Cardozo School of Law

Marginalized Voices in "The Merchant of Venice"

Author(s): Susan Oldrieve
Source: Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, Vol. 5, No. 1, A Symposium Issue on "The
Merchant of Venice" (Spring, 1993), pp. 87-105
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Cardozo School of Law
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/743394
Accessed: 19-03-2018 07:22 UTC

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 Marginalized
Voices in
"'The Merchant of
Venice"
Susan Oldrieve

I. Introduction

In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock and Portia both repre

marginalized groups, the one an ethnic and religious minority, an
other women. As Marianne Novy points out,

Women and Jews could be seen as symbolic of

absolute otherness - alien, mysterious, uncivilized,
unredeemed. Although women could be praised for
being as virtuous or intelligent as men, or Jews for
converting to Christianity or behaving as Christians
ought, nevertheless femaleness and Jewishness as
qualities in themselves had negative meanings in
this tradition - both were associated with the flesh,
not the spirit, and therefore with impulses toward
sexuality, aggression, and acquisitiveness.... 1
Novy argues that these were "all qualities becoming more eviden
Renaissance society" and that in rejecting the Jew and fina
repressing the power of women, the play reflects a desire to co
its own movement toward individualism.2
While I do not entirely agree with Novy's reading of Act V, her
association of Jews and women as outsiders is significant. Their legal
and economic conditions, as well as their emblematic connotations,
support the analogy. Women were the property of their fathers, and
Jews the property of their rulers. The mid-12th century "Laws of
Edward the Confessor" (assuming that Shakespeare was adhering to
English law, and placed his story in Venice as part of his poetic
license) describe clearly the legal position of the Jew in England:
All Jews, wherever in the realm they are, must be

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 under the King's liege protection and guardianship,
nor can any of them put himself under the
protection of any powerful person without the King's
licence, because the Jews themselves and all their
chattels are the King's. If therefore anyone detain
them or their money, the King may claim them, if he
so desire and if he is able, as his own.3

Similarly, in The Merchant of Venice, Portia is her father's property:

even from the grave he has the legal and moral right to decide the
most intimate concerns of her life. Furthermore, when married, she is
expected to transfer control of her life and living from her father's
hands to the hands of a man who might well be completely unknown
to her.

Portia's first appearance onstage shows her struggling to

balance her needs as an individual against the demands of the
patriarchal society in which she lives. She knows she should conform
to her father's will, but she desperately wants to control her choice of
a husband. Harry Berger's excellent explication of the casket scene in
Act III sensitively reveals Portia's conflict between independence and
submission. He suggests that Portia is caught between her desire to
give Bassanio clues about how to choose and her reluctance to betray
her father's will. She is also torn between her desire for Bassanio and
her anxiety about submitting herself to him. As Berger explains,
"Portia plays the inquisitor, but this is a role which, if she were more
crass, she could conceivably induce upon Bassanio, assigning him the
function of torturing out of her the answers for deliverance (for her
deliverance as well as his) which she would have too many scruples to
offer voluntarily, not only the scruple about being forsworn but also
the scruple about crowning Bassanio over her as her monarch."4
In spite of Portia's scruples and her determination to live by the
rules, her discussion with Nerissa in Act I admits the possibility of
rebellion against her father's authority. Whether the director chooses
to emphasize the clues in the song or not, this scene and her tense
conversation with Bassanio make us aware that Portia could choose to
ignore her father's will and dispose of herself according to her own
wishes. Shylock's situation seems much less flexible. He must convert
or die.

While Novy believes that the play rejects the Jew,S it seems that
in juxtaposing Shylock's dilemma with Portia's, Shakespeare suggests
that it is possible for all "Others" to conform in public but at the same
time to establish a private realm in which they can successfully satisfy
their emotional needs. Berger concludes that Portia finally asserts her
individuality and power by "mercifying" Antonio in the last scenes.

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She simply outgives both him and Bassanio, and in so doing puts them
under her power.6 My reading differs from Berger's in that I believe
she exhibits this power not just for her own sake but also for
Shylock's.

