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Mode and Structure in The Merchant of Venice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas H. Fujimura
Thomas H. Fujimura*
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Honolulu
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Extract

Athough The Merchant of Venice ranks with Hamlet in theatrical popularity, it ranks low in critical esteem. A play that is difficult to classify, it is variously labeled tragi-comedy or romantic comedy; but neither label embraces nor harmonizes the seemingly disparate plots. Further, the plots are often condemned as preposterous and unrelated to life; and a fairly common view is that the play is a fairy tale: “There is no more reality in Shylock's bond and the Lord of Belmont's will than in Jack and the Beanstalk.” Critics adopting such a position find the chief merit of the play in its “flesh-and-blood characters” who triumph over the shortcomings of the story, with emphasis on Shylock, who is sometimes regarded as the protagonist. The approach to Shylock has been diverse, ranging from Stoll's notion of him as a comic butt in terms of Elizabethan conventions to the view that he is a tragic figure. Readers have shown a preoccupation with Shylock the Jew as scapegoat, stereotype, victim, or Elizabethan usurer; usually this interest has taken a realistic turn, with concern over questions of anti-Semitism and the legality of the trial.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 7 , December 1966 , pp. 499 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 See E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: A Survey (London, 1925), p. 111, for the designation of the play as tragi-comedy. For the romantic label, see Tyrone Guthrie, intro. to The Merchant of Venice, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1954), p. 16.

2 John Palmer, Comic Characters of Shakespeare (London, 1946), p. 64; Hazelton Spencer, The Art and Life of William Shakespeare (New York, 1940), p. 239.

3 Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton, 1946), i, 335; see also Palmer, p. 54.

4 Thomas Marc Parrott, Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949), p. 143; Granville-Barker, i, 335, 349.

5 Cf. Toby Lelyveld, Shylock on the Stage (London, 1961), p. 3; Norman T. Carrington, Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice (London, 1945), p. 10; C. B. Purdom, What Happens in Shakespeare (London, 1963), p. 95.

6 Elmer Edgar Stoll, “Shylock,” Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1927). Typical of the second view is the statement that Shylock is “that haunting figure that has grown steadily more tragic with the years”—Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago, 1951), p. 115; for similar views, see n. 49.

7 Samuel A. Tannenbaum, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: A Concise Bibliography (New York, 1941)—see sections on “Law and The Merchant of Venice,” pp. 49-54, and “Jews and The Merchant,” pp. 54-58. See also Gerald Friedlander, Shakespeare and the Jew (London, 1921); Hermann Sinsheimer, Shylock: The History of a Character or the Myth of the Jew (London, 1947).

8 G. B. Harrison, Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New York, 1948), p. 582. For the severest strictures on the artistry, characters, ethics of the play, see Tannenbaum, p. vii.

9 John Middleton Murry, Shakespeare (London, 1936), p. 192.

10 John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies (London, 1957), p. 74.

11 Cf. L. C. Knights, “On Some Contemporary Trends in Shakespeare Criticism and Other Preliminary Considerations,” Some Shakespearean Themes (London, 1959).

12 “The main structural unit is the casket plot …”—H. Spencer, p. 243. “The Bond story, not the tale of the caskets, is the backbone of The Merchant of Venice …”—H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy (London, 1938), p. 125.

13 J. R. Brown is most conscious of Shakespeare's use of contrast as a structural principle: “Shakespeare was constantly experimenting in order to find a comic form which would present several characters or groups of characters in relation and contrast with each other and which would conclude in a scene which brought these various elements into some stable relationship” (p. 43). But Brown emphasizes theme; he is not concerned with the use of contrast in dramatic modes.

14 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957), pp. 33-34.

15 J. R. Brown sums up some of the familiar “interpretations” of The Merchant of Venice: the play is about the contrast between appearance and reality, the contrast between love and usury, the conflict between love and hate, etc.—The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown (Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1955), pp. xlix-liii. It is an allegory “of Justice and Mercy, of the Old Law and the New”—Nevill Coghill, “The Governing Idea,” Shakespeare Quarterly (London, 1948), i, 9-17. “The central theme of the play … [is] that of Grace, the daughter of universal harmony, challenged by the blind letter of the Law …”—Henri Fluchère, Shakespeare and the Elizabethans (New York, 1956), pp. 191-192. The play “shows that friendship may have greater strength than love; that true love must be forgiving”—Hardin Craig, An Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1948), p. 117. “The Merchant of Venice … is ‘about’ judgment, redemption and mercy …”—Frank Kermode, “The Mature Comedies,” in Early Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 3 (New York, 1961), p. 224.

