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Rice University
Poetry, Law, and the Pursuit of Perfection: Portia's Role in The
Merchant of VeniceAuthor(s): Monica J. HamillSource: Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 18, No. 2, Elizabethan and
JacobeanDrama (Spring, 1978), pp. 229-243Published by: Rice
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SEL, 18 (1978) ISSN 0039-3657
Poetry, Law, and the Pursuit of Perfection: Portia's Role in The
Merchant of Venice
M O NI CA J. HA MILL
The Renaissance assumed an intimate relationship between poetry
and law: the ancient poets, the found- ers of civilized society,
were praised as the first legislators among men; the Renaissance
poet, who endeavored tp move imperfect men to "as high a
perfection" as they were capable of,' felt that his labors
complemented those of the lawmaker. In The Merchant of Venice,
Portia's efforts to lead characters to their "true perfec- tion"
(V.i.108)2 are realized through the course of her own devel- opment
as poet-lawmaker. In the lottery episodes, the trial-scene, and the
ring-play, Portia's uses of poetic language and fictions are
inextricable from her upholding and interpreting law. The happy
endings of all three actions, and of the play itself, depend on
Portia's submitting herself to her father's will in the lottery,
upholding Venetian civil law at the trial, and maintaining and
clarifying the ring-bond in the final scene of the play.
It is necessary to stress the feeling of Shakespeare's own time
for the vital connection between poetry and law because modern
critics have too often failed to perceive this relationship.
Northrop Frye, for instance, postulates an antithesis between
comedy and moral law: "In comedy the moral norm is not morality but
deliverance. . . The moral norm does not carry with it the vision
of a free society."3 Critics who share Frye's assumption have been
unable to reconcile Portia's legal maneuvering as Balthazar with
her actions as the lady of Belmont. Comedy "is always asking
amnesty, after showing the moral machinery of life getting in the
way of life," C. L. Barber writes. "The machinery as such need not
be dismissed-Portia is very emphatic about not doing that. But
social solidarity, resting on the buoyant force of a collective
life that transcends particular mistakes, can set the
'Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, Elizabethan
Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (London, 1959), I, 160.
2All quotations from the play are from the New Arden edition,
ed. John Russell Brown (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1966).
3Northrop Frye, "The Argument of Comedy," English Institute
Essays (1949), rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed.
Leonard F. Dean (New York, 1957), p. 87.
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230 THE MER CHA N T OF VENICE
machinery aside."4 But Portia's triumph over Shylock refutes
Barber's argument: far from suggesting that society's moral and
legal machinery might be set aside, Portia vindicates Venice's
foundation on law by using the law itself to redeem Antonio.
After the trial, music inspires two conversations about
imperfec- tion and perfection that should be considered in an
assessment of all of Portia's actions. Lorenzo, speaking to Jessica
about the music of the spheres, observes that so long as "this
muddy vesture of decay" closes in the soul, men cannot hear that
immortal harmony (V.i.63 ff.). On hearing the music made by
Portia's musicians, he praises the power that terrestrial music has
over its listeners: "therefore the poet/ Did feign that Orpheus
drew trees, stones, and floods," he muses, "Since naught so
stockish, hard, and full of rage,/ But music for the time doth
change his nature" (79-82). When Portia hears the music, she is
moved to meditate on the relativity of earthly perfection: "Nothing
is good (I see) without respect,-/ Methinks it [the music] sounds
much sweeter than by day" (V.i.99-100). Men's glimpses of
perfection are fortu- itous and circumstantial: "The crow doth sing
as sweetly as the lark/ When neither is attended" (102-103). But it
is precisely through such contingencies, Portia recognizes, that
"true perfec- tion" may be realized: "How many things by season,
season'd are/ To their right praise, and true perfection"
(107-108).
Portia's belief that flawed creatures can, in some sense,
fulfill their yearnings for perfection was shared by the
pre-eminent theologian of the time, Richard Hooker, and its
foremost defender of poetry, Sir Philip Sidney. Hooker might be
said to argue a theory of virtual perfectibility in his Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity. Although absolute perfection cannot be
realized on earth, he reasoned, all creatures possess an unlimited
capacity for increased perfection: in all things, there is "an
appetite or desire, whereby they incline to something which they
may be," he wrote; "and when they are it, they shall be perfecter
than now they are.... And because there is not in the world
anything whereby another may not some way be made the perfecter,
therefore all things that are, are good."5 Sidney also maintained
that humanity could
4C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic
Form and its Relation to Social Custom (1959; rpt. Princteton,
1972), p. 186.
5Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Works,
ed. John Keble, 7th ed., rev. by R. W. Church and F. Paget (1888;
rpt. New York, 1970), I, 215.
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M O NI CA J. HA M IL L 231
become "perfecter," and argued that the poet was uniquely
empowered to move men to that end by his art of delightful
teaching: above all other earthly means, he wrote in his Apologie
for Poetrie, poetry is able "to lead and draw vs to as high a
perfection as our degenerate soules, made worse by theyr clayey
lodgings, can be capable of."6
In the dialectic between imperfection and perfection, both the
priest and the poet assumed that the inherently flawed nature of
men required that civilized society be founded on law. Because some
men are evil and all men are inclined towards sin, Hooker reasoned,
laws are necessary, and they are only perfect insofar as they are
framed to deal with the worst actions that men are capable of:
"unless presuming man to be in regard of his de- praved mind little
better than a wild beast, they [civil laws] do accordingly
notwithstanding so to frame his actions, that they be no hindrance
unto the common good for which societies are instituted: unless
they do this, they are not perfect. Hooker's views of man and
society were shared by the Renaissance apolo- gists for poetry, who
claimed that the first body of civil laws was created by the first
poets, Orpheus and Amphion. Because the ancient poets "were aged
and graue men, and of much experience in th'affaires of the world,"
George Puttenham wrote, "they were the first lawmakers to the
people, and the first polititens, deuising all expedient meanes for
th'establishment of Common wealth, to hold and containe the people
in order and duety by force and vertue of good and wholesome lawes,
made for the preseruation of the publique peace and
tranquillitie."8 In his translation of Hor- ace's de Arte Poetica,
Thomas Lodge celebrated Orpheus and Amphion as lawmakers who drove
"the sauage men from wo[o]ds,/ And made them liue aright"; in their
creation of the first civilized society, Orpheus and Amphion
allayed the strife among men, made the gods known to them, and
taught them the law of marriage.9
Portia follows in the footsteps of the archetypal poet-
lawmakers. Although she certainly fails in the attempt to convert
the "savage," Shylock, to belief in a spiritual realm, she does
allay the strife that he creates and even forces him "to live
aright" -to
6Sidney, Elizabethan Critical Essays, I, 160. 7Hooker, Works. I,
240. 8George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, Elizabethan
Critical Essays, II,
7-8. 9Thomas Lodge, Defence of Poetry, Elizabethan Critical
Essays, I, 74.
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232 THE MER CHA N T O F VENI CE
outward conformity of behavior. In her final action, the
ring-play, Portia leads the more civilized characters to amend
their flaws: using her ring-fiction to teach the laws of love, she
enables herself to exorcise her own jealousy and allows Antonio to
transform his attempt to possess Bassanio into a gesture that
expresses love's ideal generosity. If absolute perfection remains
elusive in the end, Portia has moved the various characters to
successful pursuit of that "right praise, and true perfection"
realizable by men.
II
Antonio represents perhaps Portia's greatest challenge. Anto-
nio's sadness suggests a potentially dangerous likeness to Shylock.
Shylock is one "that hath no music in himself" (V.i.83), and his
ineradicable sobriety leads him to a joyless end. Antonio is spared
a miserable destiny because his sadness proves to be a temporary,
amendable aberration of temperament.
Although Antonio himself cannot fathom the source of his
melancholy, it is apparent even in I.i. that he is sad because
Bassanio is about to leave him for his new love. Just as Shylock
craves to possess the objects that he values, Antonio becomes
increasingly desperate to possess the friend whom he loves. His
unconscious jealousy of Portia is most painfully apparent at the
trial, when his death seems imminent. Antonio resigns himself to
his death because he foresees that his sacrifice will forever cast
Portia's love for Bassanio into the shadow of his own greater love.
"Commend me to your honourable wife," he instructs Bassanio,
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 the
judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
(IV.i.269-273)
Antonio's attempt to possess Bassanio proceeds from both men's
initial misconceptions about love. When Antonio rouses himself in
I.i. to ask Bassanio "what lady is the same/ To whom you swore a
secret pilgrimage" (119-120), his question implies the cause of his
sadness, but nothing more. In the friends' ensuing conversation, it
is Bassanio who articulates the imperfect notions of love that will
implicate both men in Antonio's near-tragedy.
