The Merchant of Venice 3

1
The Merchant of Venice 3

• The interlocking plots and how they mean

2
The two sides of the play and their relation to
one another

• The tragedy of Shylock is one side, one that
  cannot, should not be downplayed.
• But the comedy of Portia and Bassanio is the
  other.
• The comedy rests in both casket plot and ring
  plot.
• Challenge is seeing the interlocking character of
  all this, how the play is also a play of ideas.

3
Antonios melancholy

• In sooth I know not why I am so sad./ It wearies
  me. You say it wearies you./ But how I caught it,
  found it, or came by it/ What stuff tis made of,
  whereof it is born/ I am to learn.
• I hold the world but as the world,/ A stage,
  where every man must play a part,/ And mine a sad
  one.
• Is there melancholy in the very condition of his
  being a merchant?

4
Money makes the world go round

• Is anyone free in the play?
• Antonio bound to the condition of trade.
• Bassanio bound to his need of money.
• Portia bound the will of her dead father.
• Antonio bound to Shylock.
• Shylock locked into the system of money and
  usury.
• Venetian state bound to its laws and need for
  trade.

5
Portias melancholy

• By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary
  of this great world.
• Nerissa you should be weary of the world if your
  miseries were equal to your good fortunes.
• But fortunes is also a fortune too much
  money.
• Fortune locks her into the nightmare of the
  casket choice.
• Poor little rich girl plot.

6
Your father was ever virtuous . ..

• Nerissas faith in a meaning in casket plot . .
  . and holy men at their death have good
  inspirations.
• Just a lottery by the heavy father, or an
  extension of a fathers protection?
• A fairy tale element in the choice of three?
• What does each casket mean?

7
Going for the gold

• Morocco quite pleased with his strength and
  valor II, 2, 24ff.
• Who chooseth me shall gain what many men
  desire.
• A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.
• Oh hell . . . A carrion death . . .
• The melancholy of gold?

8
Silvery Aragon I will assume desert

• Who chooseth me shall get as much as he
  deserves.
• Aragon as the quintessential aristocrat II, 9,
  22ff.
• Hamlet to Polonius Treat every man according
  to his desert and who shall scape whipping?
• Silver smokes out the egocentricity of Aragon.
• The portrait of a blinking idiot!

9
If you do love me, you will find me out

• Desire matching desire.
• Tell me where is fancy bred.
• Bassanios reading of the caskets.
• Caskets as mirror of self, of marriage?
• Why was choosing the lead casket necessary for
  Portias suitor?
• She gives up everything with the ring.
• Bassanios vow in accepting the ring.

10
Portia v. Shylock

• Completion of bond means Antonios death.
• Then must the Jew be merciful.
• The quality of mercy . . . and the quality of
  justice.
• Bassanios valuing of Antonio IV, 1, 280ff.
• Shylocks defeat and conversion.

11
And for your love, Ill take this ring from
you.

• The rings significance.
• Can Bassanio not give the ring?
• Belmont v. Venice?
• Bassanios defense of giving the ring V, 1,
  215ff.
• A potential nightmare like the nightmare of
  Antonios threatened death? 223ff.
• Antonios being bound a second time for Bassanio
  249ff.
• Antonio the agent who takes and gives the ring.

12
Manna in the way of starvd people

• The dilemma of the ring plot
• What do Bassanio, Gratiano learn from the
  dilemma?
• The quality of mercy once again?
• What is it in regard to friendship, love,
  marriage, civil society?

13

• Is the melancholy of Antonio dispelled by the
  conclusion?
• But perhaps not for us, for whom the history of
  the 20th century has induced even more
  melancholy.
• We dont have the luxury to take Shylock
  figuratively.
• And so the melancholy of his Jewishness remains,
  and broods over the play?