16 Northrop Frye, “New Directions from Old,” Fables of Identity (New York, 1963), p. 63.

17 The Merchant of Venice, ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson (Cambridge, Eng., 1926), pp. xxiv-xxv.

18 Helen P. Pettigrew, “Bassanio, the Elizabethan Lover,” PQ, xvi (1937), 305; Arthur Sewell, Character and Society in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1951), p. 42.

19 H. Spencer, p. 243.

20 Guthrie, intro. to The Merchant of Venice, ed. Harrison, p. 16.

21 Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Boston, 1958), p. 281.

22 See also iii.ii.240–241. The edition used is The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown (Arden) (London, 1955).

23 J. R. Brown discusses the image of love as a kind of wealth, in his chapter, “Love's Wealth and the Judgement of The Merchant of Venice,” in Shakespeare and His Comedies.

24 Charles Read Baskervill, “Bassanio as an Ideal Lover,” The Manly Anniversary Studies in Language and Literature (Chicago, 1928), pp. 90-103.

25 Bassanio is more than “pure instinct”; cf. Donald A. Stauffer, Shakespeare's World of Images (New York, 1949), p. 61. It is also unsound to say of him, “Of anything practical he is as innocent as a child. He is only full of the noblest impulses …”—George Gordon, Shakespearian Comedy (Oxford, 1944), p. 29. See Bassanio's business-like preparations for departure, his advice to Gratiano (ii.ii. 109–112, 171–180).

26 Cf. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Book iv, Ch. i.

27 The satirical element in her is a modal link with Shylock's world, which is in the ironic mode.

28 Cf. the noh drama of Japan.

29 “We may overlook the ring plot at the close, since apart from its joyous marital teasing, its sole wifely lesson to husbands might be the advice not to promise more than they can perform”—Stauffer, p. 63. Cf. also Charlton, p. 159; J. R. Brown, p. 69.

30 See Geoffrey Percival, Aristotle on Friendship (Cambridge, Eng., 1940); also St. Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle's Love and Friendship, tr. Pierre Conway (Providence, R.I., 1951).

31 Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 187-188.

32 Leo Kirschbaum, Character and Characterization in Shakespeare (Detroit, 1962), p. 10.

33 John Arthos, The Art of Shakespeare (New York, 1964), pp. 91-92.

34 See Lelyveld on the transformation of Shylock on the stage. Cf. John Russell Brown, “The Realization of Shylock: A Theatrical Criticism,” in Early Shakespeare, pp. 187-209.

35 For discussions of anti-Semitism, see Friedlander, p. 12; Stoll, pp. 275, 279; Lelyveld, p. 6; Charlton, p. 127; Sinsheimer, p. 87; John Dover Wilson, Shakespeare's Happy Comedies (London, 1962), pp. 112-113.

36 See Wilson, p. 114; Granville-Barker, p. 355; Palmer, p. 74.

37 Warren D. Smith, “Shakespeare's Shylock,” Shakespeare Quarterly, xv (1964), 193–199. See also Kirschbaum, pp. 8-9; Stoll, p. 289. Bernard Grebanier sees Shylock as primarily the usurer; see Ch. iii, The Truth About Shylock (New York, 1962).

38 Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 176.

39 Ibid,. p. 148.

40 See Oscar James Campbell, Comicall Salyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino, Calif., 1938); Shakespeare's Satire (London, 1943).

41 Cf. Nevill Coghill, “The Basis of Shakespearian Comedy,” Essays and Studies, 1950 (London, 1950), p. 1; Wilson, p. 33; Palmer, p. xiv.

42 Shakespeare makes Shylock “a genuine man, at any rate, of like passions with ourselves, so that we respond to every word of his fierce protest …”—Quiller-Couch, ed. The Merchant of Venice, p. xxviii. See also Parrott, p. 143; Craig, pp. 118-119; Arthos, p. 88; Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford, 1%0), p. 80.

