The Merchant of Venice – a problem play, with question marks

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his suffrence be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (III,1;49-61)

– Shylock tells Solanio and Salerio (two practically indistinguishable characters) at the beginning of Act III. This is one of the most often quoted passages¹⁵⁷ of The Merchant of Venice, a truly dramatic monologue, heavily laden with rhetorical questions, which give it an agitated, yet at the same time also a bitter, heavy, sorrowful, almost leaden ring. The reason for this leaden feature of the soliloquy is partly the predominance of the passive voice (fed, hurt, healed, warmed, etc.) and partly the fact that the ‘stimulus and response’-pairs (prick-bleed; tickle-laugh; poison-die) put irresistible, almost automatic reactions on display, with a heavy emphasis on human defencelessness. This defencelessness is given a twist in the pair

‘wrong’ and ‘revenge’: ‘revenge’ is the only truly active verb in the whole sequence but because of the analogous syntactic patterns which have preceded it, it is presented as a human response which is just as ‘normal’ or “natural“ as laughter or death. It is on this ‘normalcy’

and ‘natural quality’ that the legitimacy of revenge is based, the analogous syntactic patterns, now mostly in the form of conditional rhetorical questions, implying a kind of equality between Jews and Christians, as if they were weighed against each other in the respective two pans of a carefully balanced pair of scales and the pointer of this scale were the very word

‘if’. Finally, Shylock puts more weight on his revenge in the form of the verb “better’, which carries the old adjectival comparative degree in itself.

However, even the initial equality is anchored, from the beginning of the monologue, not in identity but in likeness and resemblance and, thus, paradoxically, in difference, too. In weighing, one may establish quantitative equality between lots of substances (e.g. between gold, lead, silver, or even human flesh), yet this by no means implies that the substances in question would necessarily be the same in any other respect than this single quantitative one.

In observing human behaviour, one may read the same bodily reactions (bleeding, laughing, dying) as originating in organs which are at least generically the same, but it is precisely the hiddenness of the “inner’, one of the indices of our separatedness, which will allow for the possibility that we might be wrong: the same result will not automatically guarantee the same origin. Both you and I may well share Shylock's inventory – eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, etc. – , we may both be exposed to the same internal and external circumstances – to pain, illness, heat, cold, etc. – yet, on the one hand, how can I know whether your eyes really perceive things as mine (since your eyes are, ultimately, yours and mine are mine), how can you ever know if what I feel is truly pain or not (since you can never feel my pain) and how can we know, on the other hand, whether the other, with all his or her “normal outward reactions on display’ is really and truly a human being inside, too, and not, for example, an automation, cleverly disguised as a human being?

I neither claim that these would be the only questions of The Merchant of Venice, nor that there are answers to all of them in it. These questions rather invoke, to a certain degree, the context in which Stanley Cavell deals with the play in a brief but highly challenging section of his famous The Claim of Reason, a context I would wish to share with him to some extent in what follows below. As the first instance of this shared context, I wish to claim that the measure and the extent of quantitative and qualitative sameness, difference, resemblance and, thus, personal identity are central themes of the play, as also symbolised by the “balance’

(IV,1;250) Shylock has ready to hand in the trial scene. I will further claim that sameness and difference, identification and separatedness are subject to constant and, more importantly, to

157 E.g. Stanley Cavell, who briefly but very originally deals with The Merchant of Venice in his The Claim of Reason. Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) quotes the passage in full (p. 478), and so does Sarah Kofman in her psychoanalytic study of the play: ‘Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Sign of Saturn’ (Transl. by Shaun Whiteside, In: Literary Theory Today. Peter Colier and Helga Geyer-Ryan eds., London: Polity Press, 1992, pp. 142-166), p. 161. Cavell makes it a starting point, Kofman a kind of conclusion. As it will become clear below, I am heavily indebted to both analyses.