Bassanio invites Antonio to think of his "pilgrimage" in terms
of "all my plots and purposes/ How to get clear of all the debts
I
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M O NI CA J. HA M ILL 233
owe" (I.i.133-134). When his first attempt to couch his plea for
more money leaves Antonio bewildered by his request for an "arrow,"
Bassanio proceeds to create an elaborate comparison between his
pilgrimage and Jason's quest for the golden fleece, and then hints
that he needs Antonio to finance his undertaking. Bassanio's
ambiguous language suggests that he is unable to reconcile his
disparate conceptions of his quest as a pilgrimage and as a
commercial venture. He clearly intends his image of Portia as the
golden fleece and his description of his suit to her as Jason's
quest as idealizations of his love. But he also imagines that his
own worth will be measured by his "means," which leads him to
define his quest as a mercantile enterprise:
0 my Antonio, had I but the means To hold a rival place with one
of them ["many Jasons":
suitors] I have a mind presages me such thrift That I should
questionless be fortunate.
(I i 173-176) Later in the play, when Bassanio finally wins his
lady, Portia
herself will fashion the language of money and commerce into
decorous metaphors that define the ideals of love. By then, how-
ever, Bassanio's initial desperation for "means" will have led to
Antonio's bondage to Shylock. However unwittingly, Bassanio makes
Antonio feel compelled to buy his friendship at the cost of his
principles ("Shylock, albeit I neither lend nor borrow [I.iii.56
ff.]) and, very nearly, at the cost of his life. All-absorbed in
his love for Portia, he is insensitive to Antonio's need to prove
his own love. His feeble protest comes too late ("You shall not
seal such a bond for me" [I.iii.150]), for Antonio readily assents
to Shylock's proposal that he pledge a pound of his flesh as the
forfeit for the money Bassanio needs. Antonio's plight, then, is
the pathetic consequence of the flaws and blindness that are rooted
in the very intensity with which each of the two men pursues his
love.
III
Portia's first scene (I.ii.) immediately follows Bassanio's
ideal- ized description of Belmont and its lady. Although the
atmos- phere of Belmont is surely more rarefied than that of
Venice, Belmont is a location that actually heightens our sense of
men's situation in an imperfect world. The vagaries of destiny, the
constraints of law, and the inevitability of human error are
all
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234 THE M ER CHA N T OF VENICE
illustrated in the principal action that takes place at Belmont,
the casket-lottery.
The lottery operates like destiny itself. Its apparent force is
to subject both Portia and her suitors to chance, overriding
Portia's presumable ability to choose her own husband and her
suitors' ability to deserve love through acts of heroism: "O me the
word 'choose'! I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I
dislike . . . is it not hard Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor
refuse none?" (I.ii.22-23; 25-26). Morocco also complains:
But alas the while! If Hercules and Lichas play at dice Which is
the better man, the greater throw May turn by fortune from the
weaker hand.
(II.i.3 1-34)
By consenting to participate in the lottery, Portia obeys her
father's will. Like the Venetian law that will appear to allow
Shylock the pound of flesh, the lottery is an apparently cruel
mechanism that actually constitutes a benevolent bondage: Por-
tia's father devised the lottery to ensure that she would be won by
a worthy suitor-one whom "you shall rightly love," Nerissa reas-
sures her (I.ii.32). But the device is also an arbitrary stay
against "madness the youth" (I.ii. 19): in this sense it is the
despotic imposition of the dead father's will over "the will of a
living daughter" (I.ii.24). Vexed at this constraint, Portia
dispels her anxiety over the lottery by mocking Bassanio's
imagination of the "many Jasons" who come to woo her. She
caricatures her suitors, and speaks of them as a parade of wooden
men who pester her with their quest: "Whiles we shut the gate upon
one wooer, another knocks at the door" (I.ii.127-128).
Portia is a better poet than Bassanio. Having mocked his legend
of "many Jasons," she shows her own more discriminating use of
heroic metaphor in the climactic episode of the casket-plot, where
Bassanio makes his choice. Comparing Bassanio to Hercules, Portia
stages his deliberation over the caskets as an heroic action:
Now he goes With no less presence, but with much more love Than
young Alcides, when he did redeem The virgin tribute, paid by
howling Troy To the sea-monster. . ..
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M O NI CA J. HA MILL 235
. . .go Hercules! Live thou, I live-with much much more dismay,
I view the fight, than thou that mak'st the fray.
