The Merchant of Venice: Language and Writing

Douglas M. Lanier

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781472571489
• eBook ISBN: 9781472571502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing volumes offer a new type of study aid that combines lively critical insight with practical guidance on the writing skills you need to develop in order to engage fully with Shakespeare's texts. The books' core focus is on language: both understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's complex dramatic language, and expanding your own critical vocabulary, as you respond to his plays. Each guide in the series will empower you to read and write about Shakespeare with increased confidence and enthusiasm. A notoriously disturbing play, The Merchant of Venice explores how the discourses of racial and religious prejudice and of business intertwine and shape how characters understand themselves and their relationships with one another. The intersections between religious, racial and economic language in The Merchant of Venice can be challenging to grasp, but in this guide Douglas Lanier showcases a range of approaches to understanding its language, all based on close reading and attention to Shakespeare's style. The volume will equip you to analyze Shakespeare's troubling portrayal of anti-Semitism for yourself and to articulate your views on The Merchant of Venice with greater insight and confidence.

CHAPTER ONE

Shakespeare’s Stylistic Resources

Shakespeare’s language is and is not our own, as any casual reader will quickly recognize. On the one hand, the words Shakespeare uses are for the most part recognizable as English to any competent speaker of the language. In fact, it’s a commonplace that many of the words and phrases we use daily were invented or popularized by Shakespeare. The phrases ‘bated breath’ and ‘blinking idiot’, to take just two examples, originate with The Merchant of Venice. On the other hand, early modern English, and the ways in which Shakespeare manipulates it, differs markedly from everyday modern English in several important ways. Early modern English uses, for example, a different system of pronouns and verb endings than does modern English, and it includes some bits of once-common vocabulary that have fallen out of active use. It also allows for a more flexible syntax (or word order) so that, for instance, inverted word order and sentences with long-delayed main verbs are not uncommon. Learning a bit about these characteristics will ease some of the initial difficulties readers encounter with Shakespeare’s language.

Even more important is how Shakespeare takes full advantage of the creative possibilities of early modern English. His plays are written largely in dramatic verse, so Shakespeare makes the most of various elements of Renaissance verse technique – rhetorical patterning, metre, metaphor, imagery and wordplay. These are the stylistic resources on which he draws, the basic building blocks of his art, and knowing a bit about each of them will help you comprehend more and appreciate his extraordinary achievement. What makes Shakespeare’s verse particularly special among Renaissance playwrights is the density of meaning Shakespeare manages to pack into a line, his willingness to experiment with word effects of all sorts and the ways in which his lines convey the impression of a character’s thought in motion, but most special of all is his very evident delight simply in the aptly chosen, resonant word and well-wrought phrase. Clearly Shakespeare loved language for its own sake – he is something of a connoisseur and inventor of words. But it’s reasonable to assume that he loved language also because his audiences paid good money to savour skilfully crafted writing spoken well. With his dramatic verse Shakespeare is catering, in other words, to a public market for eloquent speech, an audience eager for stories told in luxurious, extravagant language. If modern audiences, scions of a predominantly visual culture, love to see movies that push film techniques to their very limits, Shakespeare’s audiences, products of an oral and (to a lesser degree) written culture, appreciated stylistic craftsmanship and flair with the English language. What modern audiences sometimes experience as Shakespeare’s overly formal, extravagant, wilfully complicated writing style, Renaissance audiences experienced as thrillingly novel and inventive, the verbal equivalent of complex cinematic special effects. Helping to kindle some appreciation for poetic skill and flamboyant eloquence is the ultimate goal of this chapter.

