too easily assimilate erotic longing, which leads serious human beings to devotion, to a bestial pleasure that must ever be on a hunt. Shylock s sobriety bespeaks by contrast both a deeper and a steadier soul. Jessica, tossing the casket of gold ducats down to Lorenzo, declares ambiguously that she is much ashamed of her exchange. She means not her change from a faithful Jew to a lover of a Christian, but to the appearance of a boy. Cupid himself would blush, she declares, if lovers could see their pretty follies, like this one. Yet she, the lover, does see it as a folly and is aghast to hear that she will be the torchbearer: I should be obscured. Her remark would make sense only if the world sees what she sees that she is Jessica dressed as a boy rather than seeing, as they will, a boy. She Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 194 appears unable to fathom that the disguise will disguise her, as Lorenzo indeed reminds her. Or is it not rather the case that Jessica is indeed ashamed of something else, which she fears cannot be so easily hidden: the betrayal of her father and her people? At Belmont, meanwhile, Portia observes the wrong choice of casket by Morocco, to whom appearances are indeed decisive: Portia deserves to be in gold, so gold it must be. Portia, we also see, is not above making use of her father s scheme for her own ends, encouraging Morocco in what she knows is the wrong choice (2.7.61 62). She does not, however, violate the convention established by her father. She appears ready to submit to its judgment, just as the suitors must; she uses the convention effectively. And so the Prince of Morocco takes his leave. From Salerio and Solanio, however, we learn that Shylock has learned of his daughter s elopement and is now beside himself with anger and mocked in it by all the boys: my stones, my daughter, my ducats! (2.8.15 26). He vows that Antonio will pay for the suffering he has undergone. We know that this makes no sense: Antonio had nothing to do with Jessica s stealing away. But this is now the awful situation: the only way Shylock has left to redeem his honor and satisfy the vengeance that his dignity demands is through the law. Salerio and Solanio speak indeed of the kind gentleman Antonio and his generous love for his friend Bassanio, but they have never experienced the obverse of that love: Antonio s deep, abiding, and harsh hatred of his enemy, Shylock. As Antonio s fate grows darker with the deepening of his enemy s hatred, Portia s brightens with the failure of another detested suitor at her hands. For we now learn that the suitors are required to swear three oaths before submitting to the testing by caskets: they must not tell which casket they have chosen, must never woo a maid, and must leave immediately if they fail. The central of these three oaths raises the stakes of failure and surely deters most suitors from even attempting the test of the caskets. We do not yet know whether the prescribed oaths are Portia s or her father s doing, but we would not now put it past her to have invented them. Aragon, the next suitor, rejects the lead casket on the basis of its poor looks. He rejects also the gold casket, because its inscription speaks of what many men desire ; he is keen to distinguish himself from the multitude, whom he condemns for judging on the basis of looks (as he has just done with respect to the lead casket). Aragon is a snob, pretending to be above the many while remaining fundamentally of them. The inscription on the silver casket promises to give him what he deserves, and because this is in his opinion much, he chooses it. But before he assumes his desert, he gives a disquisition on desert (40 49), revealing himself to be, as Portia will put it, a fool. He delivers sentences in the overbearing, hortatory subjunctive ( Let none presume . . . ), and his expressions of disappointment with the world ( O that estates . . . ) are the ridiculous product of foolish hopefulness. He is ever wishing that the world were perfectly just and so ever disappointed to discover that it isn t. If only is his pathetic watchword: if only men were not corrupt! If only the truly deserving (like himself) received their due! Perspectives on Political Science So deep runs his hope that he can scarce believe that he has not won the prize. Portia must remind him of his third vow ( Too long a pause . . . ), and because even then he argues the result, she must rebuke him, reminding him that he is not the judge. The note inside the casket declares him a fool, and he leaves. Deliberate fools, as Portia calls those who pride themselves on such deliberations, when they do choose / They have wisdom by their wit to lose (80 81). The outcome, that is, is good for them, because if they should win, she would make their lives miserable. For unlike them, she has no high hopes in the world s justice. She will take things, rather, into her own hands. In fact, we can see that she has already done so: the note in the silver casket tells Aragon Take what wife you will to bed (70), revealing to us that Portia, not her father, is responsible for the second daunting oath. And in conformity with her reasonable hopes, Bassanio is now arriving, bestowing gifts on the announcing messengers, who are completely won over by them. Portia for her part prudently suspects that self-interest rather than disinterested admiration lies behind the messengers praise of Bassanio; she realizes how easily one s benefactors are equated with noble-hearted humans, that is, how easy it is for most of us, thinking well of ourselves, to assume that good things that come our way are what we deserve, as the noble-hearted recognize. Not that she does not think highly of herself, but she does not see her good fortune as resulting from her worth. She and Aragon would have been oil and water. SHYLOCK S HOPE FOR DIVINE VENGEANCE If to this point Shakespeare has given us cause to see in Shylock a reasonable if flawed alternative to Christian profligacy, we now see Shylock turned, by the apparent losses of his enemy Antonio, into a man wholeheartedly bent on the fulfillment of an ugly hope in bloodthirsty vengeance. Antonio, we learn from Salerio and Solanio, has lost a second ship at sea. And Jessica, Shylock declares, is damned for rebelling against him. He thereby justifies the fears of Salerio and Solanio that he will exact vengeance for his loss of her upon Antonio who, he declares, was once smug, called him usurer, and lent money for a mere Christian curtsy. Shylock has been humiliated, disgraced, mocked, lost friends, and gained enemies at Antonio s doing because I am a Jew. Shylock s famous reply to these wrongs Hath not a Jew eyes? etc. (I2.1.58 73) brings out the desperate plight of his dignity. For the attributes that Shylock mentions are all, save revenge, bodily; they belong to any mammal. Shylock abstracts from the distinctively human, the virtues upon which worth or dignity rests. The cultivation of those virtues was the highest end of premodern political life but Venice, the commercial republic, must move away from their cultivation precisely if it wishes to maintain peace among its various subjects. Revenge, to be sure, is distinctively human, but having a desire for it is hardly a reason to treat someone with respect, as Shylock himself admits: he has learned revenge from the Christians, he claims, and will now outdo them in its villainy. He will demand for his revenge the stipulated pound of Antonio s bodily flesh. How the laws of the Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 commercial republic address as they must this distinctively human desire will be disclosed in the trial of Antonio. And trial there will be. For Tubal, sent to Genoa