(III.ii.53-57; 60-62)
In his discussion of Renaissance interpretations of the myths of
Hercules, Hallett Smith points out that all of the legends were
thought to illustrate moral heroism; according to the mythog-
rapher Natalis Comes, for instance, "the stories about Hercules
serve to encourage the strenuous life, and Hercules himself repre-
sents nothing other than that virtue and strength of mind which
casts out all vices and conquers all voluptuous desires."'0
Portia's imagination of Bassanio's choice as an Herculean feat"
empha- sizes that the heroic lover need not undertake literally
dangerous exploits; as the inscription on the lead casket implies,
love's heroism is a metaphor that expresses the lover's willingness
to "give and hazard all he hath" (II.ix.21).
Like Morocco and Arragon, Bassanio moralizes the inscription on
the gold and silver caskets. He wins the lottery not because he is
a better moralist than the other suitors, but because he does not
try to rationalize the choice of lead: "Thy paleness moves me more
than eloquence,/ And here choose I" (III.ii.106-107). Its
inscription, he realizes, "rather threaten'st than dost promise
aught" (III.ii.105). The lottery is designed not to elicit
precepts, but to test dispositions; by accepting the risks and the
challenge demanded by the lead casket, Bassanio shows his
disposition to true heroism.
Morocco's and Arragon's reflections on the gold and silver
caskets' inscriptions are similar to Bassanio's, and they do not
suggest that the two men are essentially unworthy suitors.'2 They
choose wrongly because, like Bassanio, they fail to recognize
the
'0Hallett Smith, Elizabethan Poetry: A Study in Conventions,
Meanings, and Expression (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 295.
"Smith, pp. 293-299, points out that the Renaissance's favorite
legend about Hercules was the story of Hercules' Choice, "a legend
in which the hero is shown deliberately choosing the kind of life
he will lead" (p. 293); Hercules' decision to follow the path of
Virtue rather than that of Pleasure signified, among other things,
his conquest of the temptations of the flesh. Although Portia does
not refer to this legend, perhaps many members of Shakespeare's
audience would have been inevitably reminded of it.
I2See Thomas Fujimura, "Mode and Structure in The Merchant of
Venice," PMLA, 81 (1966), who argues that Morocco, like Shylock, is
a "materialistic creature" who is taken with false values (p. 506)
and that Arragon's flaw, like Antonio's, is hubris (p. 510).
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236 THE ME R CHANT OF VEN ICE
paradoxical character of these inscriptions. As Portia realizes,
Morocco and Arragon are "deliberate fools! when they do choose,/
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose" (II.ix.80-81). Morocco
is not wrong to describe Portia as a "mortal breathing saint" whose
worth is symbolized by gold (II.vii.40 ff.). But his idealistic
rationalization denies what the substitute for Portia's portrait,
the Death's-head, expresses: the fact of mortality. All men and
women, even Portia, will lie in "the obscure grave" (II.vii.51).
Nor does Arragon fail because he dares to "assume desert"
(II.ix.51); love, itself, presupposes this. But the portrait of the
blinking idiot warns that men must also recognize their limita-
tions: "Seven times tried that judgment is,/ That never did choose
amiss" (II.ix.64-65).
Antonio's ensnarement by Shylock is announced at exactly the
moment when heroic metaphor appears to have come literally true:
"We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece," Gratiano declares
jubilantly (III.ii.240). "I would you had won the fleece that he
[Antonio] hath lost," Salerio replies (241): reality pain- fully
impinges on the lovely fiction of the heroes' completion of their
quest. Portia can meet this challenge because she has used heroic
myths poetically, as ideal truths-in Sidney's words- "either better
than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite a newe, formes such as neuer
were in Nature."'3 The happy instances when men's fantasies of love
and happiness do come true cannot annihilate the wickedness and
suffering that inevitably shadow human joy. The moments when the
ideal becomes real are necessarily fleeting, and are the more
precious for that reason.
IV Antonio's plight moves both Bassanio and Portia to show
their
mettle. When he learns of his friend's imminent death, Bassanio
immediately recognizes that this tragedy is the consequence of his
own actions. "I have engag'd myself to a dear friend," he con-
fesses to Portia, "Engag'd my friend to his mere enemy/ To feed my
means" (III.ii.260-262).
When Bassanio sets off for Venice, he carries with him Portia's
promise to provide however much gold Shylock might demand for
Antonio's ransom: "Double six thousand [ducats], and then treble
that," she tells Bassanio, "Before a friend of this descrip- tion/
Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault" (III.ii.299-301).
13Sidney, Elizabethan Critical Essays, I, 156.
