Is The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitic?

[Danik 2016]

I still have to look up Portia's speech "How all the other passions fleet to air"( I didn't understand why it has to be ignored only because Bassanio's speeches are longer.

[stanley2]

Sorry about a lack of clarity in #500. I meant to note that the speech has not been noted prior to the other day here. Jealousy is also a subject in the scene just before the court scene: "I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you thus get my wife into corners"(MV3.5.29-30). "Rash-embraced despair"(MV3.2.109), I should think, might recall the first conversation in the play. One might suggest that Portia's "How all the other passions" speech brings together such things as Hawkman and Charles D.'s disagreement in posts #50-53 here. It is reasonable to suggest that one passion motivating Shylock is jealousy. This is suggested in a speech from Launcelot earlier: "Adieu! Tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew! If a Christian do not play the knave and get thee, I am much deceived"(MV2.3.10-12). Some editors,as we have seen, substitute "did" for "do."

[Danik 2016]

Interesting, Stanley. Launcelot seems to like Jessica indeed. But in the case of Shylock I would rather suggest envy ( of the greater freedom of the Christians) than jealousy.

[stanley2]

Well done Danik! One might recall Professor Leggatt's comment for the Folger edition, that various comments are "allowed" by the text. The author's use of the word "or" also comes to mind: "What said my man when my betossed soul / Did not attend him as we rode? I think / He told me Paris should have married Juliet. / Said he not so? Or did I dream it so? / Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet / To think it was so?"(ROMEO AND JULIET5.3.76-81). Eminent scholar J. Dover Wilson wrote that MV was written near the time of R&J and that it is interesting to compare the two.

[stanley2]

Portia's "How all the other passions"(MV3.2.110) speech is found right after Bassanio makes his choice. Portia is quite relieved, one might say. We then have the question of whether the casket test was a good idea. In the first two scenes of the play we learn that Portia and Bassanio are fond of one another. Was Portia's father, then, like Egeus in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Shylock in MV lacking in enthusiasm? Yet another difficult question I think. That the phrase "green-eyed jealousy" follows hard on Bassanio's choice, I think, strongly suggests that this passion is the most important one regarding Shylock's motivation.

[stanley2]

The last four of the seven lines in Portia's response to Bassanio's choice(3.2) follow: " O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy, / In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess! / I feel too much thy blessing. Make it less, / For fear I surfeit"(MV3.2.114-117). We find an echo in the first lines of TWELFTH NIGHT: "If music be the food of love, play on! / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die." Most editors include the word "aside" in brackets before Portia's speech, which begins with the word "How." These last two points are the same as in Shylock's "How like a fawning publican"
speech(MV1.3.41-52).

[stanley2]

For the series SHAKESPEARE IN PRODUCTION, Professor Edelman wrote of Portia's "How all the other passions speech:" "Deborah Findley[who played Portia in 1987] remembers this speech as 'a wonderful moment when time stands still, a moment of sheer joy quietly expressed before the great cheer from the household on..........'fair Portia's counterfeit.'" Little wonder, then, that scholars tend to pass over the "fluff of the love story" as Hawkman put it here. They focus more on such plays as TROILUS AND CRESSIDA following such comments for students on TROILUS as Parrott's "All in all a strange and mystifying play." It's their job to try to demystify stuff.

[stanley2]

Professor Parrott's textbook for students was written in the 1930's. There we find: "yet there are at least four fully realized characters, life-like enough for actors to differ in their impersonations and critics in their comments from Shakespeare's day to ours." To Hawkman's list(Shylock, Portia and Antonio) here we must add Bassanio to make Parrott's four.

[Danik 2016]

I agree with you and Hawkman´s three first characters. As for Bassanio, I think that he is much more standard and less realized than the other three.

[stanley2]

I think Marchette Chute would subtract Antonio from the list too. The last essay in the 2002 anthology put together by the Mahons is about the history of Portia onstage. There we find a quote from a 1953 review: "Most Portias are content to turn the tables on Shylock with the triumphantly detached air of a schoolmistress telling the bad boy of his class that he is not going to get away with his nonsense this time. Miss Ashcroft is much too indignant for this to content her. She hurries across and interposes herself, bodily, arms outstretched, between the Jew's knife and the Merchant's breast." I'm not sure but perhaps the idea that Bassanio is already between Shylock and Antonio at that juncture came about after reading that note. It's as if the actress is showing the actor playing Bassanio how to play the part.

[stanley2]

When we learn that Nerissa, dressed like a Lawyer's Clerk, has arrived at the court, Bassanio says: "Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet! / The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all / Ere thou shall lose for me one drop of blood"(MV4.1.111-113). Therefore, it is reasonable to think that when Portia says "Tarry a little; there is something else"(4.1.303), Bassanio is standing between Shylock and Antonio. Thus it is clear that the author has in mind the death of Marlowe and the life and death of Sir Phillip Sidney.

