The Merchant of Venice

Critical Essays

Thomas Wheeler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317485223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1991. Essays here are arranged chronologically within sections: 'The Play as Text', 'Shylock' and 'The Play in the Theatre.' Collecting previously published important commentaries and scholarly articles, this volume in the Shakespearean Criticism set looks at one of the Bard's most disturbing plays. These historical critical pieces give witness to the changing attitudes to the play and the characters and provide readers with a wide range of material relating both to performances and to textual readings.

Part 1 The Play as Text

The Merchant of Venice

Harley Granville-Barker

DOI: 10.4324/9781315709208-1

The Merchant of Venice is a fairy tale. There is no morereality in Shylock’s bond and the Lord of Belmont’s will than in Jackand the Beanstalk.

Shakespeare, it is true, did not leave the fables as he found them. Thiswould not have done; things that pass muster on the printed page maybecome quite incredible when acted by human beings, and the unlikelierthe story, the likelier must the mechanism of its acting be made.Besides, when his own creative impulse was quickened, he could not helpgiving life to a character; he could no more help it than the sun canhelp shining. So Shylock is real, while his story remains fabulous; andPortia and Bassanio become human, though, truly, they never quite emergefrom the enchanted thicket of fancy into the common light of day.Aesthetic logic may demand that a story and its characters should moveconsistently upon one plane or another, be it fantastic or real. ButShakespeare’s practical business, once he had chosen these two storiesfor his play, was simply so to charge them with humanity that they didnot betray belief in the human beings presenting them, yet not souncompromisingly that the stories themselves became ridiculous.

What the producer of the play must first set himself to ascertain is theway in which he did this, the nice course that—by reason or instinct—hesteered. Find it and follow it, and there need be no running on therocks. But logic may land us anywhere. It can turn Bassanio into aheartless adventurer. Test the clock of the action by Greenwich time, itwill either be going too fast or too slow. And as to Portia’s disguise and Bellario’slaw, would the village policeman be taken in by either? But the actorwill find that he simply cannot play Bassanio as a humbug, forShakespeare does not mean him to. Portias and Nerissas have beeneclipsed by wigs and spectacles. This is senseless tomfoolery; but howmake a wiseacre producer see that if he does not already know? And if,while Shylock stands with his knife ready and Antonio with his baredbreast, the wise young judge lifting a magical finger between them, wesit questioning Bellario’s law—why, no one concerned, actors oraudience, is for this fairyland, that is clear.

The Merchant of Venice is the simplest of plays, so longas we do not bedevil it with sophistries. Further, it is—for what itis!—as smoothly and completely successful, its means being as wellfitted to its ends, as anything Shakespeare wrote. He was happy in hischoice of the Portia story; his verse, which has lost glitter to gain amellower beauty and an easier flow, is now well attuned to such romance.The story of Shylock’s bond is good contrast and complement both; and hecan now project character upon the stage, uncompromising and complete.Yet this Shylock does not overwhelm the play, as at a later birth hemight well have done—it is a near thing, though! Lastly, Shakespeare isnow enough of the skilled playwright to be able to adjust and blend thetwo themes with fruitful economy.

The Construction of the Play

The Problem of “Double-Time”

This blending of the themes would, to a modern playwright, havebeen the main difficulty. The two stories do not naturally marchtogether. The forfeiture of the bond must be a matter of months;with time not only of the essence of the contrast, but of thedramatic effect. But the tale of the caskets cannot be enlarged,its substance is too fragile; and a very moderate charge ofemotion would explode its pretty hollowness altogether. Criticshave credited Shakespeare with nice calculation and amazing subtlety in hiscompassing of the time-difficulty. Daniel gives us one analysis,Halpin another, Eccles a third, and Furness finds the play asgood a peg for the famous Double Time theory as Wilson, itsinventor, found Othello. All very ingenious;but is the ingenuity Shakespeare’s or their own?¹ For himdramatic time was a naturally elastic affair. (It still is,though less so, for the modern playwright, whose half-hour actmay commonly suggest the passing of an hour or two; this also isDouble Time.) Shakespeare seems to think of it quite simply interms of effect, as he thought of dramatic space, moving hischaracters hither and thither without considering the compassingof yards or miles. The one freedom will imply and enhance theother. The dramatist working for the “realistic” stage mustsettle definitely where his characters are to be and keep themthere till he chooses to change the scenery. Shakespeare neednot; and, in fact, he never insists upon place at all, unless itsuits him to; and then only to the extent that suits him.² In this play,for instance, where we find Shylock and Antonio will be Venice,but whereabouts in Venice is usually no matter; when it is—atShylock’s door or in court before the Duke—it will be made clearenough to us. And where Portia is, is Belmont. He treatstime—and the more easily—with a like freedom, and a like aim.Three months suits for the bond; but once he has pouched themoney Bassanio must be off to Belmont, and his calendar, attunedto his mood, at once starts to run by hours only. The windserves, and he sails that very night, and there is no delay atBelmont. Portia would detain him some month or two before heventures; and what could be more convenient for a Shakespearebent on synchronizing the two stories? For that matter, he couldhave placed Belmont a few hundred miles off, and let the comingand going eke out the time. Did the problem as a whole ever evenoccur to him? If it did, he dismissed it as of no consequence.What he does is to set each story going according to its nature;then he punctuates them, so to speak, for effect. By the clockthey are not even consistent in themselves, far less with eachother. But we should pay just the sort of attention to thesemonths, days or hours that we do, in another connection, to thecommas and semicolons elucidating a sentence. They give us, andare meant to, simply a sense of time and itsexactions. It is the more easily done because our own sense oftime in daily life is far from consistent. Time flies when weare happy, and drags in anxiety, as poets never tire ofreminding us. Shakespeare’s own reflections on the phenomenonrun to half a column of the concordance, and he turns it quitenaturally to dramatic account.