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M O NI CA J. HA MILL 237
More than simply a generous gesture, Portia's pledge justifies
her use of monetary metaphors to define the nature of love. For
instance, when Bassanio playfully claims her as his lottery-prize
("I come by note to give, and to receive" [III.ii.140]), Portia
transforms his fiscal imagery into language that expresses the
lover's desire to perfect herself into a gift that transcends the
powers of reckoning:'4 "for you," she tells Bassanio, "I would be
trebled twenty times myself,"
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich,
That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues,
beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account.
(III.ii. 152-157)
After Bassanio has left her to go to Antonio, Portia uses
similar language to show that her love for Bassanio embraces
Antonio too. Since Bassanio is her soul, she reasons, Antonio, his
bosom lover, is the semblance of her soul (III.iv. 16 ff.). Her
offer to ransom Antonio is the seal that ratifies this union of
lovers and friends: "How little is the cost I have bestowed,"
Portia concludes, "In purchasing the semblance of my soul/ From out
the state of hellish cruelty!" (19-21).
v
The ideal of love's inclusiveness that lies behind Portia's
offer to ransom Antonio will inform her ring-play, where she will
enable Antonio to save himself from his notion of love's posses-
siveness. But neither love nor gold can save Antonio from Shy-
lock's "hellish cruelty." Portia denies Shylock's claim to the
pound of flesh by answering the villain's own demands for "merely
justice" (IV.i.335); by her strict interpretation of the law,
Portia not only redeems Antonio from his bondage to Shylock but
also vindicates Venice's bondage to law.
Our understanding of the symbolic dimensions of the conflict
between Portia and Shylock is indebted to those who have exam- ined
the medieval paradigm that lies behind the trial-scene, the debate
between Justice and Mercy over the issue of man's salva-
'4See C. L. Barber's illuminating discussion of the play in
terms of "the conflict between the mechanisms of wealth and the
masterful, social use of it," Shake- speare's Festive Comedy, pp.
166-167.
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238 THE MER CHA N T O F VENI CE
tion.5 In most medieval versions of the Heavenly Parliament,
Justice and Mercy are divine beings who personify God's own
"characteristics." One kind of comic exploitation of the paradigm
was the variation known as the Processus Belial,16 where Satan and
the Virgin supplied the roles of Justice and Mercy. As E. E. Stoll
pointed out many years ago, Shylock, too, is a devil-figure who
travesties Justice.17 His demand that Antonio pay the forfeit of
his bond creates a tragic impasse: if the law allows Shylock to
take the pound of flesh, the court must award it, for the Duke
cannot deny the course of justice. "If you deny me, fie upon your
law!" Shylock gloats. "There is no force in the decrees of Venice:/
I stand for judgment" (IV.i.101-103).
A knowledge of the Heavenly Parliament enhances our under-
standing of Antonio's role. It is Antonio who plays the part of
humanum genus: mankind, whose inherent lack of righteousness
precludes his right to salvation. Traditionally, the debate between
Justice and Mercy was resolved by Christ's Atonement: the God-
man's sacrifice of himself discharged man's debt to Justice, and so
brought about the reconciliation of Justice and Mercy. The es-
sence of Antonio's Christ-likeness, his willingness to sacrifice
himself to pay Bassanio's debt, is a measure of his own flawed
'5Hope Traver, The Four Daughters of God (Philadelphia, 1907),
discussed the literary history of the paradigm; Samuel Chew, The
Virtues Reconciled: An Iconographic Study (Toronto, 1947) traced
its iconographic history. Later critics have used these studies to
interpret the trial scene, and even the play in its entirety,
allegorically. Although a critical discussion of the various
allegorical schemes is beyond the scope of this article, it is
perhaps sufficient to note that the most sensitive allegorists have
tempered their readings of the symbolic antitheses be- tween
Christian and Jewish, Mercy and Justice, Love and Law, by their
recogni- tion of the rich interplay between the symbolic and the
human that finally makes the characters irreducible to "figures."
E.g., Barbara Lewalski, "Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The
Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Quarterly, 13 (1962), emphasizes
that Shakespeare "is fully as interested in the way in which
allegorical dimensions enrich the particular instance as in the use
of the particular to point to higher levels of meaning" (p. 328).
In a more recent essay, "Launcelot and the Uses of Allegory in The
Merchant of Venice," SEL, 14 (1974), Rene' Fortin suggests that
Shakespeare has counterpointed one allegorical scheme with another
to show the coexistence of Love and Law: "The Merchant of Venice
suggests that, despite the truth contained in its naive allegory of
love, men can expect only relative perfection in a world far too
complex for naive allegory to be given full credit" (p. 270).