in search of Jessica, feeds Shylock s desire for revenge, alternating news of Jessica s shopping spree with news of Antonio s growing losses on the seas. Jessica, Shylock states, is no longer his daughter; having betrayed him and taken his ducats which were for him to give her she is dead, and as he tells Tubal, he will have revenge. He now makes clear that he has not in fact learned this desire from Christians, but that Antonio s misfortunes have merely provided the opportunity for sating it. He thanks not fortune but God for providing this opportunity: he will execute divine justice, plaguing and torturing Antonio. Yet his response to the last of Tubal s disclosures of Jessica s exchange of a ring for a monkey shows us again the depth of soul that is now moving him to seek revenge, a depth conspicuously absent, as we have seen, from the Christian Gratiano. Shylock had this ring from Leah, his wife, when he was a bachelor, and would not have exchanged it for a wilderness of monkeys. If as the Christian Launcelot has suggested, to be a Jew is to be a pagan, then pagans display a devotional love unmatched by Christians, who appear profligate in theirs. The loss of his beloved daughter and with her, his dignity and his hopes now manifestly moves him. If the world is to make sense, if it is to be a place in which a just God does rule, then there will have to be some compensation for his suffering. And so he is driven to seek the arrest of Antonio. PORTIA AND BASSANIO As Bassanio is about to choose among the caskets, Portia makes it clear that she loves and wants him, asking him to stay a few more days or even months before choosing. He requests to be given the test, however, and she complies, stating that if he wins, Then music is / Even as the flourish when true subjects bow / To a new-crowned monarch (48 50). It will have all the joy and majesty of a high political event. She calls for a song, this time, to accompany the choosing, and before the song, she offers a comparison of Bassanio s deed to a scene from pagan mythology, one that contains the helpful counsel to choose hardship: I stand for sacrifice (54 62). The song she has chosen, too, provides Bassanio with hints: each of its first three lines ends in a word rhyming with lead, and by speaking of love born in the eyes that will die in the cradle where it lies, the song prompts Bassanio s reflections on the caskets. They are, like Aragon s, about worth, but with none of Aragon s pious moralizing, scolding, or laments about the world s injustice. They are instead about the artifices and ornaments that hide vice and beautify what is ugly. These reflections lead him to choose rightly. Portia can scarce contain herself for her joy, and Bassanio waxes eloquent about the portrait of her that the lead casket holds; he is indeed a lover. He can scarce believe that he has won, but Portia confirms she is his, and for a brief moment, all is happiness. She wishes that she had more to give, but whatever she has is now his so long as he wears her ring. He for his part eloquently describes his speechlessness: like a buzzing multitude after a fair oration by a beloved prince, he 195 says, is the confusion of his powers. As with Portia, so with Bassanio, the comparisons that are made to bring out the joy of his choice are to political life, but that life is thereby made the more conspicuously absent in Belmont. He vows to wear Portia s ring faithfully to his death. Gratiano and Nerissa announce that they too will be married. And as soon as that is agreed to, Gratiano reverts to his old self with the demand for a bet on who will have the first child, followed by a dirty joke and as Salerio and Lorenzo arrive a crass reference: We are the Jasons. We have won the fleece (241). But suddenly all is not well; a letter from Antonio causes Bassanio to turn pale, and Portia remarks that it must mean that a dear friend is dead, else nothing in the world / Could turn so much the constitution / Of any constant man (245 47). Her words announce immediately the problem that Antonio will pose to her in vying for first place in Bassanio s heart. Shakespeare now has her echo what the Roman Portia said to her Brutus upon noting the trouble that the conspiracy to kill Caesar had brought to his soul: With leave, Bassanio: I am half yourself, / And I must freely have the half of anything / That this same paper brings you. 14 In response, Bassanio discloses that his claim to have no wealth was a boast: he has engaged himself to a dear friend, and that friend to his mere enemy, to feed my means. Unlike Brutus, he is owing to his Christian profligacy in debt. Like Brutus, however, he presents the situation in the classic political terms of friend and enemy rather than with any reference to the religious question. And Salerio confirms that the contents of the disturbing letter are true: all of Antonio s five ships are wrecked, and Shylock is stubbornly demanding justice, his bond. Jessica, too, confirms that Shylock has sworn to Tubal and Chus, his countrymen not his tribesmen, not his fellow Jews, but his countrymen that he would prefer Antonio s flesh to twenty times the loaned ducats. While the dispute between Shylock and Antonio is unintelligible in abstraction from that of Christian and Jew, here, at the heart of the play, the issue is understood in strictly political terms, as it would have been in the pre-Christian city. So too when Portia asks if it is Bassanio s friend who is thus in trouble, Bassanio responds with this striking praise of Antonio: The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, The best-condition d and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies, and one in whom The ancient Roman honor more appears Than any that draws breath in Italy (292 96). These words appear to stand in sharp contrast to Shylock s (confirmed) accusations but not to what we have seen of Antonio. For they say nothing of any Christian virtues of which we have seen none in Antonio; they stress instead his devotion to ancient Roman honor. Before a friend of this description / Shall lose a hair through Bassanio s fault (301 02; emphasis added), asserts Portia, twelve times the owed sum should be paid out. As Bassanio had led us to expect, Portia, too, is moved no less than her Roman namesake by concern for honor. But she begins already here to reveal a superiority to Brutus Portia, disclosing the wit to use the superior position in Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 196 which she finds herself. For though she tells Bassanio that he will have gold to pay the debt twenty times over, she has heard already that Shylock will not accept even this amount and that he can be thwarted in his intention only by law, authority, and power (289). She knows, that is, that her offer, while generous, is likely to be rejected, and as the rest of the play discloses, she has another plan up her sleeve. She is careful to go with Bassanio to church to make their vows public and solemn, in accord with Christian law, but as we will see, she will not as she suggests to Bassanio sit idly if faithfully by with Nerissa and await the outcome. The reason she gives for her generous action tells us why: For never shall you lie by Portia s side / With an unquiet soul (305 06). The statement certainly expresses affection, and Portia undoubtedly loves Bassanio. But it also puts Portia first, and even has her referring to herself, in the proud, Roman manner, in the third person. Even in love, Portia acts clear-sightedly and proudly for her good. Bassanio s reading of the contents of the letter confirms what she must now suspect: Antonio wishes that Bassanio come, moved by love, to witness his end. Hearing the contents of the letter