II. Shylock and the Christian Patriarchy

Shylock's counterpart in the Christian business world is

Antonio, who represents the dominant elite. He is the successful
businessman of Venice, totally immersed in the city's financial and
social life. Antonio first appears surrounded by friends who are deeply
concerned about his melancholia. In Act I, Bassanio's entrance with
Lorenzo widens Antonio's socio-commercial circle. The men on stage
are obviously part of a well-knit and familiar group who both do
business and socialize with each other. Antonio is the most successful
of them, and the most respected. A true "Old Boy Network" is
portrayed during the friendly exchanges of I,i,57-73.7 The stage is full
of men of various ages who share common interests, values, and daily
pursuits, and who give each other both the emotional and the
financial support that enable them to retain their social and
commercial security. Antonio is the center of their concern in every
scene in which he or they appear, until Act V. Bassanio is the newest
member of the group, favored by Antonio and encouraged by all the
men to succeed in their world of commerce. When he says, "To you,
Antonio, /I owe the most in money and in love" (emphasis added),
his words imply that he has received help from others as well, but that
Antonio is his primary mentor. Their conversation extends the tone of
mutual bonding established at the rise of the curtain, culminating in
Antonio's slightly reproachful, "You know me well... do but say to
me what I should do /That in your knowledge may by me be done,
/And I am prest unto it." (I,i,153-160) Antonio is willing to devote
both his material and emotional resources to ensure Bassanio's
success.

Whether Antonio is motivated by more than h

his enthusiasm for business cannot be told from the text alone.8
However,' the mentor-protege relationship does not necessarily need
overtones of homosexuality to radiate strong emotion. In such
relationship, the protege's success is a reflection of the mentor's, an
it can be difficult for the mentor to dissociate his professional self
image from the success or failure of the protege. When Antonio is
engulfed in his losses, he wishes to see Bassanio, because in so doing
he can assure himself that he has not completely failed in his
economic ventures: he can affirm that his loans to Bassanio have

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secured the young man's social and financial position. He rejects
Bassanio's offers of sacrifice, telling him, "You cannot be better
employed, Bassanio, /Than to live still and write mine epitaph."
(IV,i,117-18) In writing Antonio's epitaph, Bassanio would preserve
his friend's reputation, and through his success, carry on Antonio's
role in the world.
In this sense, Bassanio is more Antonio's son, continuing the
family name and tradition, than his lover.9 Such a relation is borne out
by one of Shakespeare's sources, II Pecorone, where the relationship
between the mentor and protege is one in which a rejected younger
son finds a surrogate father.1' Bassanio and Antonio thus stand in
comparison not to Portia and Bassanio, but to Portia and her father,
and to Shylock and Jessica. The need to perpetuate one's estate - to
control it after one's death by handing it on to an obedient child - is
a motif that runs throughout the play. The will of Portia's father and
Shylock's grief over the loss of both his daughter and, through her, his
ducats, clearly reflect the play's concern with perpetuation. Antonio,
too, can reflect this concern, particularly if a director follows
Shakespeare's source and portrays him as an older man. Beneath
Antonio's intense interest in Bassanio may be a homosexual attraction
or a doting friendship, but he also may be motivated by a bachelor's
desire for a surrogate child who will ensure his immortality.

III. Portia and Belmont's Patriarchy

Perpetuation is also an issue for Portia, as we move from a

predominantly male world to a predominantly female world. Portia's
father has tried to ensure that his daughter and his rich estate will
continue to prosper after his death. While Antonio trusts Bassanio's
judgment in spite of indications that his "son" wastes more money
than he preserves, Portia's father takes the care of his estate totally out
of his daughter's hands, completely disregarding her intelligence and
common sense. Portia cannot even veto her father's choice of a
husband, a right increasingly accepted in Elizabethan times."
Certainly with both her parents dead, and apparently competent of age
and capable of managing the estate well, Portia could expect to have
some influence over her marriage.
Portia chafes against this patriarchal control but eventually
accepts it, partly out of trust and duty, and partly because she finds
that it ultimately works to her advantage. When she discovers that her
father's will has chased most of her distasteful suitors away, she
resolves, "If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana,
unless I be obtained by the manner of my father's will." (I,ii,104-6)

