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Wisdom as Touchstone in The Merchant of Venice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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In distinguishing between character and role in Shakespeare’s plays, Peter Ure once wrote:
It is often because we are made aware of the gap, not the consonance, between the man and the office that the situation becomes profound and exciting, and permits rich inferences about what the hero’s inward self is like.
Few critics spoke with greater conviction about the “inward self’ of the Shakespearean protagonist, but it is with the outward selves of the protagonists of The Merchant of Venice that we shall be concerned in what follows. It is at least arguable that the somewhat confused state of debate about this play is owing to the resolute concentration of attention upon the “inward selves” of Portia, Antonio, and Shylock, and to the too-easy assumptions that are made about the nature and importance of their roles. To suggest that the fabric of meaning in The Merchant of Venice depends absolutely upon the identification of roles in the terms in which Shakespeare conceived them is not to underestimate the interest and importance of the ways in which character regularly pulls against role, for what Peter Ure said is perhaps more true of this play than of many. This, nevertheless, is a truth which can be apprehended only if the conception of role is properly appreciated; if it is not appreciated, neither is the nature or purpose of the tension Peter Ure was attempting to define.
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- Copyright © 1983 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Peter Ure, “Character and Role from Richard III to Hamlet”, in Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies V (1963); p 10.Google Scholar The essay is reprinted in the collection, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1974).
2 Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge (1935), is very helpful on borrowed phraseology, less so on the more pervasive influence of thought. His findings suggest that Shakespeare was specially familiar with Ecclesiasticus, and this view is supported by Peter Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background (1973); p 87 et passim.
3 Ecclus. 35: 19: “Oh, how faire a thing is mercie in the time of anguishe and trouble! It is like a cloude of raine, that cometh in the time of a drought.” This is noted by Noble (p 167), and he notes two further possible echoes from Ecclesiasticus, 2:21Google Scholar(at IV.i.193‐7), and 28:2‐5 (at IV.i. 200‐202).
4 All quotations are from the Genevan Bible of 1560, but with spelling modernised. It is generally agreed that Shakespeare either possessed or had access to a copy of the Genevan‐Tomson in the 1595 edition. This was a binding of the Genevan OT with Lawrence Tomson's revision (1576) of the NT. (See Noble, pp 58‐89).
5 Useful surveys of current thinking in this rapidly expanding field of biblical scholarship may be found in James L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction (1981), and Gerald T. Sheppard, Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct (1980).
6 All references are to the Complete Works, edited by Peter Alexander (1951).
7 For ease and brevity, references in this section are given in brackets.
8 J. R. Brown, in his Arden edition of the play (rep. 1961), speaks of Shakespeare employing the language of commerce for the exchanges between Portia and Bassanio “Consciously or unconsciously” (Introduction, p lvi). It seems to me a fully conscious adoption of a usage he must have long been familiar with in Proverbs. He employs it also in Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.82–4.Google Scholar
9 Cross‐references are given in brackets where they appear to be either necessary or helpful.
10 This verse provides one of only two echoes of Proverbs Noble found in The Merchant of Venice (at III.ii.88‐9). The other is even more doubtful – a distant echo of Proverbs 17: 28 (at I.i.95‐7), where in fact the whole exchange (picked up again at II.ii. 165ff.) is based on Ecclesiasticus 20: 1–8.Google Scholar
11 There seems to be some play upon Old Gobbo's myopia too. He is “gravel‐blind” (a Shakespearean coinage), but – perhaps anticipating Gloucester's seeing blindness in King Lear– he seems like Bassanio in being able to make value‐judgments confirming that “golde is but a little grauel in respect of” Wisdom (Wisdom, 7: 9).Google Scholar
12 The fact that Wisdom is not in the Jewish canon of scripture (assuming that Shakespeare knew this) is of much less importance here than the fact that it reflects specifically Jewish thinking.
13 Noble, p 96.
14 He notes only three echoes of Ecclesiasticus (see Note 3 above), only two very doubtful echoes of Proverbs (see Note 10 above), and none at all from Wisdom.
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