Portia exclaims, O love, and bids Bassanio be gone to Venice. He then vows to Portia his fidelity. VIRTUE IN A COMMERCIAL REPUBLIC Shylock has had Antonio arrested, the jailor has allowed him out to speak once more to Shylock, and we see Antonio asking to be heard. But Shylock is closed to speech. He takes the jailor to be supporting a plea for mercy. I ll have my bond, he thrice states, rejecting Antonio s request to be heard. Shylock claims by his own words to have become now subhuman: you called me a dog, watch me now be a dog. Yet he persists in claiming that it is justice that he seeks and adds now that he has sworn an oath to have his bond. Antonio gives up the attempt to speak, asking Solanio to desist too. He claims that Shylock seeks his life because I oft deliver d from his forfeitures / Many that have at times made moan to me (22 23). In what we might call an effort to think well of himself, Antonio forgets or ignores the cruelty he has shown to Shylock his cruelty to him as an enemy, one whose practices are vicious in his eyes and deserving of deep contempt. But he is bereft of hope. Against Solanio s comforting words that the Duke will not grant that the forfeiture of the agreement hold, Antonio points out that for the Duke to deny the course of the law . . . Will much impeach the justice of his state; Since that the trade and profit of the city Consisteth of all nations (26 31). In no other kind of republic would this situation have arisen. The Christian rulers of Venice have, we may say, taken the opportunity afforded by the Christian denigration of politics of high political ends, which the Christian doctrine of two cities makes inevitable to relegate the practice of virtue to a private sphere, for the sake of the only remaining public good: the city s wealth. In other words, Christian universalism, the universalism of love of members of all Perspectives on Political Science nations, has as a political consequence a cosmopolitanism centered on the pursuit of wealth. Recognizing that Venice has been thus reduced to the minimalist if strictly enforced dictates of commercial law and that his case is therefore hopeless, Antonio can pray God only that Bassanio come to see him pay his debt (35 36). He is driven to seek confirmation or recognition of the nobility of his deeds in private, from his friend. As at Belmont, so in Venice, the nobility once sought in political life has been relegated to the private realm. PORTIA ACTS At Belmont, Lorenzo praises Portia, telling her that if she knew how true a gentleman and how dear a lover of Bassanio is Antonio, she would be even prouder of her deed than customary bounty can enforce you (9). He attributes her actions to generosity and believes (quite ridiculously) that she will be glad to learn how dear a lover of Bassanio is Antonio. Portia makes sufficiently clear in her reply that her deed is not done without attention to her own interests: I never did repent for doing good (10). And in this case, if Antonio is Bassanio s bosom friend, he must be like Bassanio, and so she is purchasing the semblance of my soul / From out the state of hellish misery (20 21). She purchases the semblance of her own soul. At the same time, of course, she is stopping Antonio from carrying out his noble deed on behalf of her husband, his beloved. She now pretends, to be sure, to be acting in a quiescent, humble way, prayerfully enduring what will come. She has, she declares, toward heaven breathed a secret vow / To live in prayer and contemplation at a nearby monastery until her lord s return (26 34). And she puts Lorenzo in charge of her household. But this is a wickedly humorous lie. She will in fact, disguised as a man, be rescuing her husband s friend from his hellish fate, rescuing Antonio from death for her husband s sake, and thus rescuing her husband from indebtedness or guilt for Antonio s deed. She will be acting both for her husband s happiness and her own and will also save her husband s friend. She will thereby be garnering the debt, devotion, and allegiance of Bassanio. She acts for herself and her beloved but with the semblance of pious devotion and legality. Portia s plan which she promises to tell Nerissa en route to Venice is to send a letter, through Balthazar, to her cousin Dr. Bellario, from whom she expects in return court garments and notes. Bellario is a lawyer upon whom the Duke has relied in the past; through him Portia is acquainted with Venice s laws. She expects or perhaps already knows through Balthazar that the Duke has written to Bellario, and she intends to be representing herself as Balthazar, in court, with notes from Bellario (58 62) though clearly Bellario s notes and Balthazar s own appearance in court could have done the trick. She and Nerissa, like the gold and silver caskets, will appear to be accomplished with that we lack (61 62). She will deceive, not out of vanity or a foolish estimate of her worth, but consciously, to achieve her own good. She will even have to lie within the lie pretend on the road to be a bragging youth who has broken the hearts of honorable ladies. She cloaks her series of deceptions in the grand October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 deception of quiescent Christian piety, prepared to outdo her Roman namesake in rescuing her troubled husband. Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 BELMONT UNDER LORENZO Launcelot, the play s only bridge between the Jewish and Christian households, for a second time makes the biblical doctrines of sin and damnation the object of comedy. He tells Jessica to be of good cheer, because she is damned, the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children. Her only way out is if her father isn t truly her father, that is, if her mother had been unfaithful, in which case, however, she is damned. Jessica replies that she will be saved through her husband, who has made her a Christian. Proving again that what moves him is his belly, Launcelot notes that [t]his making of Christians will raise the price of hogs. Extending this jest, Jessica tells the entering Lorenzo that Launcelot says she is damned and has accused Lorenzo of being a bad member of the commonwealth for raising the price of pork. The jesting rests on the serious ground that good membership in the commercial commonwealth consists in concern for the price of commodities. The commercial commonwealth is not concerned with nay, it is hindered by religious ends, by attention to the immortal souls of its members. Lorenzo for his part promises to address only Launcelot s charge concerning the commonwealth (37 39, and cf. 2.4.33 37 with 2.6.51 57). Lorenzo finds himself now, perhaps for the first time in his life, tasked with the responsibilities of an adult and hence, exasperated by Launcelot s series of punning replies to the orders he gives in his effort to run the household. I pray / thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning (56 57). We are shown what would lead a Shylock to favor sobriety over such obesity of wit. Turning his attention at last to Jessica, Lorenzo asks her how she fares, but not waiting for an answer, asks her opinion of the Lord Bassanio s wife. Her praise warrants our attention: Past all expressing. It is very meet The Lord Bassanio live an upright life, For, having such a blessing in his lady, He finds the joys of heaven here on earth, And if on earth he do not [merit] it, then In reason he should never come to heaven! Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match, And on the wager lay two earthly women, And Portia one, there must be something else Pawn d with the other, for the poor rude world Hath not her fellow (73 83). Portia is a blessing so heavenly as to make heaven superfluous, and Bassanio meetly lives an upright life to deserve her. Such a life is, she implies, one of some self-denial, an eschewing of selfish pleasures to be worthy of the joy. But then Jessica s statement is incomplete, because anyone who finds his joy in this life is already rewarded: an ascetic life in a monastery would alone be called for. Moreover, to live such an upright life one must, as Jessica says, merit it, that is, there cannot be the mere pretense of sacrifice, or else one will in reason not come to heaven. But how, then, can it be sacrificial, if it is to be rewarded in heaven? Is such a life not 197 led precisely to benefit oneself eternally? The sacrifices of an upright life, such as Jessica presents, cannot then be sacrifices at all, but acts of long-range self-interest, a price to be paid. One could perhaps deserve eternal life by not seeking it, but Christianity calls one precisely to seek it. Her words inadvertently disclose the impossibility of becoming worthy of eternal life by self-sacrifice, because such sacrifice is not possible. It is perhaps in awareness of this, brought home by the fact that Bassanio already has his heavenly reward on earth, in Portia, that Jessica switches her argument to a pagan one: gambling, competing, that is, fighting, irrational gods would have trouble finding Portia s equal. Such gods would exist, however, at the cost of the moral order that promises eternal life. Might such reflections have moved Portia to abandon the faith of her father for the clear-sighted pursuit of her good in this life while, however, maintaining the appearance of upholding piety and the law? As we will see, she is much closer to Shylock and Antonio than to her Christian husband in her understanding of Venetian law. As for Lorenzo, he fails to realize even the need to pay Jessica the compliment for which she is in part surely fishing: he gracelessly turns the praise of Portia into a praise of himself and wants to feed his stomach before hearing more of it (83 90). He is indeed an excellent member of the commercial republic. PORTIA AT COURT The Duke of Venice opens the dramatic trial of Antonio lamenting Shylock s lack of mercy, finding him incapable of pity and an inhuman wretch. But Shylock is, as we have seen, relying on the law to give him what he has been deprived of: dignity. His faith in a just God hangs in the balance. Antonio, by contrast, remains perfectly Stoic: I have heard Your grace hath ta en great pains to qualify His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate, And that no lawful means can carry me Out of his envy s reach, I do oppose My patience to his fury, and am arm d To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, The very tyranny and rage of his (6 13). Antonio makes no pretense to care about the conversion of Shylock s soul to the true, heavenly goods; he makes no mention of enduring a wrong to awaken Shylock s conscience.15 Patience is simply his own armor. Conversion, as we will see, he later demands simply as a punishment. The Duke requests of Shylock, precisely as a Jew, a gentle answer to his query of whether he will proceed cruelly or show now human gentleness and love. Shylock responds, however, that he is a man of his word; he has sworn an oath by our holy Sabaoth to have the pound of flesh and warns of the city s punishment if he is denied: Venice will lose its charter of freedom (34 39). Free men keep their oaths. But free men also are expected to behave reasonably: why does he demand the pound of flesh? His answer is that he is like all men the slave of arbitrary, whimsical, capricious likes and dislikes. This is a tyrant s answer but also an answer unanswerable by the laws of Venice or its modern cousin, Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 198 the liberal state. It implies that there is no accounting for our opinions of noble and base, ugly and beautiful, repulsive and venerable, high and low; they are the product of blind passions to which we are subject; we have no choice over them and cannot be blamed for holding them; blame is attached only when we step outside the law to which we have consented, out of fear, to obey. Each of us should otherwise be left alone to pursue our whims, answerable to no one. So can I give no reason, nor I will not, / More than a lodg d hate and a certain loathing / I bear Antonio (59 61). As Shylock tells Bassanio, who objects to the cruelty of the answer, I am not bound to please thee with my answers (65). Venetian law is deliberately indifferent to questions of the right way of life, that is, to the ground of the quarrel, and so Shylock will stick to that law. He is surely aware that his own religion calls for mercy (see, e.g., Psalm 136) but exploits the law s freedom to do as he will within its confines. Still, Bassanio seeks to engage him: Do all men kill the things they do not love? But Shylock s response is apt: Hates any man the thing he would not kill? Hatred drives him to kill. Bassanio presses him: Every offense is not a hate at first. To this Shylock might well have noted that the offense in question goes back well beyond the three-month loan; he might again have recounted the years of abuse he has suffered at Antonio s hands. But this would open up the source of their dispute in the question of the right way of life. So a second time Shylock avoids that path: Wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice? He reduces Antonio s deeds, as he has his own, to a bestial level, and his requisite response to a matter of prudence. Antonio s resigned plea for Bassanio to desist appears to echo this reduction: Shylock does what he does, he avers, for the same reason the tides flow, the wolf eats the lamb, the mountain pines creak in the breeze. He blames the alleged necessity on Shylock s hard Jewish heart (70 83). Shylock s fourth and final argument comes after he has firmly rejected Bassanio s offer of double the payment. The Duke asks him how he should hope for mercy, rendering none. The question reflects the level of commercial law that Shylock has so cleverly exploited: mercy is self-interested, a calculative prudence. Shylock is able to reject even this plea, however, through the law s low aim: What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? That he is not claiming here a perfection that frees him from fear of a demandingly high law, but stating merely that he acts within the low law of Venice, is made startlingly clear in the sequel, in which he reprimands the Venetians for their attempts to demand of him virtue that transcends the law. They know as well as he that slavery is wrong, that human beings are not asses and dogs and mules. Why, then, should he not tell them to liberate their slaves? To marry them to their heirs? To give them good things? Because they will respond (he says), the slaves are ours, that is, we own them; they were dearly and legally purchased. So too with his pound of flesh: it is his. If not, fie upon your law! (89 103). With this final argument Shylock implicitly admits that what he is demanding is just not in itself, at least in their eyes, but only by law. He exposes the Venetians hypocrisy in demanding of him a virtue that goes beyond the law while Perspectives on Political Science they use the law to serve their interests. Not being a patsy, he will use the law as they do and demands that it be binding. The law as he presents it is a tough, arbitrary laying down of how things are going to be. It is not always nor necessarily just; if it were, Venice would have no slaves. And if one begins challenging the law on the basis of a justice that is above the law, many wealthy and comfortable Venetians would suffer serious harm. The law quashes