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David Sundelson argues that her submission to her father is a form of
identification that enables her to cope with his death. She recreates
him within herself by taking upon herself his characteristics and
values.12 Carol Leventen also argues that Portia internalizes her father's
will, but attributes her motivation to cultural imperatives:

Quite literally, Portia makes a virtue out of what

once was perceived as necessity. In Freudian terms,
Portia's words to Nerissa in I,ii and to Bassanio in
III,ii, demonstrate the power of the superego: the
internalisation of cultural imperatives. Guilt is so
internalised that one can never "get away with it"
because one punishes one's self; the sanctions are
no longer "out there."13

With or without the influence of guilt, when Nerissa announces that at

least some undesirable suitors have been driven away by Portia's
father's demands, the will and the patriarchal and economic system it
reflects seem to have worked for her. It is this success that makes her
more willing to accept the demands of the patriarchal authority and to
submit both her possessions and her person to her husband. The ring
that she gives Bassanio is a symbol of her trust in him and in the
institution of marriage in her patriarchal world. It is also, as Newman
points out, "a representation of Portia's acceptance of Elizabethan
marriage which was characterized by women's subjection, their loss of
legal rights, and their status as goods or chattel."14 A potential rebel at
first, Portia conforms to the demands of her society and places her
entire life and living into her husband's hands.
Her faith in the patriarchal view of marriage extends to Antonio
and to the exclusively male socio-commercial relationships with
which the play begins. She tells Lorenzo,
...this Antonio,
Being the bosom lover of my lord,
Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,
How little is the cost I have bestowed
In purchasing the semblance of my soul
From out the state of hellish cruelty! (III,iv,16-21)

Her trust in Bassanio makes her willing to trust Antonio, and her
generous financial offers mimic the financial and emotional support
the play's Christian merchants give each other. Portia becomes "one of
the boys" even before she takes on her disguise as a male to defend
her new group of friends from an outside threat.
What Portia does not realize at first is that Antonio is not exactly
like her lord - or like what she has seen of Bassanio so far. Nor does

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she understand that the man who is threatening Bassanio's friend has
been victimized by the Christian merchants just as she could have
been victimized by her father's patriarchal control. Shylock is a
businessman in Venice, too, but conducts his business very differently
than do his Christian colleagues. Not only does he charge interest
while Antonio does not, but he also for the most part works alone,
without the social, financial, and emotional support of mainstream
Venetians. Antonio is threatened by Shylock's business practices; he
resorts first to vehement anti-semitism and then to the legal
opportunities Portia affords him to eliminate that threat.

IE. The Contract and its Enforcement

Both Shylock and Antonio are highly successful, and the fact
that Antonio sends Bassanio to Shylock shows that even in Antonio's
mind, Shylock is an important business force on the Rialto. Shylock
says he hates Antonio because he "brings down the rate of usance,"
(I,iii,42) but also because he berates Shylock in public, "even there
where merchants most do congregate." (I,iii,46) One result of
Antonio's behavior would be to drive customers away from Shylock
and into his own fold; therefore, his berating Shylock in public would
reflect not just anti-semitism, but an anti-semitism used to give the
Christian an economic advantage. If Antonio were not threatened
professionally by Shylock's business abilities, he would have less
motivation to denigrate him in front of customers.
Their rivalry emerges directly as they briefly vie for Bassanio
early in scene three. Shylock has just told the Laban and Jacob story,
parrying Antonio's pointed questions with a good joke underscoring
his financial success. That Bassanio responds by laughing, as he does
in the 1981 BBC television production of the play, is signaled by
Shylock's line "But note me, signor.""15 Shylock has gotten Bassanio's
attention and wishes to extend their moment of comraderie. Antonio
immediately interrupts him with "Mark you this, Bassanio," drawing
the young man's attention back to himself and reminding him to
which camp he belongs.
For a short moment, then, Bassanio is caught between two
potential mentors, and the rivalry between Shylock and Antonio
becomes not just a matter of business practice and success, but of the
gathering and losing of friendship and prestige. Shylock is not really
interested in stealing Antonio's protege from him; he seeks only
professional respect for his way of doing business. His rival needs a
loan and is willing to adhere to conditions he has vehemently
denounced in public. Antonio, faced with his economic vulnerability