'6The most extensive study of the Processus Belial is Hope
Traver's "The Four Daughters of God: A Mirror of Changing
Doctrine," PMLA, 40 (1925), 44-92. Its applicability to The
Merchant of Venice was first suggested by John D. Rea, "Shylock and
the Processus Belial," Philological Quarterly, 8 (1929),
311-313.
"7E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1927), p. 319.
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M O NI CA J. HA MILL 239
humanity.'8 His situation is the more pitiable because he,
himself, recognizes his inability to supply the part of Christ, the
Sacrificial Lamb. His acknowledgment of his "tainted" condition is
a cry of despair: "I am a tainted wether of the flock,/ Meetest for
death" (IV.i.114-115). But it is Shylock who provides the most
pathetic definition of Antonio's role. His prostitution of Justice
makes Antonio's martyrdom a perverse travesty of Christ's saving
act: the flawed Antonio's sacrifice of himself satisfies not the
demands of divine Justice, but Shylock's savage desire to feed upon
the Chris- tian.
Bassanio's fear lest malice bear down truth (IV.i.210) is an
anguished protest against the curse that Venice's bondage to law
appears to have laid on its citizens. But Portia comes to the
courtroom armed with the legal acumen needed to vindicate the law
should Shylock persist in his travesty of Justice. She disguises
herself not as a figure of Mercy, but as Balthazar, a doctor of
laws; she has prepared for her role by seeking the advice of
Bellario, a real jurist. Portia's demands for mercy are a
deviation- presumably-from Bellario's directives. In her speech on
"The quality of mercy" (IV.i.180 ff.), Portia perfects her own role
as Justice and affords Shylock one last chance to transform the
courtroom's travesty of the debate between Justice and Mercy into a
positive imitation of the Heavenly Parliament. Mercy is "an
attribute to God himself," she explains, "And earthly power doth
then show likest God's/ When mercy seasons justice" (191-193). It
is as an imperfect human being, rather than as divine Mercy, that
Portia speaks of salvation. She includes herself among the flawed
men and women whose own need for God's mercy inspires their charity
towards one another: "we do pray for mercy," she points out, "And
that same prayer doth teach us all to render/ The deeds of mercy"
(196-198).
But Antonio is not saved through the pleading of Mercy. When
Shylock maintains his own righteousness-"My deeds upon my head! I
crave the law" (IV.i.202)-Portia redeems Antonio by awarding
Shylock the strict justice he has demanded: should he
'8Allegorists tend to interpret Antonio as a Christ-figure who
is only incidentally flawed (see, e.g., Lewalski, pp. 331, 333,
339). I feel that this reading reverses Shakespeare's emphases.
Essentally, Antonio fails to carry Christ's role because it is a
humanly impossible burden; by having Antonio's longing to make a
Christ- like sacrifice of himself express his yearning for human
love, Shakespeare exploits, and makes more poignant, the inherent
human inadequacy that limits Antonio just as it would limit any
man.
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240 THE ME R CHA N T OF VENICE
shed one drop of Antonio's blood or cut more or less than
exactly one pound of flesh, she explains, he must forfeit his life
and goods.'9 In her arguments for mercy, Portia had suggested law's
spiritual function of showing to all men their inherent lack of
righteousness, for "in the course of justice, none of us/ Should
see salvation" (IV.i.195-196); by preventing Shylock from claiming
the pound of flesh, she shows that law is also necessary to
constrain those evil-doers who will not acknowledge the spiritual
realm.
Having had Justice itself dictate Shylock's defeat, Portia un-
earths a statute that allows her to renew her appeal for Mercy.
Should an alien seek the life of a Venetian citizen, she explains,
Venetian law directs that half his goods be awarded to the injured
party and that his life lies at the mercy of the Duke. The Duke and
Antonio are confronted with a choice: Portia prompts for mercy;
Gratiano, for revenge.
Por. [To Shy.] Down therefore, and beg mercy of the duke.
Gra. Beg that thou may'st have leave to hang thyself.
(IV.i.359-360)
Por. What mercy can you render him Antonio? Gra. A halter
gratis, nothing else for Godsakel
(IV.i.374-375)
Allowing Shylock his life, the Duke shows Venice's liberation
from the apparent curse of its bondage to law by using his
obligation to enforce the statute as a chance to show mercy to the
offender. The mercy Antonio renders signifies that his release from
the role of martyr frees him to discover more tenable kinds of
self-sacrifice; by directing that his half of Shylock's goods be
held in trust for Lorenzo and Jessica, he shows that he is capable
of genuinely disinterested generosity.