such challenges; that is its great virtue. And the Venetians know it: I stand for judgment, as he says, and a little later, I stand for law (142). Nothing looms above the law in such a manner as to permit us to judge it. Rather, the law alone determines right and wrong; that is, it permits citizens to obtain what they take to be in their interests. Whether it is genuinely in their interest is, so far as the law is concerned, a nonquestion. On the basis of this proto-Hobbesian, Venetian understanding of law, Shylock rests his case. Unfortunately for him, the Duke has sent for Bellario, and Portia, dressed as Bellario s boy Balthazar, will use this very understanding of the law to defeat him. Before she enters, Bassanio encourages Antonio by stating that Shylock shall have Bassanio s own flesh before he has a single drop of Antonio s blood. But the latter rejects this offer: I am a tainted wether of the flock, / Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit / Drops earliest to the ground; and so let me (114 16). If this seems vaguely Christian, Antonio dispels that appearance resoundingly in the words that follow: You cannot better be employ d, Bassanio, / Than to live still and write mine epitaph (117 18). These proud words confirm Bassanio s earlier claim that Roman honor beats in Antonio s heart. They display a magnanimity that found its home, as we have seen, in ancient Rome,16 and they show the first part of his response to bespeak nothing Christian but instead a readiness for death that has resulted from the loss of his material means and, more importantly, his loss of Bassanio to Portia the enduring source of his sadness. Christianity appears in fact only haplessly now in the figure of Gratiano, who again betrays his name with graceless and stupid railing. As Shylock whets his knife on the sole of his shoe, Gratiano blames him for his envy his harsh desire to harm others. Gratiano raises again, that is, the question of motive, which, had he keener eyes, he would see has been skillfully shown by Shylock to be illicit. When Shylock shows his contempt for the youth s wit, Gratiano erupts with venom: O, be thou damn d, inexecrable dog! And with justice seeming so absent from the proceedings, Gratiano screams that he is almost moved to waver in his faith: perhaps the pagan Pythagoras was right in claiming that the souls of beasts dogs, wolves enter human beings, as appears to be the case with Shylock. But Shylock reminds the raging youth that he stands for law (123 42). This will now prove to be Shylock s undoing, at the clever hand of Portia. She is introduced by Bellario s letter as a young doctor of Rome, a young body with an old head (153, 163 64) coming in the allegedly sick Bellario s stead. She grants immediately that law is on Shylock s side and appeals therefore outside of it, to mercy, with her famous lines on its quality (184 205). She presents mercy not as something a sap would offer but as a royal and even a divine virtue: if justice October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 were done, no one would see salvation. And she appeals to the piety, common to Christian and Jew, that petitions God for mercy and that teaches us to be merciful (which finds expression in the Pater Noster). Yet as her concluding lines indicate, this whole appeal is a setup: Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea, Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence gainst the merchant there (202 05). Mercy alone is what stands between Shylock and the object of his desire. And Shylock, not unexpectedly, rebuffs her plea: My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, / The penalty and forfeit of my bond (206 07). Portia s second attempt a preparation, no less than the first, for Shylock s ultimate defeat is begun by raising the question of payment. Bassanio offers now ten times the sum, as well as forfeit of his hands, his head, his heart, declaring that if this does not win, then it must be malice that bears down truth; justice is being defeated by malice. Is the law to support malice? If it does, Bassanio declares, then ignore the law: To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curb this cruel devil of his will (216 17). His is a very tempting position it is the gratifying premise, in fact, of many of our contemporary film dramas. It was likewise the position of Cassius, over and against the scolding of Brutus.17 But Portia firmly opposes it: It must not be; there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established. Twill be recorded for a precedent, And many an error by the same example Will rush into the state. It cannot be. (218 22) She stands for unbending allegiance to the law. But unlike Brutus or, indeed, Julius Caesar, she does not do so on the republican ground that to allow anyone to stand outside the law would subvert the justice upon which the law stands.18 Instead, her position bespeaks the limits of justice, the impossibility of it being attained in every case, and the consequent need for strong, unbending law. Hence Shylock, who fully shares this understanding, praises her exceedingly: A Daniel come to judgment! (223).19 Portia again offers, though, a way out, bidding Shylock accept the offer of thrice the money. Shylock, apparently now believing that this is God s beloved Daniel, replies that he has an oath in heaven, and not for Venice will he lay perjury upon his soul (228 30). What we see now is the very opposite of the money-grubbing Jew portrayed by other playwrights: Shylock does not want the money, the ducats. His concern is for his soul, that is, his immortal soul, as his preceding reference to Daniel makes clear.20 With Shylock now devoted body and soul, as it were, to the law s execution, Portia announces that the bond is forfeit and hence the pound of flesh nearest the heart is lawfully Shylock s. Her final entreaty for mercy meets with a final rebuff of her, the worthy judge. Antonio asks for a judgment, and Portia grants that the intent and purpose of the law corresponds to the stated penalty. Shylock can scarce contain his praise of Portia, and as he prepares the scales for the gruesome deed, she bids Antonio speak what he must 199 believe to be his last words. They reflect his abiding stoicism and his abiding love for Bassanio. But they also finally address the matter of Bassanio s wife not, however, to wish Bassanio happiness with her. Antonio s desire for his own abiding honor dominates his thoughts even here: But little; I am arm d and well prepar d. Give me your hand, Bassanio, fare you well. Grieve not that I am fall n to this for you; For herein Fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom. It is still her use To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow An age of poverty; from which ling ring penance Of such misery doth she cut me off. Commend me to your honorable wife, Tell her the process of Antonio s end, Say how I lov d you, speak me fair in death; And when the tale is told, bid her be judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love. Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, And he repents not that he pays your debt; For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, I ll pay it presently with all my heart (264 81). While he is prepared to die for Bassanio, Antonio offers him the comfort that it is a better fortune than to have miserably outlived his wealth. (He says nothing, in this would-be final speech, about God or the afterlife.) Yet this thought that death is now a benefit to him runs counter to the professed proof of his love for Bassanio: if death costs him nothing and is indeed a benefit, what great devotion is shown by it? In this conundrum, Antonio enacts a somewhat farcical version, appropriate to the commercial republic, of the problem attending the happy death that Brutus claims for himself, a death made happy by the public glory it bestows on him at the expense of the glory of his enemies.21 A commercial republic affords no such opportunities. But it does still afford the opportunity for a noble death on behalf of one s friends. We are led to suspect that the true source of Antonio s wish to be relieved of life now is indeed manifest in the second half of the speech, where he commends himself to Portia and requests that Bassanio tell her the tale of Antonio s great devotional love. Bassanio s wooing of Portia has of course been the source not only of Antonio s enduring sadness but of the need of the loan from Shylock. His death would solve this problem, manifesting his great love while curing him of his sadness. But his request shows no concern for the effect that the triumphant, ultimate sacrifice he makes, as part of his vying love for Bassanio, will have on Portia s happiness. Nor can his deed be considered altogether friendly to Bassanio if, as he makes clear, it entails rendering him the mere writer of his epitaph, and the troubling loss of a beloved friend who died to pay his debt as Portia had indeed perceived immediately upon hearing of it, and in her fear for what it would mean for her own happiness, has acted to overcome. Portia s prudent fears are amply confirmed now by Bassanio s profession of his devotion to Antonio, as is the agreement we have observed between her and Shylock. Bassanio claims that he is prepared to sacrifice all that he has, including his dear wife, to deliver Antonio from Shylock. Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 200 Portia immediately retorts: Your wife would give you little thanks for that, / If she were by, to hear you make the offer (288 89). She is clearly not prepared to be sacrificed for her husband s friend. After Nerissa has made a similar response to the similar profession of Gratiano (though one expressed in manifestly Christian terms), we hear a significant aside from Shylock: These be the Christian husbands. I have a daughter; / Would any of the stock of Barrabas / Had been her husband rather than a Christian! (295 97). Even a murderous Jew would not be prodigal and hence faithless in his love, as are Christians. Shylock is by far more aware of what it means to be a husband, and his agreement with Portia on law stems from this agreement, over and against Christian practice, from a recognition of the harsh truth about the exclusivity of devotional love and the harshness of the world to which it points. That Antonio has been from the opening of the play sad on account of his awareness of what Bassanio s love of Portia will mean to him bespeaks his agreement, too, with Portia and Shylock in this grave matter. Shylock s understanding of Venetian law has, accordingly, been one with these two Romans. We are thus shown the serious ground of Launcelot s equation of Judaism with paganism. Having her own remarkably prescient thoughts publicly confirmed, Portia now springs her trap. She again proclaims that the court awards and the law gives a pound of flesh near Antonio s heart to Shylock. But, she adds, no drop of Christian blood shall be spilled, or his goods and life are confiscate to the state of Venice (305 12). Shylock asks if this is the law, and she ominously confirms that it is: you will see the act; you will have justice, more than you desire. Shylock, having many times praised her wisdom as a judge, is therefore now daunted: he requests instead of the flesh thrice the bond. Bassanio is prepared to give it, but Portia boldly persists: it is the flesh, or nothing, and only she now adds precisely one pound, or Shylock and his goods are confiscate. Shylock requests now only the principal, and again Bassanio is ready to grant it. But Portia denies it: Shylock has in open court refused mercy, she declares, so he will have justice rather than mercy. Shylock offers to go home, but Portia will not let him off: referring now to another law, proscribing an alien directly or indirectly seeking the life of a Venetian citizen, she declares half his goods confiscate to the state, and half to Antonio, and his life forfeit, if the Duke so demand it (313 63). This remarkable defeat is carried out to the accompaniment of the vicious reaction of Gratiano, who screams nasty chants at Shylock. His low taunts (316, 322, 333, 340) reach a crescendo as Portia lowers the boom (369 74 and 379 81). While Gratiano s desire for the merciless death of Shylock is on display, this clearly is not what Portia has in mind. She can count, fortunately, on the mercy of the Duke, who pardons Shylock s life and reduces the state s forfeiture to a fine (368 72). Portia is careful to note that the reduction to a fine applies only to the state s half of his estate, not to Antonio s half. She has a plan, and its execution depends now on Antonio, whom she asks to render mercy. He complies: the half of Shylock s goods Shylock will have in use, and upon his death he will give them to Jessica and her husband, the man who Perspectives on Political Science lately stole his daughter. (He readily and honestly admits that Lorenzo s deed was a theft.) But he demands in turn that Shylock now convert to Christianity as his punishment and make a written gift of all he possesses to his son Lorenzo and to his daughter. He suspects rightly that Shylock will more readily accede to the care of his daughter than adhere to his faith. He recognizes the depth of Shylock s love of his own and suspects that it will trump his religious scruples. Shylock agrees to this arrangement but is obviously not simply content with it; he is not well, he declares, in the last words we hear of him. Antonio for his part finds this compelled conversion merciful, and the final words spoken in court by the repulsive Gratiano make it appear so: he d have had Shylock hanged (398 400). Portia slips easily out of the Duke s dinner invitation and then has a chance to test further, and more manifestly or enduringly, her husband s devotion, requesting of the grateful Bassanio the ring on his finger. He initially passes the test (426 45), but given what he has said at the trial, this resolve clearly will not hold. Having offered Balthazar much, he is loath to deny Balthazar the one thing he has requested and claims he deserves. Bassanio has not seen and does not see what Portia and Shylock have seen: that there is a necessary limit to the objects of one s devotional love. What is at issue is summarized by Antonio s plea: My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring: / Let his deservings and my love withal / Be valued against your wife s commandment (449 51). Bassanio is thus moved to show Antonio, who was prepared to die for him, that his love is, as he has publicly declared, truly reciprocated. Still pursuing her plan, Portia searches for the home of Shylock, to make official the agreement that will be well welcome to Lorenzo (4.2.4). She accepts Bassanio s ring from Gratiano, and Nerissa is careful to go to obtain from Gratiano the ring she had given him: it would be unpleasant, as they both know, if Gratiano kept his ring after Bassanio had given his over. PORTIA TRIUMPHANT Lorenzo, still acting lord of Belmont, exchanges words with Jessica about the lovely night, with its bright moon and sweet, gentle wind amid the quiet. They recount what lovers immortalized by poets have done on such a night. Troilus discovered that Cressida is faithless, out in the Greek camp. This first example sets the tone, calling our attention to the depreciation of both politics and devotional love entailed in this tale the comic