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and perhaps smarting from Shylock's ability to attract Bassanio's
attention, berates Shylock's methods even as he is asking for help.
Shylock's bond proposal comes out of his emotional reaction to
this insult. He has said that he wants to "catch him once upon the hip"
(I,iii,43) for the way in which Antonio has damaged his business
reputation; and here he finds himself subjected to worse scorn. He is
justifiably angry, and he wants to find a way to stop Antonio's behavior
once and for all. The unusual bond that he offers both satisfies his
anger and will prevent future public outcry. He begins by accepting
Antonio's way of doing things. The implication is that if he can
compromise, Antonio should also, especially since he wishes to profit
by Shylock's practice:

To buy his favor I extend this friendship.

If he will take it, so; if not, adieu.
And for my love, I pray you, wrong me not.
(I,iii,167-9)
If Antonio does not accept the loan without monetary interest,
then he can no longer berate Shylock for demanding interest, for
Shylock can counter Antonio's public criticism by claiming that he
offered him a no-interest loan and was refused. And if Antonio is
willing to "play" with Shylock by accepting the bond and the "merry
sport" that it represents, then perhaps he will voluntarily come to trea
Shylock with more respect. In either case, Shylock will get what he
most desires: the silencing of Antonio's public criticism of his
business practices.
On the other hand, Shylock is deeply and justifiably angered by
Antonio's insults and some part of him would probably enjoy cutting
into Antonio's "fair flesh." Because Shylock's social and legal position
prevents him from taking a more direct action for revenge, his anger
expresses itself in a dare that also allows Shylock the opportunity
subtly to insult Antonio by stating that his "fair flesh" is worth less
than an animal's.
Antonio accepts the dare, sure that he cannot lose and pleased
that he may have pressured Shylock into conforming to the "proper"
way of doing mercantile business. As long as Shylock operates
according to his own rules, he threatens Antonio's business
supremacy. When Antonio thinks Shylock may be persuaded to change
his business practices, he no longer feels threatened; perhaps he
believes that he can then compete with Shylock on his own terms and
win.

In the trial scene, the Duke, speaking for "the world," (IV,i,17)
also expects Shylock to play by Antonio's rules. Not only does he tell

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Shylock that everyone expects him to change his mind about exacting
the forfeiture, but also to

Forgive a moiety of the principal,

Glancing an eye of pity on his losses
That have of late so huddled on his back...
(IV,i,26-28).

The Duke seems to have forgotten that Shylock is motivated by his

own great losses. Not only has he lost ducats and jewels, but in losin
Jessica, he has lost both a daughter and the means by which to contro
his estate after his death. Antonio can still hope to perpetuate hi
image in Bassanio, and Portia has behaved as an admirable image o
her father and of Bellario her mentor, but Shylock has had all hope o
the future torn from him. The Duke ignores Shylock's grief and tells
him that loyalty to business associates - even if they have betrayed
him - should come before personal concerns. Shylock refuses thi
argument, and in a forceful speech argues that his feelings are all tha
matter in this case. His private and personal emotions are going t
take precedence over social and political amenities, and he is there to
see that the system that allowed him to be humiliated is forced t
recognize his personal experience.
Portia enters the scene in the service of that system, intent upon
saving her husband's friend and punishing his enemy, upon showing
that the feelings of the individual must give way to the larger cause o
social harmony. Portia has her plan clearly worked out before sh
enters the courtroom. She hopes, like the Duke, that she can tal
Shylock into relenting and conforming to the expectations of th
establishment, but she is prepared to "throw the book at him" if he
should not.
However, by defeating Shylock, Portia learns that the very
system she upholds would make a victim of her as a woman and a
mockery of the marriage to which she has trusted her life and living.
The warnings begin with Bassanio's offer to sacrifice her for Antonio.
Her aside, even if jocular in tone, expresses some concern over this
offer, a concern echoed by Nerissa and by Shylock's comment about
Christian husbands. Pausing only momentarily, Portia returns to her
primary task and offers the Duke a chance to render the mercy he
previously asked of Shylock. The Duke meets her expectations, but
she does not allow him to speak for Antonio. "Ay for the state, not for
Antonio" (IV,i,371) she says of the Duke's reducing Shylock's
punishment to a fine. Antonio is to have his own opportunity to
demonstrate the charity which he has so vehemently argued Shylock
should show.
When Portia turns to Antonio, she asks for his demonstration of