115

shockingly and even humiliatingly public interpretations and reinterpretations, thematising choice more than in any other Shakespeare-play; “O me, the word 'choose'!’ – Portia exclaims as early as in her first longer monologue of the drama but “hazard’ (cf. II,7;11; II,9;16 and 20;

III, 2;2) or “lottery’ (cf. I,2;25; II,1;15) – as they also like to call it – does not only involve the three caskets and their internal difference from, or resemblance to, Portia but, for example, Bassanio's identification with Antonio or Portia, or the sameness and the difference between Shylock and Antonio – the other “outsider’ – too. Even further, I would like to claim that the interpretations and reinterpretations go along three basic attitudes to meaning, and that the three fundamental semantic strategies the main characters follow might be correlated with three “magic objects’ of the play: the casket, the ring and the bond, respectively, each implying the semantic attitude in question by its very nature, and thus, to some extent,

‘carrying’ this attitude “in itself’, too. I am more than aware that this three-fold division sounds a bit too neat and that it does not, by any means, “exhaust’ the “meaning’ of The Merchant of Venice. Yet I hope they will prove to be at least a convenient starting point.

As regards meaning, I, as a first step, would like to return to Shylock's monologue for a moment. It is in no way surprising that it is Shylock, the “stranger’, the “alien’, in his overall deprivation and humility, who is brought to the point where he simply has to give an inventory of the most basic human functions, capabilities and means in order to establish some bond between Christians and himself. One might read his list (eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, etc.) as one that is going through the prerequisites of meaning, the “stage setting’ before the act of signification, the necessary, though not necessarily the sufficient conditions of being able to make sense. Yet it is remarkable that the word means occurs in this central monologue, too (“healed by the same means’), a word which in another context is connected with the very word meaning as early as the first scene in which we hear Shylock speak, the connection amounting to a pun through their proximity:

My meaning in saying [Antonio] is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition (I,3;13-15)

Indeed, in The Merchant of Venice, means ('method', 'instrument', 'money') is often taken to be the prerequisite of coming into a position to make and interpret somebody else's meaning: Bassanio's borrowed means will enable him to take his stand in front of Portia's caskets; for him means mean the possibility to mean at all and he will confess to her that he has “engaged’ himself “to a dear friend, / Engaged [his] friend to his [his friend's] mere enemy, / To feed [his] means’ (III,2; 260-263). Bassanio lives, exists by Antonio's means, which was offered to him, in the 136th line of the drama, with the following words:

...be assured

My purse, my person, my extremest means Lie all unlocked to your occasions. [I,1;135-137]

Yet the play works inversely, too: the successful choice of the meaning of Portia's father does not only mean choosing Portia¹⁵⁸ but gaining her (seemingly infinite) wealth (means), too, and the right or wrong interpretation, the coming into the actual possession of meaning and, thus, the possibility of its manipulation will literally create and undo human existence:

having chosen the right casket, Bassanio could in principle pay “he petty debt’ (III, 2;306) to Shylock, and Portia, having gained meaning in Act IV can deprive “the Jew’ – in his very interpretation – of his life / When [she does] take the means whereby [he] live[s]“ (IV,1; 371-372). Finally, means is even identified with meaning, i.e. words are interpreted as instruments by Antonio, when, in the trial scene, he tries to convince the others about the futility of the venture to “alter’ (IV,1;257) Shylock:

158 Cf. Nerissa's words to Portia: ‘...who chooses his [Portia's father's] meaning chooses you [Portia]’ (I,2;27).

You may as well do anything most hard

As seek to soften that – than which what's harder? – His Jewish heart. Therefore I do beseech you,

Make no more offers, use no farther means. (IV,1; 77-80)

Means means meaning and meaning means means in the play: the question is where a character imagines means to be in order to gain meaning, and vice versa.

