Reader Response: Merchant of Venice

On a whim, I decided to begin responding to one of Shakespeare's plays with the same thoroughness and attention to possibilities as I give my students in the Shakespeare class I'm teaching this year. I haven't seen anything like this--all other work on the Bard comes in the form of fully formed essays, assembled into a book. These are a delight to read, but they end up feeling the same if only because they copy one another's format so diligently.

I thought it might be interesting to have a commentator on a play, someone to give some sort of response for the reader to consider. What I have to say is not necessarily worthwhile nor profound, but it's an exercise in analysis that I enjoyed. I'm pasting the first couple of pages of work here. I've not bothered to put any sort of formatting on it, so it may be a bit hard to read.

Enjoy!

ACT I

SCENE I. Venice. A street.

Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO

ANTONIO

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

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This is what I often use when teaching iambic pentameter. Not only is it easy to scan, but it's entirely composed of monosyllabic words. These ten words, aside from their metrical strength, also generate the through-line of Antonio's inner conflict. That it's unknown to him is actually suspect; he may well know it but can't express it. Many commentators have opined that this malaise of Antonio's soul is because of his unrequited love for Bassanio. While there is a distinct case for this, at this particular point in the play, it's impossible to know--we're only one line deep. We'll dig into this potential point later.

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;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

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In typical Shakespearean thoroughness, Antonio duplicates his thoughts, but with a difference: The repetitions do more than simply fill out the meter. Each one expresses the battle that Antonio has waged. For all of this potential inwardness, we're denied a stronger hero for this play that is always remembered for its villain. This potential loss is done, perhaps, because Antonio's purpose is not as inward expression but something else entirely. Many, of course, liken Antonio's sacrifice as a paradigm for Christ's, but Antonio lacks the self-awareness of Jesus--as well as the messianic forgiveness that Christ demonstrated to his own revilers.

An interesting possibility for these lines, however: The means of despondency are diseased; they arrive via vectors. If we could but learn them, we'd know the ways by which depression are transmitted--and, by learning, avoid them. Alas, we, like Antonio, are stuck without the knowledge we desire.

The concept of "want-wit sadness" is illustrative of Shakespeare's word-wielding power that is so casually strewn in mild, useful ways. Who hasn't had times when they've been baffled and stupid because of weary depression? Who hasn't tried to "hammer out" (to use Richard II's phrase) whence the melancholy comes? Antonio is no Jaques: he doesn't "suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs" (AYLI 2.1.13), for he actually cares about whence his sadness comes.

This last line is particularly resonate, considering what else is percolating in Antonio's mind. Antonio will not do much to unfold himself; he is content throughout to be a martyr to himself and his friends--and an occasional gleeful tormentor. In fact, much of what we learn of Antonio comes elliptically via Shylock (no disinterested speaker), who isn't rebutted in his accusations. Indeed, the behavior of the Salads (Salarino and Salanio) in the post-elopement moment could be seen as proof of Shylock's accusations about Antonio's behavior in the other parts of the play. And, it should be said, there is very little ado about learning the source of this in The Merchant of Venice. His task is static sufferer, not introspective wanderer, so Antonio fails to fulfill the promise offered here.

SALARINO

Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curtsy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.

SALANIO

Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;
And every object that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt
Would make me sad.

SALARINO

My wind cooling my broth
Would blow me to an ague, when I thought
What harm a wind too great at sea might do.
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,
But I should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs
To kiss her burial. Should I go to church
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,
Which touching but my gentle vessel's side,
Would scatter all her spices on the stream,
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,
And, in a word, but even now worth this,
And now worth nothing?

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The vividness of Salarino's lines testify to Shakespearean powers of imagination. Poets of all stripes can evoke images--that's their primary trade--but the Shakespearean difference is the alacrity with which the images are minted. Shifting from a cooled broth to a timepiece to a church to the amorous dressing of the ocean, Shakespeare spends golden words on a trivial character--as it were not fretting that such coinage could be hoarded for better use later on. Instead, he allows the imagination and energy of the Salads to, like the sea-tossed vessels, ply the images of the play. This infusion has propelled the Bard's works through the last four centuries.

Shall I have the thought
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought
That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?
But tell not me; I know, Antonio
Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

ANTONIO

Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

SALARINO

Why, then you are in love.

ANTONIO

Fie, fie!

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This possibility (homoerotic or no, depending on your reading) is now pressed by Salarino and dismissed by Antonio. Much like Shylock's inaccurate "I am content" (4.1.394), Antonio is not speaking from his heart. There is something or someone that he loves, but it's ineffable. The sniffing "Fie, fie!" is how Antonio disdains to answer what comes closer to the mark than anything else so far expressed.

SALARINO

Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,
Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,
Because you are not sad.

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The Salads are no fools--they are no Gobbo--but neither are they the Poloniuses nor Dogberries who parade about thinking themselves wise. In a story with an easy stereotype for craft, the Jews are not the ones most prone to duplicity nor sly insinuation. Instead, it is the Christians who most bend toward a dual reality. Sure, there's something to the ease in the answer, "Then let us sya you are sad,/Because you are not merry", something idyllic for which we--and Antonio--might pine. But there is aught awry, and Hamlet's insistence that "nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so" (2.2.249-50) doesn't fit the unease with which we--and Antonio--respond to Salarino's posit.

Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO

SALANIO

Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,
Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well:
We leave you now with better company.

SALARINO

I would have stay'd till I had made you merry,
If worthier friends had not prevented me.

ANTONIO

Your worth is very dear in my regard.
I take it, your own business calls on you
And you embrace the occasion to depart.

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They don't answer to his argument. This raises an interesting point about staging: A director could take this moment to let Salarino appear chagrined at having been caught. Or she could allow the actor a chance to blow off the argument with a non-verbal shrug. How you choose to interpret this dramatically has a lot to do with your preconceived ideas of the Salads in particular and the play in general. Also: As has been demonstrated many times over, Shakespeare is a canvas on which we project ourselves. We bring to his plays what we will, and he holds Nature's mirror up to us so that we can see ourselves, though darkly. Who is Salarino? Do you want him to be at all abashed when called on the carpet? Do you want him to have selective hearing? How you wish to read Shakespeare always says more about you than it does about him.

SALARINO

Good morrow, my good lords.

BASSANIO

Good signiors both, when shall we laugh?

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There is a bit too much of melancholy for a comedy by this point, no? There is a ubiquitous pall that Antonio has deliberately spread over the first portion of the scene. While this question doesn't echo as heavily throughout this play as it could in, say, Macbeth, there's still a haunting reverberation to consider. The answer, so far as the Christians are concerned, is in Act V. When will they laugh? Throughout the "music" (Van Doren's words, not mine) of the final act when "all's well that ends well"--provided you worship the right God. So, while this gains an answer, it is not without cost--and, if nothing else, Shylock's story is all about cost.

say, when?
You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

SALARINO

We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

Exeunt Salarino and Salanio