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mercy, expecting it to exceed the Duke's. Instead, Antonio not only
appropriates half Shylock's wealth, but proposes to settle it on his
protege Lorenzo, thus making Jessica, in effect, his rather than
Shylock's daughter, and completely divesting Shylock of the right to
control his estate. Portia, who has so painfully accepted the patriarchal
right to dispose of a daughter, suddenly sees that when it suits them,
powerful men care little about that right when it belongs to a member
of a marginalized group. The father-daughter relationship for which
she risked great unhappiness disappears in the game of power. This
moment reminds Portia that she is the property of the dominant male.
From the grave or in the courtroom, he has the legal right to pick her
up or lay her down; she is completely subject to his whim. When
Antonio demands Shylock's conversion, Portia suddenly recognizes
the similarity between the Jew's plight and her own. That recognition
gives her reason both to devise and to resolve the dilemma of the
rings with which the play ends.

V. Forcing a Conversion

Shylock's conversion must be accounted for in any comprehen-

sive reading of The Merchant of Venice. In the trial scene, when
Antonio stipulates ".4. .that for this favor /He presently become a
Christian," (IV,i,384-5) the audience inevitably feels tremendous
tension. From that point on, the dynamics of the scene depend heavily
upon the characters' non-verbal reactions to Antonio's words.
Interpretation of the subtext depends upon one's feelings about
conversion in general and upon the relationship one sees between
Shylock's forced conversion and the play's themes.
The Merchant of Venice reflects an era in which conversion
resonated differently than it does today, and it is therefore useful to
understand what a religious conversion might have meant to the
Elizabethan audience of Shakespeare's play. Barbara Lewalski,
Lawrence Danson, and others (including myself) have argued that
Shylock's conversion reflects an allegorical representation of harmony;
that because Shakespeare knew no Jewish people, he thought of the
conversion of a Jew primarily in theological and abstract terms; and
therefore, that Shylock's conversion was not meant to generate the
degree of emotion it often elicits from the modern reader.16 However,
the issue of religious conversion in Elizabethan England was not
merely a theological concern in which the Jew represented the Old
Law and the Christian the New Law. It was a life experience for many
in Shakespeare's own audience, and a political and social issue that
affected their daily lives.

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 Henry VIII had required that his subjects repudiate the Pope,
opening the door for the influence of zealous Continental
Protestantism upon the English Church. The short reign of Edward VI
continued the conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism, but Mary
radically reversed that process. Under the influence of Mary and her
Spanish husband, English men and women again found themselves
worshipping as Catholics, or risking accusations of treason. When
Elizabeth came to the throne, she came as a strong Protestant leader,
soon to be excommunicated and marked for death by the Pope who
encouraged all English Catholics to reject her as their sovereign.
Nevertheless, most English people donned their Protestant cloaks in
compliance with the orders of the state. Some Catholics retained their
faith as secret recusants, caught between theological belief and
national loyalty. Shakespeare's own father is believed to have been
among these recusants,17 indicating that the issues of religious
conversion for political and social reasons may have been more
experiential than theoretical for our playwright. If William Shakespeare
were raised in a Catholic household that secretly held onto its faith in
spite of Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, the playwright himself
would have experienced having to disguise or change his faith, his
heritage, and his manner of worship in order to comply with the law
of the land or risk losing both his living and his life.
Religious conversion in Renaissance Europe was inextricable
from political and social conformity and practical daily living, both for
Christians and for Jews. If a person wanted to be socially accepted,
politically safe, and economically stable, conformity to the politically
correct religion of the day was imperative. Consequently, it is not
surprising to find that Elizabethan anti-semitism, like that of its
European cousins and medieval predecessors, was grounded upon the
Jewish refusal to convert, that is, their refusal to conform to the
political and religious unity of the state.s8
However, just as there were English recusant Catholics who
outwardly conformed to Protestantism, or earlier, Protestants accepting
Catholic trimmings to please their monarch, so too, some Jews
compromised by converting outwardly while practicing their preferred
religion in secret. Such "converted" Jews were known as conversos,
ostensible Christians whom everybody knew as Jews.
It is impossible to estimate how many such conversos were
present in London while Shakespeare was there. One who was well-
known was Dr. Roderigo Lopez, physician to the Queen, translator,
and spy, best known for his grisly death as a (probably wrongfully)
accused traitor in 1594. Richard Popkin argues that Shakespeare may
have known of the Jewish hostage, Alonso Nufiez de Herrera
(Abraham Cohen de Herrera) whose situation and learning were much