portrayal of ancient heroism. Pyramus was, on the other hand, deceived by the appearance of the lion and in mistaken grief for Thisbe, killed himself. Aeneas, contrastingly, left Dido behind at Carthage to found Rome: here in the middle example we are reminded of a jilted lover, but one jilted for the political, away from the supremacy of the household. The fourth example recounts how Medea, having made Jason s father young again, was then betrayed by Jason, who married the queen of Corinth instead of Medea. His ingratitude and infidelity were motivated by desire for a politically useful union. Fifth and finally, Lorenzo speaks of Jessica s crime (in leaving her father), and she of Lorenzo s dubious vows of fidelity to her. Keeping up the playfulness, Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 Lorenzo claims to be slandered, but forgives her. A messenger, Stephano, arrives before things turn mushy, but not before we have seen that the couple s pagan models none are Christian have all been either faithless or deceived, their love ending in pain. Under Portia, at Belmont, things will be different. Stephano claims that Portia and Nerissa have been praying at various roadside crosses and promises that they will be arriving presently. We are thus emphatically reminded of Portia s lip service to the Christianity that has made ascendant the private realm over which she so deftly rules. But Bassanio will soon be arriving too. Lorenzo therefore asks for preparations, especially music, to be made. He comments on the stars in a manner that is helpful in understanding the charming nature of Belmont: there is harmonious music of the immortal souls of the stars, he tells Jessica, but while ensconced in our mortal bodies we cannot hear it (60 65). In a subsequent long ode to music, Lorenzo argues that one who is unmoved by music s harmony, the concord of its sweet sounds, is not to be trusted. Music, as the poet (Ovid) intimates, moves even the stones and trees, changing the nature of the hard and of those filled with rage; it makes us for a time placid, soft, temperate, turning us to the high pleasures of love and harmony. It presents a temporary solution to the problems of discord, the chief cause of which is our mortal bodies and hence, one can say, whatever silences our understanding of what is always or holds us back from knowledge. We have summarized Lorenzo s reflections because they form such a sharp contrast to those of Portia that follow. She will achieve harmony and concord at Belmont, but she does not attempt to bring it about everywhere, even in Venice, nor does she consider doing so to be working in accord with a natural if imperceptible cosmic harmony. On the contrary, her initial reflections on the light in the darkness ahead indicate that she sees instead a fundamental and insurmountable disharmony in human affairs: That light we see is burning in my hall. / How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world (89 91). Even and precisely if a good deed shines in it, the world is naughty. Nerissa then observes that when the moon shone, the candle s light was hidden. So doth the greater glory, observes Portia, dim the less (93). None see the lesser glory when the greater shines; the lesser becomes at most a party to the service of someone else s greater glory. This theme of a fundamental disharmony in human affairs is continued in Portia s reflections on the music she hears: Nothing is good, I see, without respect (99), that is, without respect to something else. As she explains, music sounds sweeter at night than by the day, by dint of its isolation from all other sounds; it is unattended. Like the isolated, sweet song of the nightingale, it would be less glorious during the day, in competition with other sounds (104 06). Shakespeare thus makes clear Portia s full awareness of the problematic, nonharmonious nature of the human quest for glory and, more generally, of the absence of a genuinely common good. Unlike Lorenzo, her stand-in at Belmont, she grasps the contradictory character of individuals quest for fulfillment through glorious, noble deeds, deeds whose glory precludes others from ob- 201 taining their share of the noble. But Portia quickly hides this reflection from Nerissa in a pleasant conclusion, which makes all things seem potentially harmonious: How many things by season season d are / To their right praise and true perfection! (107 08). Portia, who claims to have been praying with Nerissa for their husbands health, instructs all of them to remain quiet about her absence. The evening at this point mirrors Portia s present position: not bright, but merely luminous, like the daylight sick, when the sun is hidden. The entering Bassanio picks up on Portia s comment about the sun and claims that they d walk in light if she were present. But her playful, punning response begins their discomfiture: Let me give light, but let me not be light, For a light wife doth make a heavy husband, And never be Bassanio so for me But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord (129 32). She will not be light (wanton) because she does not want a heavy (sad) husband. A clear-sightedness, again, directs her, even in love. She does not seek mere physical pleasure, but for that reason is fully aware that love, like glory, cannot be shared. And so it is again when she is introduced to Antonio, as a man to whom Bassanio is infinitely bound : You should in all sense be much bound to him. / For, as I hear, he was much bound for you (136 37). Her correction not infinitely but much bound is explained by her broader point that his binding is due to reciprocal justice. And the correction carries an implicit warning: she will be bound to Bassanio if he has indeed been faithful to her. But has he been? That question is now raised as Nerissa reproaches Gratiano for giving away her ring and for ignoring the significance of the oath that went with it: not for me, but for your vehement oaths / you should have been respective and kept it (155 56). If Gratiano is not a man of his word, she declares, then perhaps he gave the ring to a woman. While Nerissa plays here with the truth (159), the business of oaths is a serious one, as Portia now affirms. Her Bassanio, she declares, would never give away the ring she gave him. She thus makes Bassanio squirm; he knows now that he is in deep trouble. And as she expects, Gratiano, ever the cretan, tries to get out of his trouble by snitching on Bassanio: he has given away his ring! (179ff.). Not the ring? asks Portia, and on hearing the answer, declares that Bassanio s false heart is void of truth, and she swears an oath playfully, never to bed him until he has the ring (190 91). But her play has the serious intent of teaching her husband and his friend something of vital importance: fidelity to her, first and foremost. Bassanio, naturally, defends himself on the ground of the worth of the person to whom he gave the ring (192 202), and so the issue of respective worth comes front and center. Bassanio argues that if Portia knew to whom, for whom, for what, and how unwillingly he gave the ring, her displeasure would abate. But now the great Portia uncovers her greatness of soul, her magnanimity: If you had known the virtue of the ring, Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, 202 Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 Or your own honor to contain the ring, You would not then have parted with the ring (199 202). Here is raised the private realm s equivalent of the political or public realm s assertion of worthiness to rule, an assertion of who is the abler, as Cassius had put it to Brutus, to make conditions. 