Historicizing Shakespeare’s language

First, some technical preliminaries. For modern readers the occasionally unfamiliar vocabulary of early modern English poses the most immediate obstacle to understanding Shakespeare’s plays. We may stumble if we don’t know, for example, that in the Renaissance the word ‘his’ can mean either ‘his’ or ‘its’, or if we don’t recognize that ‘tis’ is the typical early modern contraction of ‘it is’. We need to know that the Renaissance English pronouns ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, and their possessive forms ‘thy’ and ‘thine’ (like the French ‘tu’ or the German ‘du’), are forms of ‘you’ appropriate for someone with whom you are familiar or intimate (‘you’, not ‘thou’, is the more respectful alternative). Using ‘thou’ to address someone not close to you may sound presumptuous or insulting, unless you are addressing someone absent, a ghost, a spirit or God. For that reason, paying attention to moments when a character uses ‘thou’ or ‘you’ with another character may give some hint as to the nature of their relationship, though Shakespeare is by no means rigorous in how he deploys these pronouns. In fact, characters may occasionally switch from one pronoun to the other when addressing the same person and even within the same speech. Verb endings too can pose a challenge. The ending ‘-eth’ is an equivalent of the third-person present tense ending ‘-s’; the verb ending ‘-est’ and the verbs ‘art’, ‘wilt’ and ‘wert’ (for modern ‘are’, ‘will’ and ‘were’) are only used with the pronoun ‘thou’. These pronouns and verb endings have a churchy ring to the modern ear because of their survival in religious rituals and Biblical translations, though they would not have evoked such an aura of reverence in Renaissance playgoers.

Just as pesky are those words that have fallen out of once common use, such as ‘an’ (meaning ‘if’), ‘hither’ and ‘thence’ (meaning ‘to here’ and ‘from there’), ‘wont’ (meaning ‘predisposed or accustomed’), and ‘fie’ and ‘go to’, expressions of mild disgust. When Shylock after being summoned to dinner at Antonio’s asks ‘but wherefore should I go?’ (MV 2.5.12), he is not confused about directions. The archaic word ‘wherefore’ means not ‘where’ but ‘why’, and so Shylock is pausing to ask himself why he should attend a meal where he knows he will not be truly welcome. It also takes a bit of effort to master vocabularies for arenas of Renaissance life that now have largely passed into history. For instance, nearly everyone in early modern England came into daily contact with horses, and so there was a substantial body of words and phrases familiar to all – bay, jade, roan, groom, pasterns, fetlocks, bit, rein, Dobbin, Barbary, to name a few – upon which Shakespeare could draw with assurance that his audience could follow. Old Giobbe’s remark to his son Lancelet that ‘thou hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin, my thill-horse, has on his tail’ (MV 2.2.88–9) would have been a more immediate joke to Shakespeare’s audience, since they would know that a thill-horse (or fill-horse) was a horse attached to a cart, and Dobbin a conventional name for an old horse, one likely to have a thinning tail. As one might expect, The Merchant of Venice is especially rich in the vocabulary of trade and finance, since Venice (like London) was an international commercial mecca and Londoners were likely to know basic business terms. The words ‘bond’, ‘rate’, ‘worth’, ‘credit’, ‘venture’, ‘hazard’, ‘owe/own’, ‘fortune’, ‘commodity’, ‘use’, ‘thrift’, ‘sum’, ‘commodity’, ‘convert’ and ‘prodigal’ all belong to the realm of early modern trade, and Shakespeare taps into the multiple meanings of these words to suggest how economic ways of thinking pervade the relationships, values and behaviour of the play’s characters, even in areas of life seemingly far removed from business dealings.

Particularly interesting to students of the English language – and most troublesome for modern audiences of Shakespeare – are those words that in Renaissance English had quite different shades of meaning. These require us to adjust our modern expectations. When, for instance, Portia claims to the Prince of Morocco that ‘in terms of choice I am not solely led / By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes’ (MV 2.1.13–14), by ‘nice’ she means ‘foolish’, perhaps ‘lusty’, maybe even ‘precise’, with a negative connotation of prissiness, all meanings current in Shakespeare’s day. What she doesn’t mean is ‘pleasant’ or ‘kind’, meanings not attached to the word ‘nice’ until the eighteenth century. It’s important that we modern readers be aware of those historical semantic differences, lest we misinterpret. At the trial scene, the Duke’s opening plea to Shylock that he show mercy ends with the line, ‘we all expect a gentle answer, Jew!’ (MV 4.1.33). The word ‘gentle’ certainly encompasses the modern meanings ‘mild’ and ‘polite’, but we miss the full meaning of the passage if we don’t recognize that the primary meaning of ‘gentle’ in Shakespeare’s day was ‘noble’ or ‘aristocratic’, with a play on the word ‘gentile’. With that one word, the Duke’s remark associates mercy not merely with kindness but with the ruling classes and Christianity, with the implication that Shylock’s insistence upon justice is ‘un-gentle’ in every sense, cruel, vulgar, impudent and un-Christian.