The first possibility crystallises around Portia's three caskets. Here the required procedure Portia's father blessed or cursed his daughter and her suitors with, models one of our most fundamental – and perhaps most common – hermeneutical practices: because meaning is hidden, because it is inside, we have to find it, to unlock it, to poke it out by staring from the outside, where we are initially positioned, and what we are given are signs, readable (decipherable) on the surface of the very things calling for interpretation. Thus the objects (the caskets) are not “dead’ in the traditional sense of the word; they do give a

“shining’, they even “talk’ in a certain way, their “openings’, their “mouths“ being partly the conventional words they bear as inscriptions (a sentence, a label on each), and partly the traditional associations going with the respective metals – gold, silver and lead – they are made of. Thus, within a traditional system, the six signs – i.e. the three labels and the three metals – form a small system, where each member will have to be interpreted both vertically and horizontally: the inscription and the metal will be compared along the paradigmatic (vertical) axis and the inscription-and-the-metal (the caskets themselves), put side by side, will create the syntagmatic (horizontal) axis. The choice itself will be nothing else but stopping at one of the items along the syntagmatic axis but the speciality of this particular system is that here the success or the failure of interpretation is literally encoded in the object itself: inside there are further signs (“schedules” (II,9;54), “scrolls” (II, 8;64; III,2;129),

“pictures” [II,7;11], “forms” ['images', II,7;61], “portraits” [II,9;53], “counterfeits” [III,2;115]

and ‘shadows’ [III,2; 127, 128]) which will not only let the choice-maker explicitly know if has picked the right casket or not but will also instruct him as regards the reasons for his good or bad selection. Thus this semantic system is – at least at first sight – is an ultimately happy one: there is a correct interpretation, so the decoder is not sent along the 'endless chain of signifiers' because there is a terminal, ‘an unlessoned girl’ (III,2;459) with a house and servants. To what extent Portia is decipherable herself and what lessons she really holds in store is another question. But, after the correct choice, the referential link from the inside of the leaden casket to the real woman is easy to find: it is ensured by the close resemblance of her portrait and herself.¹⁵⁹

Thus, as regards the three caskets, the richness of interpretation depends on how far one ventures to go along the horizontal and the vertical axes. What the suitors say during their hermeneutical quests may already count as lessons in interpretation.. The point, of course is, that their choice will qualify them: they will find as much as they have brought, they will recognise themselves both in the outside and the inside of the caskets. Yet this is far from simple, precisely because here one has to guess somebody's (Portia's, Portia's father's) specific meaning, which has been placed into the caskets earlier and which cannot be altered in the hermeneutical process itself: the interpreter may ultimately have no influence with his signifiers on the signified. Each casket gives a response but there is no dialogue; a casket is more like an automat rather than the model of the secret of a human being. Thus, although there is only a single correct meaning, there is no such thing as a single correct interpretative strategy either logically, or morally, or even ontologically. Who could tell, for example, whether it is any ‘better’ (more justifiable, more ethical, more revealing, etc.) to see an

159 The close resemblance between Portia's ‘counterfeit’ and her face is underscored by Bassanio several times:

‘What demi-god / Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, / Seem they in motion?’ (III,2;115-118).

117

inscription as being in harmony or in conflict with the traditional interpretations of the metal it is attached to? Does the outer conceal, or does it already communicate the inner? It can, of course, do both. Gold goes with the words ‘gain’, with ‘many’ and with ‘desire’: ‘'Who chooses me shall gain what many men desire’ (II,7;5)¹⁶⁰. Silver carries ‘get’, ‘much’ and

‘deserve’: ‘Who chooses me shall get as much as he deserves’ (II,7;7). It is only lead whose inscription does not promise anything to the choice-maker in exchange but rather puts a heavy demand on him: ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’ (II,7;9). The key-words here are ‘give’, ‘hazard’ and ‘all’. Should one therefore immediately dismiss gold on the grounds that countable many and uncountable, yet still quantifying much are less ‘valuable’

than the infinity of all? But many will only mean the ‘common spirits’ and ‘the barbarous multitudes’ (II,9;31-32) for Aragon; he, the aristocrat wishes to emphasise individual dignity, bought by one's personal merit, irrespective of his origins (‘How much low peasantry would then be gleaned / From the true seed of honour’ [II,9;45-46]). Is that wrong? And if it is, in what sense? Only in the sense of Portia's father? For the Prince of Morocco ‘many’ means precisely 'all': ‘Why, that's the lady! All the world desires her.’ (II,7;38). Or should we blame the Prince of Morocco for choosing gold because he should know that it is the object of greed and, thus, of strife and destruction, as it is – perhaps – encoded in the word ‘gain’? One may even point out that he, whose very entering speech warns against mixing up outward appearance and internal value – the blackness of his complexion and the redness of his blood¹⁶¹ – should not be misled by the ‘glistening’ (cf. II,8;65) substance. But gold is also the traditional colour of the sun, of the source of life and it is precisely this ‘spiritual’ sense which gives it the Platonic value.

