Timeline and Personification in <I>The Merchant of Venice</I>

List of Tables

Table 1 (Preface)Derived timeline of The Merchant of Venice

Table P.3Travel between locations

Table P.4:1Approximate Local Mean Solar Times in Venice

Table 2.5:3Lancelot’s calendrical coincidences

Table 3.2:7Value and weight of Venetian ducats

Table 6.6Ring (ex)changes in Cymbeline

Table BQuestions arising in The Merchant of Venice

Table EHighest incidences of “ring” and cognates

Preface

A troupe from London’s Globe Theatre toured China in 2016 and when they staged The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1564–1616) they found that audiences “laughed uproariously at Shylock.”¹ Players sometimes find it disconcerting when audiences laugh unexpectedly, and certainly the troupe’s director found it so, but the reasons seem clear enough. Oriental audiences are largely immune to conditions arising from European cultural and religious differences and are free to take Shylock for the clown that he is. The audiences’ reaction comports with the First Folio’s classification of the play (herein “Merchant” or “MV”) as a comedy in which even its grisly hyperbole may have a certain comedic appeal, but more to the point I think, it raises the question of whether the play is inherently transcendent in the sense of being universally meaningful and independent of audience makeup.

The purpose of this book is to advance and raise awareness of a holistic interpretation of Merchant that cuts across ethnic and cultural lines and to offer a reading that transcends mundane differences. The work builds on previous research on Shakespeare’s plays, which thereby aids in addressing some of the thorny problems inherent in the script that previously have been ignored or inadequately addressed. It aims to remove the veil of opacity through which Merchant is customarily seen. It alleviates a number of difficulties raised by J. F. Bernard, such as the cause of Antonio’s melancholy, the minimization of his role at play’s end, the potential for the play’s complexity to conceal a subtext, as well as the nature of the play’s supposed funniness.² And further, to contribute to the perennial controversy over whether the play is really a comedy,³ this book points out reasons for audiences to greet the action with gales of laughter.

To accomplish this, the book derives the timeline of the play by unraveling Lancelot Gobbo’s enigmatic advice to Shylock in Scene 2.5 and its corroboration in Scene 2.9. Scripted events and the discussion of the timeline lead to the proposition that the play has a transcendent subtext, and a major goal of this book is to investigate and formulate the nature of that subtext. The literature on Merchant is large but the nature of the present contribution makes it virtually certain that its key elements have not been laid out elsewhere.

A list of characters is useful at the start.

• • Bassanio is a Venetian who needs money to finance courtship of Portia in nearby Belmont.
• • Portia is a wealthy heiress who lives in Belmont.
• • Antonio is a Venetian merchant who borrows the money from Shylock to give to Bassanio.
• • Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who obtains the money for Antonio from Tubal.
• • Tubal is a wealthy member of Shylock’s synagogue.
• • Morocco and Arragon are unsuccessful suitors of Portia.
• • Nerissa is Portia’s companion who marries Graziano.
• • Jessica is Shylock’s daughter who marries Lorenzo.
• • Graziano and Lorenzo are friends of Bassanio.
• • Lancelot Gobbo is a clown employed first by Shylock then by Bassanio.
• • Old Gobbo is Lancelot’s impoverished father.
• • Salarino, Solanio, and Salerio are Venetian gadabouts.
• • Balthasar is an employee of Portia and an accomplished horseman.
• • Duke (Doge) is the leader and chief magistrate of Venice.

The gist of the story is that a Venetian named Bassanio wishes to pursue a wealthy woman Portia who lives in nearby Belmont but he lacks the funds to do so. Bassanio’s friends Graziano and Lorenzo have insufficient money to lend to him, and Antonio is short on cash too because all his money is invested in goods carried overseas by six merchant vessels. However, Antonio expects the ships to return a profit well in excess of the amount wanted, so to help his dear friend he seeks to borrow 3,000 ducats from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. Antonio accepts Shylock’s conditions for the loan notwithstanding their mutual religious and ethnic antagonism and despite Shylock’s seemingly lighthearted stipulation that in the event of default Antonio must pay with a pound of his own flesh. Unexpected consequences of this provision undergird this jocoserious play.

Antonio gives the 3,000-ducat “venture capital”⁴ to Bassanio to gamble that he will win the hand of Portia by choosing one of three caskets. Bassanio wins, Portia marries Bassanio, her companion Nerissa weds Graziano, and both brides give rings to their grooms. News spreads of the foundering of the argosies transporting Antonio’s merchandise⁵ and Shylock demands that the Duke schedule an early trial for the prospective pauper. Shylock calls for a pound of Antonio’s flesh and refuses twenty times the amount owed to annul the bond. Portia successfully defends Antonio in court and convicts Shylock for his murderous intent. The play ends with the women tricking their spouses into parting with their betrothal rings, which the women then return to them.⁶

Four interdependent stories of Merchant are: the flesh-bond provision wherein the life of Antonio is imperiled by failure to repay the money borrowed from Shylock; the casket lottery by which needy Bassanio wins the hand of wealthy Portia; her defense of her husband’s friend Antonio against a charge of pending bankruptcy; and the ring-swap episode in which Portia and Nerissa hoodwink their husbands into parting with their wedding rings.

Shakespeare provides much fodder for discussion of issues that are quite apparent and contribute to a robust tale, while aspects that are opaque or beyond current understanding are often shelved or brushed aside. David Margolies states, “anything that is not clear is likely the result either of inattention on the part of the compositor or a mistake on Shakespeare’s part,” as for example in Othello in which “unclear passages may be his errors.”⁷ But for a poet of Shakespeare’s caliber, enigmatic passages may obscure depth of meaning. This book aims to analyze the script to see whether passages that seem erroneous, irrelevant, or attributable to poetic license contribute instead to a better understanding of the play.

The timeline of Merchant is crucial to its understanding, but clues to its determination appear only in Scene 2.5, and even then the events that confirm the solution are delivered only by the end of Act 2. This means that throughout Acts 1 and 2, we have no timeline into which to place events. Waiting until the end of Act 2 to make known the timeline would require revisiting preceding events. Thus, in the interests of clarity and brevity of presentation, I divulge the timeline prospectively by stating the dramatic time of the play right at the start, in a table that we call unconventionally Table 1 (Preface).