[stanley2]

And the conclusion of The Odyssey is plainly on Shakespeare's mind as well(see Fitzgerald's translation). In the first scene we have Salerio's "Your mind is tossing on the ocean, / There where your argosies with portly sail"(MV1.1.8-9). I think it is clear that the author links other characters with Odysseus too.

[stanley2]

The late professor Harold Bloom wrote that the play is endlessly ironic. Perhaps, then, Professor Parrott, writing in the 1930's was right after all by suggesting that Antonio's sadness is due simply to Bassanio's impending marriage. Antonio would rather the two of them hike the Appalachian Trail. Portia's "Fie, what a question's that; / If thou wert near a lewd interpreter"(MV3.4.79-80), is then Shakespeare's reply to both Danik's and my own comments regarding the matter. On the other hand, perhaps John Gross was responding to both Harold Bloom and E.E. Stoll and Bloom's "ironic" comment was his reply to Gross: "Personally, I think it is absurd to suppose that there is a direct line of descent from Antonio to Hitler, or from Portia to the SS, but that is because I do not believe that the Holocaust was in any way inevitable." I don't have Gross' work in front of me, but I think I'm in the ballpark.

[stanley2]

My2cents, back on page 2, wrote: There's an element of scapegoating(Antonio vis-a-vis Shylock) which legitimizes the antisemitism claim, but that would be grossly simplifying Shakespeare's complex art." Again, I've found it helpful to note the line from KING LEAR, "This is not altogether fool, my lord"(LEAR,1.4.148).

[Danik 2016]

Answer to# 513
I didn't read Gross and I don't remember anything about an Appalachian Trail. But the confusion about the rings and other signs show Portia and Antônio clearly competing for the love of Bassanio. The whole stratagem of the rings serves for Portia to ascertain her claim simultaneously as Bassanio's wife and the lawyer who freed Antônio from his deadly sentence.

[stanley2]

"And that's true too"(KING LEAR5.2.12).

[stanley2]

Writer Bill Bryson wrote A WALK IN THE WOODS, a book about the Appalachian Trail. He was asked to write a short book about Shakespeare and it is a fine one. Shakespeare's first great success, I think, was the narrative poem VENUS AND ADONIS, published in 1593, the year of Marlowe's death. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that Antonio might want company on his next hunting trip to avoid the fate that Marlowe and Adonis each suffered.

[stanley2]

And in TWELFTH NIGHT, the sea-captain Antonio has rescued Sebastian, Viola's twin brother at sea. And again the character named Antonio may be homosexual. It is interesting to compare the final scene in the later comedy to MV. For example, Olivia asks: "Who has done this, Sir Andrew?" Sir Andrew responds: "The count's gentleman, one Cesario; we took him for a coward, but he's the very devil incardinate"(TN5.1.172-4). Andrew was the name of a famous ship mentioned in MV and the clown in MV presents another odd spelling conundrum, "incarnation"(MV2.2.23).

[stanley2]

Or to follow through, the clown Lancelet says: " Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation"(MV2.2.26).

[stanley2]

And in his introduction to TN, Professor Parrott wrote: "Sir Andrew, is surely the most perfect and complete picture of a fool that Shakespeare ever drew." Marchette Chute wrote of the same character: ""a limp and well-intentioned knight who knows he is a fool but keeps hoping in a vague way that perhaps he isn't." It is Olivia who prompts Sir Andrew's comment(post #518) and it is she who marries the "very devil incardinate," Sebastian. At least I think that's what happens. I'll have to check again.

[stanley2]

So we have yet another puzzle. Why did Shakespeare echo the clown Lancelot(see post #519) in the last scene of TN? As we have seen, we find in the first scene of AS YOU LIKE IT that the author combines part of the first line in MV with a disturbing line from Shylock.

[stanley2]

Professor Parrott may have intended to recall the much noted speech in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: "Methought I was---and methought I had---but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had"(MND4.1.209-10). Bate and Rasmussen gloss "patched" to mean "i.e. wearing a fool's multicolored costume." Early in in TN, Sir Toby says to Sir Andrew: "Pourquoi, my dear knight?(TN1.3.82). "What is pourquoi?" is his reply. This might recall Juliet's "What's Montague?"(R&J2.2.39) and Flute's "What is Thisbe? A wand'ring knight?(MND1.2.38). And one might return to Lorenzo's "O dear discretion, how his words are suited! The fool hath planted in his memory / An army of good words; and I do know / A many fools, that stand in better place, / Garnished like him, that for a tricksy word / Defy the matter"(MV3.5.62-7).

[stanley2]

One might note Sebastian's "If thou dar'st tempt me further, draw thy sword"(TN4.1.43). Doing so might recall Romeo's "Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man"(R&J5.3.59). In TN, it seems that Feste, the professional fool, has alerted Olivia who arrives to break up the fight.