Critical debate about the quality of the Christians' mercy has
focused on Shylock's forced baptism. Assessments range from Allan
Holaday's denunciation of Antonio's "stupidity" in "forc- ing upon
the embittered Jew an empty label"20 to John Cooper's apology that
Shylock's baptism would have seemed an "altogether
'9See E. J. Tucker's excellent discussion of Portia's
application of the law in light of Elizabethan Common Law
principles of equity, "The Letter of the Law in The Merchant of
Venice," Shakespeare Survey, 29 (1976), 93-101.
20Allan Holaday, "Antonio and the Allegory of Salvation,"
Shakespeare Studies, 4 (1969), 113.
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MO NI CA J. HA MI L L 241
kindly conversion" to Shakespeare's audience because it
liberates him from the dilemma of the Old Law.2' Shylock, himself,
im- plies that his "Christianity" will be an empty label. He is not
interested in saving his soul, but submits to baptism only in order
to save his wealth, "the means whereby I live" (IV.i.373). The
Duke's and Antonio's treatment of Shylock shows their essential
goodness, but the quality of their mercy is conditioned by the
nature of its recipient. Mercy cannot annihilate the existence of
evil, nor transform the characters of obdurate men: Shylock can be
forced to submit to the external rite of baptism, but cannot be
compelled to his own salvation. At the end of Act IV, the repro-
bate is abandoned to his own misery, and our attention now focuses
on Portia's effort to save the Christian community of friends and
lovers from their own Shylockean tendencies.
VI In her final action, the ring-play, Portia completes her
labors as
poet-lawmaker. Throughout the play, she has practiced her arts
of true perfection within the constraints imposed by law, destiny,
and human imperfections. Her ring-play forces its participants to
act out their aspirations to love within a plot that embodies these
constraints. The ring-bond itself represents law. The intricacies
of the plot, capped by the announcement that three of Antonio's
ships have safely landed, suggest the fortuitous course that
destiny charts for each man. Most importantly, Portia designs her
own role to actualize, and then to exorcise, a Shylockean
conception of love.22
Portia's role is a calculated posture of jealousy and hard-
heartedness; her assumption of these qualities reflects men's inev-
itable tendency to define love in terms of possession and exclu-
sion. Antonio's possessiveness towards Bassanio persists even after
the trial; it is evident in his plea that Bassanio surrender
Portia's ring to Balthazar, when he urges that his love, together
with Balthazar's deservings, "Be valued 'gainst your wife's
commande-
2"John Cooper, "Shylock's Humanity," Shakespeare Quarterly, 21
(1970), 121. 22Richard Horwich, "Riddle and Dilemma in The Merchant
of Venice," SEL, 17
(1977), 191-200, proposes that the ring-play be seen as Portia's
symbolic restoration to herself of the control over her destiny
that had been seemingly denied her by the casket-lottery. Although
this reading is convincing, Horwich's failure to consider the
ring-drama as a complex action invested with multiple symbolic
dimensions reduces Portia's rich device to merely a cruel game
wherein she prolongs her bafflement and rejection of Bassanio
simply in order to assert her own "power of choice."
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242 THE MER CHA N T OF VENICE
ment" (IV.i.447). Portia herself created the dilemma that
prompts Antonio's plea: arguing that "if your wife be not a
mad-woman," she "would not hold out enemy for ever/ For giving it
to me" (IV.i.441; 443-444), Balthazar demanded the ring as payment
for redeeming Antonio. Bassanio's surrender of the ring
precipitates the quarrel that is played out in the ring-drama. By
playing the role of "mad-woman," Portia admits her own inclinations
to- wards jealousy and possessiveness; allowing herself to channel
these impulses constructively, she exorcises them by acting them
out in her fiction.
Portia designs her role to vindicate the ideals of love she had
articulated in III.iii. and III.iv. Reconciling herself with
Bassanio at Antonio's pledge of himself as surety for his friend,
she stages her conversion from "mad-woman" to conciliated wife as
the resolution of the latent conflict between Antonio and herself.
Among the critics who have discussed this conflict, only John
Hurrell has understood that Portia is essentially "no rival but a
sharer in Bassanio's love, one whose claims are of such a different
sort that he [Antonio] has nothing to fear from her."23 But
Hurrell's statement that the revelation of Portia's part in the
trial is responsible for Antonio's final acceptance of his friend's
mar- riage is based on a misreading of the play.24 Portia does not
reveal her disguise until after Antonio has made his pledge. It is
Portia's own pretense of rivalry with Balthazar that affords
Antonio the chance to exorcise the possessiveness of his love for
Bassanio and his feelings of rivalry with Portia: seizing the
opportunity, Anto- nio makes his pledge.