The True Problem

How to blend two such disparate themes into a dramaticallyorganic whole; that was his real problem. The stories, linked inthe first scene, will, of themselves, soon part company.Shakespeare has to run them neck and neck till he is ready tojoin them again in the scene of the trial. But the difficulty isless that they will not match each other by the clock than thattheir whole gait so differs, their very nature. How is theflimsy theme of the caskets to be kept in countenance beside itsgrimly powerful rival? You cannot, as we said, elaborate thestory, or charge it with emotion; that would invite disaster.Imagine a Portia seriously alarmed by the prospect of an Aragonor a Morocco for husband. What sort of barrier, on the otherhand, would the caskets be to a flesh-and-blood hero and heroinefallen in love? Would a Romeo or Rosalind give a snap of thefinger for them? As it is, the very sight of Bassanio promptsPortia to rebellion; and Shakespeare can only allow his lovers afew lines of talk together, and that in company, dare only colorthe fairy-tale with a rhetorically passionate phrase or sobefore the choice is made and the caskets can be forgotten—asthey are!—altogether. Nor does anything in the play show theartist’s supreme tact in knowing what not to dobetter than this?

But you cannot neglect the Portia story either, or our interestin her may cool. Besides, this antiphony of high romance andrasping hate enhances the effect of both. A contrasting ofsubjects, scene by scene, is a trick (in no depreciatory sense)of Shakespeare’s earliest stagecraft, and he never lost hisliking for it.³ Then if the casket-theme cannot beneglected, but cannot be elaborated, it must somehow be drawnout, its peculiar character sustained, its interest husbandedwhile its consummation is delayed

Shakespeare goes straightforwardly enough to work. He puts justas little as may be into Portia’s first scene; but for the onesounding of Bassanio’s name there would be only the inevitabletale of the caskets told in tripping prose and the conventionaljoking upon the suitors. Portia and Nerissa, however, seen forthe first time in the flesh, give it sufficient life, and that‘Bassanio’ one vivid spark more. Later, in due course, comeMorocco’s choice of the gold casket and Aragon’s of the silver.We remark that Morocco is allotted two scenes instead of one.The reason is, probably, that Shakespeare has now enrichedhimself with the Lorenzo-Jessica story (not to mention theepisode of the Gobbos, father and son), and, with this extraweight in the Venetian scale of the action, is put to it tomaintain the balance. He could, of course, finish with bothMorocco and Aragon earlier and give Bassanio two scenes insteadof one.⁴ Andif a romantic hero could not well wait till after dinner to makehis choice, as Morocco does, Solanio’s arrival with the ill newsof Antonio could easily have been kept for the later scene. Butthis will not do either—most characteristically will not do forShakespeare. He has held his lovers apart, since the air of theBelmont of the caskets is too rarefied for flesh and blood tobreathe. And Portia herself has been spellbound; we have onlyhad jaunty little Nerissa to prophesy that love (by the piousprevision of the late lord) would somehow find out the way.⁵ But once hebrings them together Bassanio must break the spell. It is thestory of the sleeping beauty and the prince in another kind; alegitimate and traditional outcome. And once Shakespeare himselfhas broken free of the fairy tale and brought these two to life(for Bassanio as well has been till now a little bloodless) itis not in him to let them lapse from the scene unproved, and tothe full. The long restraint has left him impatient, and hemust, here and now, have his dramatic fling. We need notcredit—or discredit him, if you like—with much calculation ofthe problem. It was common prudence both to keep Belmont asconstantly in our view as Venice, and the emancipating Bassanioclear of it for as long as possible. And he is now in the middleof his play, rather past it, ready to link his two storiestogether again. He worked forthrightly; that is written plainover most of his work. Though he might now find that he had herematerial for two scenes, he would not return in his tracks,telescope Aragon and Morocco—and take, in fact, all the sort oftrouble we, who are his critics, must take to explain what amuch more compact job he could have made of it! Besides, here ishis chance to uplift the two as hero and heroine, and he willnot dissipate its effectiveness.

For Bassanio, as we said, has been till now only little lessbound than Portia in the fetters of a fairy tale; and later,Shylock and the bond will condemn him to protestinghelplessness, and the affair of the rings t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontmatter
• Frontmatter
• Contents
• General Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Play as Text
• Harley Granville-Barker, “The Merchant of Venice”
• John Middleton Murry, “Shakespeare’s Method: The Merchant of Venice”
• W.H. Auden, “Brothers & Others”
• A.D. Moody, “The Letter of the Law”
• Norman Rabkin, “Meaning and Shakespeare”
• A.R. Humphreys, “Style and Assessment”
• R.F. Hill, “‘The Merchant of Venice’ and the Pattern of Romantic Comedy”
• Alice N. Benston, “Portia, the Law, and the Tripartite Structure of The Merchant of Venice”
• Leonard Tennenhouse, “The Counterfeit Order of The Merchant of Venice”
• John Lyon, “Beginning in the Middle”
• Part 2: Shylock
• William Hazlitt, “The Merchant of Venice”
• E.E. Stoll, “Shylock”
• John Russell Brown, “The Realization of Shylock: A Theatrical Criticism”
• Bill Overton, “The Problem of Shylock”
• Part 3: The Play in the Theater
• Patrick J. Sullivan, “Strumpet Wind—The National Theatre’s Merchant of Venice”
• Sinead Cusack, “Portia in The Merchant of Venice”
• Paul Gaudet, “Lorenzo’s ‘Infidel’: The Staging of Difference in The Merchant of Venice”
• Bibliography