22 Portia, Bassanio must learn, is far more deserving of his honor and pledge of fidelity than anyone; he knows not half her worthiness. A reasonable man would be modest in demands, she adds, were Bassanio openly zealous in his devotion to her, and so she must believe that some woman has the ring. The dramatic irony is deep and promises a happy conclusion, but Bassanio s trustworthiness is seriously at stake, as is the question of who deserves fidelity. He protests that he did the honorable thing (209ff.), thereby causing the problem to deepen. For what Bassanio says in his defense is incontestably true: the ring went to a doctor of law, Even he that did uphold the very life Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady? I was enforc d to send it after him, I was beset with shame and courtesy, My honor would not let ingratitude So much besmear it (214 19). Antonio had requested that Balthazar be given the ring as requested; what kind of a friend, what kind of a man, would Bassanio be to deny this request of the honorable friend who had been willing to die for him, and of the man who had saved this very friend s life? Yet had he not sworn to Portia that he would never remove the ring, the symbol of his fidelity, until his death? There is in truth no way out for Bassanio that is not unjust. Having from the start anticipated this situation and having now brought it to a head, Portia makes clear to Bassanio that when he is torn in this way, by justice, fidelity to her must rule his soul; she must rule. Portia has, with Antonio, not only the virtues of an ancient Roman but a clear grasp of the problem of republican virtue as we have seen it explored in Julius Caesar; this indeed is, as we have been led to suspect, the basis of her clear-sighted pursuit of what is good for her. The situation she has brought about is, to be sure, a beautiful or poeticized one: she herself deserves both gratitude for saving Antonio and the fidelity of Bassanio; the contradiction in justice will be resolved by the revelation that Balthazar and Portia are one and the same person. And so all can be made well. But this most certainly is not always the case. And so before she resolves the problem, Portia prudently uses the situation to correct the underlying difficulty for her, that is, to reorder the friendship of Antonio and Bassanio. She ensures that Antonio will henceforth support Bassanio s fidelity to Portia. She first pretends that, because she suspects Bassanio has been sexually unfaithful to her, she will be unfaithful to Bassanio in return, will become as liberal as you (226). (Her choice of words reminds us that the question of who is deserving of devotion has been exacerbated in her husband by Christian liberality with respect to love.) Antonio is therefore compelled to speak up and declare himself the cause of the quarrel, which Portia s gracious reply ( you are welcome notwithstanding ) quietly confirms (238 39). Bassanio asks Perspectives on Political Science for forgiveness for what he again calls an enforced wrong, but an apology is not what Portia is after. She cuts him off in mid-sentence with an accusation of selfishness. He then swears an oath never more to break an oath with her. This of course is the problem, known well to any seducer of a married person: how can one any longer trust an oath breaker? How can such a one retrieve his good name? In one way: if another honorable man should speak up for him as his surety. And so Antonio does (249 54), thereby giving Portia precisely what she has been seeking. Antonio s new office is to ensure that Bassanio is ever faithful to Portia, that he nevermore break faith advisedly (i.e., intentionally), as Antonio astutely puts it (253), contradicting Bassanio s claim that his breach of faith was enforced. Antonio recognizes that Bassanio made a decision for him over and against Portia and submits himself now to being a true friend by serving Bassanio s fidelity to Portia. He also states that he would be dead now but for him that had your husband s ring (250). Portia thus has verbal evidence of Antonio s deep gratitude, for his very life, to Balthazar. And so she begins to disclose her identity as Balthazar by giving the ring to Bassanio. But her identity is not made altogether clear before Gratiano again reveals his baseness: What? Are we cuckolds ere we deserved it? (265). That is, he expects at some time to deserve it. Portia finally rebukes him directly: Speak not so grossly (266), and we see who is now firmly in charge. She gives a letter from Bellario disclosing her identity and, able now to tell Antonio without qualification, you are welcome (273; contrast 139 41 and 239), she gives him a letter concerning his three ships, becoming thereby the source of his life and living (286). Finally, Nerissa discloses the solution of Lorenzo and Jessica s difficulty: Shylock s bequest of all of which he will die possessed. All gratitude and friendship now flow in Portia s direction. She has become the sun, dimming altogether the sacrifice Antonio was prepared to make for Bassanio. The play had opened with Antonio s sadness and speculations about his ships; it closes with good news about his ships, delivered in such a way as to hide the new source of sadness for him, that is, his realization of being now and for the rest of his life second fiddle, a friend to Bassanio only and insofar as he ensures his fidelity to Portia. To be sure, this in a manner solves Antonio s problem, because he too is now devoted to Portia as to a goddess one to whom he owes everything. But such subordination of one in whom the ancient Roman honor appears, to one in whom it appears more fully, is not an unmitigated blessing. His misfortune has provided her opportunity for greatness. NOTES 1. This article is reprinted with permission from chapter three of Timothy W. Burns, Shakespeare s Political Wisdom (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013). 2. See, e.g., Allan Bloom, On Christian and Jew: The Merchant of Venice, in Shakespeare s Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1964), Chapter 2 (13 34). 3. 3.2.292 96. I thank Thomas Pangle for drawing my attention to this important passage. 4. See Julius Caesar 2.1.267 302. October December 2014, Volume 43, Number 4 Downloaded by [Baylor University Libraries] at 12:59 01 October 2014 5. Compare Aristotle, Politics 1258a1. 6. See Genesis 27. 7. See Genesis 34:30 31, 35:22. 8. Contrast Augustine, Letter 138. 9. 1.3.133 34 with 83 84 and 94 95; and see Aristotle, Politics 1258b1 20. 10. Contrast Desdemona s disposition in Othello 1.3.252. 11. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. Hamlet 3.1.318 19. 12. Compare Genesis 27. Lancelot demands to be called master, but the blind father refuses; Lancelot tries to reveal who he is by asking his father s blessing, rather than hiding who he is in order to receive it; the father expresses mistaken doubt when he feels what he takes to be the son s hairy beard, rather than gaining mistaken confidence through feeling a hairy disguise; and the father comes to believe when the son correctly names his 203 mother, rather than being misled through the mother s deceit of having the son misname himself. 13. See Matthew 10:34 36; Luke 12:51 52. 14. 248 50; compare again Julius Caesar 2.1.267 302, esp. 274. 15. Contrast again Augustine, Letter 138. 16. Consider, e.g., the parallel words of Brutus in Julius Caesar 5.1.59 60. 17. See Julius Caesar 4.3.7 8. 18. See Julius Caesar 4.3.1 28, 5.5.45 48, and 3.1.33 73. 19. Daniel means God is my judge, and in the Babylonian court Daniel was known as Balthazar. See Daniel 1:7. 20. See Daniel 12:1 3. 21. See Julius Caesar 5.5.36 42, 50 52. 22. See ibid., 4.3.30 35. Cf. Macbeth 4.3.91 103.

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