Recalling his pledge of his body to Shylock, Antonio offers his
soul as surety for Bassanio's marital fidelity:
I once did lend my body for his wealth, Which but for him that
had your husband's ring Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound
again, My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord Will never more
break faith advisedly.
(V.i.249-253)
23John Hurrell, "Love and Friendship in The Merchant of Venice,"
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 4 (1961), 340. Other
critics who discuss the conflict interpret the ring-play as
Portia's final triumph over Antonio: see Robert Hapgood, "Portia
and The Merchant of Venice: The Gentle Bond," Modern Language
Quarterly, 28 (1967), 28-29; Lawrence Hyman, "The Rival Lovers in
The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Quarterly, 21 (1970),
112-115.
24Hurrell, pp. 339-340.
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M O NI CA J. HA M IL L 243
Antonio's pledge of his soul is an obviously symbolic gesture,
one that transforms his willingness to sacrifice himself for his
friend from an attempt to possess Bassanio into a gesture that
realizes love's ideal generosity. In response, Portia stages the
turn-about of her assumed character: "you shall be his surety," she
tells Anto- nio, "give him this [ring],/ And bid him keep it better
than the other" (254-255). By having Antonio present the ring to
Bassanio, Portia widens the significance of the ring-metaphor:
transmitted to the husband by the friend, the ring becomes a gift
that ratifies the ideal of love's inclusiveness.
If the ring acquires a new symbolic dimension, it retains its
initial significance. It symbolizes, first of all, the
marriage-bond, a contract that stipulates the possessiveness of
love. Accordingly, Portia creates the last knot in her series of
tangled paradoxes to show the obvious point at which love's
possessiveness displaces its generosity: at Bassanio's exclamation
that this new ring is the same he gave Balthazar, Portia swears
that the doctor lay with her. Nerissa's repetition of the jest
draws a gross rebuke from her husband. "Why this is like the
mending of highways/ In summer where the ways are fair enough!"
Gratiano rails. "What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv'd it?"
(V.i.263-265). Disgusted that the women have fallen prematurely
into a common pattern of love's betrayal, Gratiano implies that
vows of fidelity are the merely idealistic promises of young
lovers. Bassiano's very silence sug- gests his own more lofty
idealism. Having experienced love as the realization of his ideals,
he is overwhelmed by Portia's confession that she has betrayed
their vows; as Portia implies, he is too "amaz'd" to speak (266).
At this point, Portia acquits herself and Nerissa and resolves all
of the seemingly inextricable paradoxes of her ring-plot by
confessing her part at the trial: "Portia was the doctor . . ."
(269 ff.).
In the same speech, Portia tells Antonio that three of his ships
have come to harbor. The fortuitous return of his riches, which
Portia announces as if it were a recompense for his willingness to
sacrifice them, removes the last vestige of Antonio's role as mar-
tyr. "I am dumb!" (279), he responds to Portia's news, his earlier
sadness displaced by an astonishment that declares a very surfeit
of happiness. His life and living returned to him, Antonio can
resume his pursuits as a merchant of Venice-but as one who is far
happier and wiser in the ways of love.
Charleston Higher Education Consortium Charleston, South
Carolina
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Article Contentsp. [229]p. 230p. 231p. 232p. 233p. 234p. 235p.
236p. 237p. 238p. 239p. 240p. 241p. 242p. 243
Issue Table of ContentsStudies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1978), pp.
201-418Front MatterThe Original Ending of The Taming of the Shrew:
A Reconsideration [pp. 201-215]The "Perspective Glass" in
Shakespeare's Richard II [pp. 217-228]Poetry, Law, and the Pursuit
of Perfection: Portia's Role in The Merchant of Venice [pp.
229-243]Ambivalence in the Player's Speech in Hamlet [pp.
245-256]Transcendence Denied: The Failure of Role Assumption in
Troilus and Cressida [pp. 257-274]Shakespeare's Octavius and
Elizabethan Roman History [pp. 275-287]"As We Are Mock'd with Art":
From Scorn to Transfiguration [pp. 289-305]Interpreting The
Winter's Tale [pp. 307-329]The Wax Figures in The Duchess of Malfi
[pp. 331-339]"Wits Most Accomplished Senate": The Audience of the
Caroline Private Theaters [pp. 341-360]Recent Studies in
Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama [pp. 361-418]