43 Palmer, p. 79.

44 Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (Cambridge, Eng., 1943), p. 11.

45 Ruth Leila Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays, Univ. of Iowa Humanistic Studies, Vol. iii, No. 4 (Iowa City, 1927), p. 69.

46 The Poems of Sir John Davies (New York, 1941), p. 53.

47 Cf. Palmer, p. 68.

48 Gratiano's satiric function is usually misunderstood. “Gratiano's vulgar and repulsive Jew-baiting,” says Guthrie, intro. to The Merchant of Venice, ed. Harrison, p. 30.

49 The discussion of Shylock as a tragic figure is so voluminous that I shall cite only a few instances of this kind of interpretation. “This is a Shylock born of the old story, but transformed, and here a theme of high tragedy, of the one seemingly never-ending tragedy of the world”—Granville-Barker, p. 357. “There are … good reasons, I think, why we ought to regard Shylock as a tragic and not a comical figure …”— Wilson, p. 107. See also Palmer, p. xii; Lelyveld, p. 8; Sinsheimer, p. 144; Parrott, p. 140; Carrington, p. 9. For illuminating commentary on the Jew-villain as a comic figure, see Edgar Rosenberg, From Shylock to Svengali (Stanford, Calif., 1960), p. 35.

50 Excessive sympathy for Shylock is common. “To us, I think, he emerges as a more admirable man than Gratiano, and possibly than Lorenzo and Bassanio”—Guthrie, intro. to The Merchant of Venice, ed. Harrison, p. 17. “His fate is terrible …, and our hearts cannot help but be touched by his suffering”—Carrington, p. 12. See also Wilson, p. 106.

51 E. E. Stoll, see chapter on “Shylock.” His point of view is restated in H. Spencer, pp. 245-246. “Shylock is villain and hero and clown …”—John Hazel Smith, “Shylock: ‘Devil Incarnation’ or ‘Poor Man … Wronged‘?” JEGP, lx (1961), 5.

52 For Shylock as a killjoy figure, the comic antagonist to a civilized and gracious world based on the proper use of wealth, see C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959), Ch. vii. For some of the best comments on Shylock, see Charles Mitchell, “The Conscience of Venice: Shakespeare's Merchant,” JEGP, lxiii (1964), 214-225.

53 See the reference to Bassanio as a “constant man” by Portia (iii.ii.246).

54 Cf. Guthrie, p. 20; Quiller-Couch, p. xx; Parrott, p. 138; Israel Gollancz, Allegory and Mysticism in Shakespeare (London, 1931), p. 31. Jessica has been both censured and defended for the theft from her father. But in the ironic treatment of Shylock, laughter rather than sympathy is aroused by his loss.

55 Cf. Evans, p. 51; Samuel Asa Small, Shakespearean Character Interpolation: The Merchant of Venice (Gottingen, 1927), p. 116.

56 See ii.ii. 101–103. Perhaps there is significance in the fact that Shylock's name may derive from Shalack or Shelach, meaning cormorant (a gluttonous person as well as bird).

57 There is a tenuous link here between Launcelot and Morocco. See Mitchell, p. 223.

58 There is little point in arguing the morality of the forced conversion, since the play assumes only a Christian metaphysic.

59 Cf. Murry, p. 191; Granville-Barker, p. 351; Quiller-Couch, p. xxiii; Cumberland Clark, A Study of The Merchant of Venice (London, 1927), p. 122.

60 Cf. Evans, p. 57; Kirschbaum, p. 18.

61 The phrase is Murry's, p. 209.

62 Cf. Murry, p. 196; Chambers, p. 114; Wilson, p. 109; Carrington, p. 17.

63 Wilson, pp. 50, 94-95; Chambers, p. 117; Parrott, p. 139.

64 The melancholy is usually explained as premonition of impending disaster or simply as dramatic foreshadowing; see Small, p. 71; Chambers, p. 106; Murry, p. 210; Stopford A. Brooke, On Ten Plays of Shakespeare (London, 1905), p. 134.

65 He seems to anticipate the not-so-wise Jaques, and also to echo the poet of the sonnets; cf. Knights, pp. 50-51.

66 Perhaps it is significant that Tony (Antonio) means fool, and that Shylock calls Antonio a fool (iii.iii.2).