Without some historical knowledge of language and the cultural practices that underlie it, we can also miss some of the sly humour of Shakespeare’s writing. Note this little bit of banter between Lorenzo and Lancelet:

LORENZO

Then bid them prepare dinner.

LANCELET

That is done too, sir; only ‘cover’ is the word.

LORENZO

Will you cover then, sir?

LANCELET

Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty. (MV 3.5.45–9)

The comedy of this exchange is lost if we don’t know that the word ‘cover’ refers to, among much else, laying down a tablecloth (a key prelude to a meal) and putting a hat on one’s head, a potentially disrespectful gesture, since one was required to remove one’s hat in the presence of one’s social betters. The Oxford English Dictionary provides a reliable guide to the history of the meanings of words. It arranges definitions chronologically, with the earliest meanings of a word first and so on, along with examples that suggest the historical range within which each definition was current. In any case, it’s important not to assume that words in The Merchant of Venice have the same meaning as they do in contemporary English. Historicizing one’s sense of what even familiar words mean is a crucial skill to develop. If your reading of a passage rests upon a particular meaning of a word or phrase, it would be wise to check that the particular meaning was one that Shakespeare had access to, or you will be building your interpretation on a foundation of sand.

All of these are obstacles to the first-time reader of Shakespeare, though Shakespearean English still shares enough with modern English that we can follow it with a little effort and some background on specific differences. However, what most divides us from Shakespeare’s early modern audiences, I think, is our very different attitude towards poetically heightened language. By poetically heightened language, I mean language distinguished from everyday usage by its rhetorical patterning, elevated vocabulary, elaborate metaphors and imagery, and formal register. The language of most modern pop culture tends to be colloquial, informal and plain-spoken. The typical dialogue of mainstream film and television aims for maximum transparency and immediacy for a broad audience; the stress falls upon simplicity, clarity, contemporaneity, verisimilitude, minimalism and the appearance of spontaneity. Modern audiences have come to associate this plain style with sincerity and authenticity and to regard poetically heightened language as over-calculated, artificial, old-fashioned, snobbish, exclusionary or insincere (even though we modern audiences are more than willing to embrace very complex forms of visual expression).

For audiences of Shakespeare’s play, however, attitudes towards poetically heightened language could not have been more different. Evidence suggests that Renaissance audiences, their ears trained by sermons and public speeches to take in long, rhetorically complex forms of discourse, came to plays expecting to hear sophisticated, elevated, poetically elaborate language. Writers played to their apparent delight in linguistic experimentation and wordplay. Spectators believed that poetical sophistication heightened and ennobled the drama’s emotional content, deepened its intellectual power, and intensified its capacity to persuade and move the heart. Such assumptions were founded upon practices of classical poetry from Greek and Latin antiquity, the reigning model for literary excellence in the day. To hear grand, eloquent language was in great part why audiences attended the theatre, even for those who had little formal schooling. Lancelet and his father’s malapropisms in 2.2 offer an important clue to attitudes towards elevated language in Shakespeare’s theatre. Their misuse of grand words like ‘infection’ (for affection), ‘frutify’ (for certify), ‘impertinent’ (for pertinent) and ‘defect’ (for effect) is comical because they fail to measure up to the standard of verbal sophistication that rules elsewhere in the play. What’s more, their elevated vocabulary may hint at the class aspirations that lie behind the desire to hear poetically sophisticated language: to go to the theatre was to experience verbal luxuriousness. Whether these rustics’ mistakes indicate their own intellectual failings or witty mockery at their betters’ expense is a question to be asked. In any case, to appreciate Shakespeare’s artistic achievement we modern spectators must first bracket out our ingrained response to heightened language and embrace a different set of expectations – no easy task.

