Who is the hero?

Contrast between

material and treatment.

truly in this, that one man's comedy is another man's tragedy.

Who is the hero of this " poem unlimited" Antonio or Shylock? Or are Bassanio and Portia the hero and heroine? Sir Sidney Lee gives a bold and unhesitating answer: "It is Shylock (not the merchant Antonio) who is the hero of the play, and the main interest culminates in the Jew's trial and discomfiture. That solemn scene trembles on the brink of tragedy." We may be told that the original title, The Venetian Comedy, and the present title of The Merchant of Venice, settle the question in favour of Antonio as the hero, and therefore of comedy (in the strict sense) as the nature of the play. The answer to this, however, is twofold. First, Shakespeare is notoriously careless about titles; witness the insouciance of such phrases as Twelfth Night, or What You Will; As You Like It; and Much Ado about Nothing. Secondly, and consequently, the question can only be settled, if at all, by appeal to the internal evidence, which, as we have already noted, is decidedly ambiguous. An author who practically invites you to call his plays anything you please must not be held with excessive rigour to the exact implications of any particular title, especially when it may very well be that the title was chosen by his colleagues, with a view to advertising purposes.

As Shakespeare's art matures and his work becomes profounder and more subtle, the contrast between his raw materials and the use he makes of them grows ever more striking. Think of his choosing the opera-bouffe theme of the bond whereby Antonio, in default of payment, is to forfeit a pound of his own flesh, and the card-sharper's trick by

II vii, ix,

which the disguised Portia swindles Shylock of what
Antonio never doubted was justly due to him; and
then think of the skill with which these twin absurdi-
ties are made to yield the breathless tragedy and the
incomparable poetry of the Court scene! Take, IV i.
again, the old folklore story of the Caskets, the mon-
strous incredibility of which is almost completely
disguised from us by the art with which Shake-
speare makes the meditations of the two unsuccess-
ful suitors betray their characters, and by the keen
emotion awakened by Portia's solicitude for Bas-
sanio's success. His sense of poetic fitness is hap-
pily illustrated by the exquisite device of the song
and the accompanying music, which covers the si-
lence in which Bassanio makes his felicitous choice.
What material,—and what a product! It is as
though the poet had grasped at the heaviest possible
handicap, that his transcendent power might be the
more amazingly displayed. One is reminded of
those pregnant words of Browning's Abt Vogler:-

can,

Here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo! they

are;

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to

man,

That out of three sounds he make, not a fourth sound, but a star!

and III ii.

speare's

estimate of

his char

acters.

As regards his own moral judgment upon the Shakecharacters he presents and the conduct he describes, Shakespeare does not trouble to arrive at complete consistency. Had he accepted the ordinary conventions of his day, he would have represented Antonio, Bassanio and their friends as completely in the right, and Shylock as a mere fiend, devoid of any

Jessica's conduct.

II iii 15 f.

claim to human sympathy, and deserving only to be persecuted as mercilessly as possible. If, on the other hand, he had taken the attitude of uncompromising revolt against these conventions, he would have depicted Shylock as a wholly sympathetic character, and exposed Bassanio, Gratiano and the rest as snobs, self-righteous prigs and unscrupulous thieves. But he does neither of these things with "foolish consistency." His insight and his irony prevent him from being deceived as to the true character of the ruffling gallants who marry for money, and rob a lonely old man both of his riches and of his daughter. By a marvellous transcending of the prejudices of his time, he sympathizes profoundly with Shylock, and turns what another playwright would have represented as mere vicious perversity into an intelligible and dignified assertion of racial patriotism and natural, though not laudable, revenge. Yet he clearly sees how blameable Shylock's conduct makes him, and how many redeeming features there are in the characters of his enemies.

He shows us Jessica acting with unpardonable perfidy towards a father who had loved her as the apple of his eye. He shows her incredibly false to her faith and to her race. And yet he makes her to the end, from the young men's point of view, a consistently charming girl. We are left convinced that Lorenzo will never have occasion for apprehension lest the infidelity he has taught her to commit against her father shall be practised upon himself. Only once does the culpability of her conduct appear to flash upon her, when she exclaims:

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me

To be ashamed to be my father's child!

Her desire, however, for a freer life than she could hope to enjoy in the gloomy house of a fanatical member of a proscribed race, together with her love for the handsome swaggerer who had wooed her, makes her ready to call herself a Christian. We cannot doubt that she would have been equally ready to become a nominal Mohammedan, had such been the profession of her suitor.

of woman in XVI cen

tia's submission to her

The place of woman in the play reflects the semi- Social status barbarous social and moral standards of the period. To Shakespeare's audience, no doubt, it seemed alto- tury: Porgether natural that Portia should submit uncomplainingly to the horrible conspiracy by which her father's plot. deceased father had disposed of her unconditionally to any sot or savage who might happen to select the right casket. The notion that by marriage the woman and all her worldly goods became the absolute property of the husband was taken for granted as unquestioningly by women as by men. If any of Portia's earlier suitors had been led by luck or judgment to the leaden box, Portia, despite her own feelings, would have held herself bound to accept the doom of marriage with him. The Neapolitan prince, I ii 30 ff. who "doth nothing but talk of his horse"; the French lord, Monsieur le Bon, of whom she pithily remarks, "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man"; the young German, "the Duke of Saxony's nephew," whom Portia likes "very vilely in the morning when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk";-any one of these she would have felt compelled by honour and duty to accept had he chosen the right casket, for her decision is firm that "I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father's will."

The character of Bassanio.

Moral blindness as to treatment of the Jews.

The "salvation" of Jessica.

Of Bassanio we know only that he is perfectly respected by the best among his contemporaries. Yet he is quite frankly presented as a man who has never done an honest day's work in his life. Having gambled away his fortune like a spendthrift, he thinks it entirely honourable to rehabilitate himself, if he can, by marrying, simply for the sake of her money, the richest heiress he can fascinate. Against such a method of living, at least in the aristocratic class, it had never occurred to the sixteenth century that there was any ethical or economic objection to be raised. Antonio is a frugal merchant, whose wealth represents years of careful study and prudent investment; yet he feels honoured by the friendship of the sponging parasite Bassanio, the scion of a class above him, and is very willing to pledge his credit to advance that noble youth's fortunes.

To the people of Shakespeare's time it also seemed consistent with morality and religion that Christians should act with diabolical cruelty and perfidy towards a Jew, but that the Jew, if he imitated them, should be condemned as a monster of iniquity. Even his strictly legal revenge might fairly be thwarted by a palpably dishonest trick. The Jew was there to be robbed and trampled upon, for the glory of God and the advantage of such estimable citizens as Bassanio, Lorenzo & Co.

Again, the conscience of the sixteenth century had no misgivings as to the curious method by which Jessica secures her eternal salvation. The way for her to gain entrance into heaven after death was to rob her father, lie to him and desert him, and embrace the exalted faith of the instigator of these virtuous deeds. Lorenzo ranks as an honourable man.

Far from losing caste by his exploit (de