[stanley2]

In Act four, scene 2 of TWELFTH NIGHT, the professional fool is giving Malvolio a hard time: "Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog"(TN4.2.40-3). Editors gloss this last part: "darkness cast over Egypt by Moses, Cf EXODUS 10:21." The author may also have in mind the first paragraph of the GOSPEL OF JOHN and the prologue of Marlowe's the JEW OF MALTA: "I count religion but a childish toy / And hold there is no sin but ignorance," noted by Professor Bate. More certain is the echo of R&J above (post #523). It is helpful to note that the early play ends tragically and the later play ends happily. One might recall again Portia's "Tarry a little, there is something else"(MV4.1.313). And all these Biblical allusions make it difficult to argue that the author is rejecting any religion.

[stanley2]

We should thank Professor David Nicol who wrote the comments for the CliffsComplete edition published in 2000. He concludes his notes on the court scene as follows: "Although Antonio is saved and Shylock has been punished, a new cloud has arisen: An awkward conflict between the two loves of Bassanio's life." Whether he had in mind Sonnet 144 and it's "Two loves" or not, Portia's "I never did repent for doing good.........Which makes me think that this Antonio, / Being the bosom lover of lord / Must needs be like my lord"(MV3.4), suggests that Antonio may also have "two loves."

[stanley2]

We also find in TWELFTH NIGHT: "Antonio, O my dear Antonio! / How have the hours racked and tortured me / Since I have lost thee!"(TN5.1.214-216). One might wonder if the printer played the comedian here. At any rate, the author still has MV in mind 3 or 4 years later when writing TN.

[Danik 2016]

And another Antonio is apostropheid.

[stanley2]

"You have too courtly a wit for me, I'll rest"(AS YOU LIKE IT3.2.67).

[stanley2]

And therefore, given that Antonio and Orsino each begin their respective plays, each has the same difficulty. That is, "the perplexities of love," as Professor Bate suggested. This quotation is a much noted comment from a contemporary of Shakespeare.

[stanley2]

And therefore Shylock's "The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, / Snail slow in profit, and he sleeps by day / More than the wildcat"(MV2.45-47), links Shylock with Nick Bottom in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM(see post #522).

[stanley2]

Another contestant for the title most perfect and complete fool in a Shaxberd text is Romeo's man Balthazar. He's the one who must hear Romeo say "The time and my intents are savage-wild, / More fierce and more inexorable far / Than empty tigers or the roaring sea"(ROM5.3.37-9). Perhaps because Balthazar is one of a very few parts in Shakespeare that I can imagine myself playing onstage, I noticed Antonio's lines "You may as well go stand upon the beach / And bid the main flood bate his usual height, / You may as well use question with the wolf"(MV4.1.71-3).

[stanley2]

And one might note that Balthazar, or Balthasar, is the name of a servant of Portia and the young Doctor of Rome(MV4.1.153). On the cover of the Annotated Shakespeare edition we read that "on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations."

[stanley2]

Professor Raffel, for his 2006 introduction, quoted John Gross: "Nothing can alter the fact that, seen through the eyes of the other characters, Shylock is a deeply threatening figure, and the threat he poses is of a peculiarly primitive kind." His point is, in part, that as Charles D. and Hawkman pointed out here in this thread, that folklore is an important matter in the play. Also important is Scripture. In ancient Scripture, adultery is a serious crime and was a serious matter regarding the life and death of Queen Elizabeth's mother. In the scene right before the Court scene, Lorenzo says "I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Lancelet, if you thus get my wife into corners"(MV3.5.22-3). "Green-eyed jealousy"(MV3.2.112) may then be a passion driving Shylock.

[stanley2]

Professor Kenneth Gross also noted Philip Roth's 1993 novel where a character quotes part of Shylock's first line. "[The character's] diatribe is something of a blind, however, being intended mainly to draw the narrator(Roth himself) into a secret plot." Therefore, one might argue that the character botches the quote(see post #471 here) because he has something else on his mind. And Danik seems to agree with Marchette Chute's 1956 comment on MV: "the fascination of his two chief characters is so strong that no audience can resist them. They are Portia the heiress and Shylock the moneylender, and between them they create an extraordinary play."

[stanley2]

Another question is whether the author had in mind translations of DEUTERONOMY 6.4 when he wrote the monologue in Act 2, scene 2: "The fiend is at mine elbow, and tempts me, saying to me, 'Iobbe, Lancelot Iobbe, good Lancelot,' or 'good Iobbe,' or 'good Lancelot Iobbe, use your legs, take the start, run away.' My conscience says, 'No, take heed honest Lancelot, take heed honest Iobbe,' or as aforesaid 'honest Lancelot Iobbe, do not run, scorn running with thy heels'"(MV2.2.2-7). While Professor Drakakis preferred "Giobbe," and tells us that the word is the Italianate form of Job, John Andrews wrote: "It is not clear whether the Quarto spelling is meant to differentiate Iobbe from Gobbo(line 35) or to suggest an equivalence. 'I' appears where modern 'J' occurs in words like Justice and Jew." We read that the Scriptural passage is important in Judaism.

[stanley2]

And thus as Charles D. suggested(see post #117), the above Biblical allusion is of a piece with much else in the play. Antonio's sadness, Shylock's motives, Portia's courtroom strategy and so forth are all matters for further discussion and as Professor Leggatt noted, various comments are "allowed" by the play.