Rhetorical patterning

Shakespeare uses myriad techniques for supercharging his language, but four are of special interest to us here: rhetorical patterning, metre, imagery and wordplay. To illustrate these techniques in action, let’s turn to the first few moments of the play. Shakespeare opens The Merchant of Venice with a mystery, Antonio’s melancholy, a motif Shakespeare will repeat when he introduces Portia in the scene that follows. This melancholic note is an odd way to begin a comedy, and it is all the more odd because Antonio’s melancholy has no clear motivation, as he himself observes:

In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

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

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

I am to learn; and such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself. (MV 1.1.1–6)

At first glance this passage looks rather unartful, but it is a fine example of Shakespeare’s poetic technique. Though Antonio’s language is flat, almost entirely monosyllabic, without flash or flourish, that very flatness is entirely appropriate to Antonio’s mopey mood. As a man who presents himself as serious (another meaning of the word ‘sad’, a meaning which Gratiano will pick up on soon enough), Antonio doesn’t use poetic imagery in this passage. But his lines are nevertheless artfully patterned, with the word ‘it’ at the heart of various parallel phrases. That unspecific ‘it’, repeated again and again, underlines the naggingly unknown nature of the sadness Antonio is feeling, adding to the mystery of what ‘it’ is and where ‘it’ has come from. The short parallel phrases also have an obsessive quality about them, miming the way in which Antonio is running over versions of the same thought in his mind until he reaches the phrase that breaks the repetitive pattern and ends the sentence with the long-delayed main clause, ‘I am to learn’. In the sentence which follows, the repeated ‘m’s, examples of alliteration, draw our attention to key words – ‘makes … me … much … myself’. The alliterative ‘w’ of ‘want-wit’ picks up important words from earlier in the speech – ‘wearies … wearies … what … whereof’. The verbal craft of this passage is hardly flashy. In fact, it is a good example of the classical aesthetic ideal, art est celare artem – the best art hides its artfulness. Nevertheless, we can see that the language has clearly been enhanced in ways appropriate to the topic. This speech provides an apt portrayal of the state of Antonio’s mind and an intriguing introduction to a darker element that will become important to the play’s complex notion of comedy.

This passage reminds us that Shakespeare need not use elevated vocabulary to heighten his dialogue, though he can do so to good effect. For an example of elevated language, we might look ahead in the first scene to Bassanio’s conversation with Antonio, where he first introduces the idea of pursuing Portia. There Bassanio provides a glimpse into his past:

’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,

How much I have disabled mine estate

By something showing a more swelling port

Than my faint means would grant continuance.

Nor do I make moan to be abridged

From such a noble rate, but my chief care

Is to come fairly off from the great debts

Wherein my time, something too prodigal,

Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio,

I owe the most in money and in love,

And from your love I have a warranty

To unburden all my plots and purposes

How to get clear of all the debts I owe. (MV 1.1.122–34)

We learn much here: that Bassanio spent up his inheritance and went into debt to live beyond his means, that he has depended most of all upon Antonio’s generosity, that he is now determined ‘to get clear from all the debts I owe’ with a plan that requires Antonio’s help. This is the behaviour of a prodigal, one who squanders his family fortune in pursuit of aristocratic glory, a familiar Renaissance type. The prodigal is also a Biblical type, the protagonist of one of Jesus’s parables. In that parable, the prodigal son, after spending all of his birthright and ending up in squalor, returns home to ask for his father’s forgiveness. Unlike Antonio’s fairly direct approach in his opening speech, Bassanio expresses himself here in an elevated vocabulary – ‘disabled mine estate’, ‘grant continuance’, ‘abridged / From such a noble rate’, ‘a warranty / To unburden all my plots and purposes’. Perhaps his ornate way of speaking is intended to express respect to a friend to whom he owes money, but it also seems rather euphemistic, as if he is out to soften his sense of shame or evade full responsibility for his prodigality. The negations and equivocations with which he peppers his speech – ‘not unknown to you’, ‘something showing a more swelling port’, ‘Nor do I make moan’, ‘something too prodigal’ – only add to the impression of evasiveness. To some extent this is a non-confessional confession of past sins. By contrast, in a line that stands out for its directness of expression, Bassanio is crystal clear about his special relationship with Antonio: ‘To you, Antonio, /...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Series Editor’s Preface
• A Note on Editions
• Introduction
• 1. Shakespeare’s Stylistic Resources
• 2. Language in Print I: Texts from Texts
• 3. Language in Print II: Two Shylocks, Two Portias
• 4. Language in Print III: Bonds
• 5. Language in Dramatic Context
• 6. The Language of Racial and Ethnic Humour
• 7. The Language of Comedy
• 8. Language through Time: Adaptations and Performance
• Notes
• Further Reading, Listening and Viewing
• Imprint