A source of light and radiance, it is a symbol of fertility, and [...] it is associated with the ram, the emblem of generative potency. The golden fleece is the insignium of the master and of initiation.¹⁶²

– Sarah Kofman writes in her highly learned essay ‘Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Sign of Saturn’. One could even argue that Morocco, the perfect and polite gentleman, chooses gold not only because he is the ‘neighbour’ and the ‘near bred’ of the sun (cf. II,1;3) (‘A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross’ [II,8;20]) but because for him the traditional evaluation of his skin versus his blood is only acknowledged but not approved of:

he chooses gold precisely because he believes that things are really what they are when they are of the same substance through and through and where there is no alienation between what is inside and outside. Kofman even points out that gold, silver and lead, in the alchemist interpretation of Shakespeare's time, are far from excluding one another:

The alchemists, in particular Paracelsus, are actually aware of this: lead is the water of all metals; anyone aware of its content would swiftly have abandoned all other materials to work with lead alone, for white lead implies the possibility of transmuting the properties of one body into that of another and the general properties of matter into the quality of the mind. Lead symbolizes the most humble base from which a transforming evolution can emerge. By means of the transmutation of lead into gold, the alchemists sought symbolically to escape individual limitations in order to attain collective and universal values. A 'binding agent' between all metals, it is also – and this is its other face – the symbol of unshakeable individuality, and is therefore linked to Saturn, the god of separation whose scythe cuts through all bonds, all ties. Lead, like Saturn, is therefore the condition both of all connection, transformation, creation, and of all mortal separation,

160 I give the locus according to the first occurrence of the inscriptions – they are quoted several times.

161 Cf. Morocco's entrance: ‘Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadowed livery of the burnished sun, / To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. / Bring me the fairest creature northward born, / Where Phoebus fire scarce thaws the icicles, / And let us make incision for your love / To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine’ (II,1; 1-7).

162 Kofman, op. cit., p. 151.

division and dissociation. Choosing lead therefore means, as the phrase on the casket says, choosing to 'give and hazard all [one] hath', for it means opting for the choice that involves the risk of catastrophic death, while the choice of gold – or of silver – for anyone who misrecognizes their profound kinship with lead, is an illusionary choice of incorruptibility, a refusal of risk and hence of choice.¹⁶³

Kofman goes a long way along the line of the line of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes: while reading Freud's seminal essay entitled ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’ (1913), she allows not only for an alchemy of metals but for the alchemy of words, too. Freud remarks that there is something forced in Bassanio's speech with which he chooses lead instead of gold or silver; indeed Bassanio never confronts the inscriptions of the metals, at least not publicly and instead of his reading them out we hear a song in which the three first lines rhyme on lead (bred, head, nourished). Further, the third inscription says ‘Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath’ – but what does B. have? All his means, as we pointed out, are from Antonio. So is there a hazard at all? Yes, Antonio's (but not B's !) heart but

Kofman goes a long way along the line of the line of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes: while reading Freud's seminal essay entitled ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’ (1913), she allows not only for an alchemy of metals but for the alchemy of words, too. Freud remarks that there is something forced in Bassanio's speech with which he chooses lead instead of gold or silver; indeed Bassanio never confronts the inscriptions of the metals, at least not publicly and instead of his reading them out we hear a song in which the three first lines rhyme on lead (bred, head, nourished). Further, the third inscription says ‘Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath’ – but what does B. have? All his means, as we pointed out, are from Antonio. So is there a hazard at all? Yes, Antonio's (but not B's !) heart but