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discussed in certain Elizabethan court circles.19 Also, both Cecil Roth
and Maurice Freedman tell of small groups of Jews from Antwerp who
settled in London and Bristol as conversos, officially either
"Portuguese" or "Protestant" although even the authorities knew them
to be Jewish. Evidently, these groups lived comfortably enough in
England until 1609 when an internecine quarrel led one faction to
report to the authorities that the other faction was practicing Judaism.
The whole community was then expelled from England.20 Once these
groups were exposed, they became a threat to the political and social
unity of the state and were expunged.
So to say that Shakespeare knew only of the theological
treatment of Jews and their conversion is probably not entirely
accurate. He may have known more than one Jewish converso.
Certainly he knew conversion as a way to achieve political and social
unity through at least an outward conformity. Thought of in this way,
religious conversion becomes part of the larger theme of how
individuals might cope with authoritarian political, social, and
economic pressure. Shylock's dilemma is therefore not entirely
different from Portia's. He struggles under the political and economic
sanctions of Christian authority; she copes with a patriarchal system
that similarly exerts economic and social control over individuals.
Christian mercy has been traditionally given as Antonio's
motivation in his demand for Shylock's conversion. However, in the
bond scene, Antonio was more concerned with Shylock's business
practices - and weakening them - than with his religion, and there
is no reason for him to have changed his motivation here. In forcing
Shylock to become a Christian, he thinks he is demanding that Shylock
give up his practice of charging interest. Since the court has already
diminished Shylock's capital by as much as half, Antonio's demand for
conversion would ideally force Shylock to stop charging interest. This
would destroy Shylock's means of increasing that capital quickly,
effectively eliminating Antonio's most threatening business rival.
Rather than respond to Portia and the trial scene by rendering mercy,
Antonio continues his business competition with the man and uses his
rival's vulnerability to assert further dominance.

VI. Portia and Shylock Linked

I fully appreciated the reaction of Joanne Comerford, as Portia,

during the trial scene of Peter Royston's staged reading of Bonds -
Made and Broken.21 She was shocked at both the Duke's and
Antonio's offers of "mercy," and pained by the effect of her judg
upon Shylock. Portia suddenly sees how the law "being seaso

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with a gracious voice, /Obscures the show of evil," (III,ii,76-77) and is
horrified to have been a part of it. When she asks Shylock, "Art thou
contented Jew? What dost thou say?" (IV,i,391) she is making a
hopeless plea for a way out. Shylock, of course, cannot offer her one,
but his concerned look draws attention to their common under-
standing of oppression. Shylock's "I am content" then becomes
fatherly response meant to indicate that sometimes conformity is t
only choice that can be made. For a brief moment, Shylock regains
child - one who understands and will listen to him - and Portia a
father.
After a moment of silence, the emotional connection between
Portia and Shylock dissipates with Portia's somber "Clerk, draw up a
deed of gift." (IV,i,392) Shylock, shaken by the swiftness of his defeat,
asks leave to go and resignedly departs amid Gratiano's heartless
taunts, a picture of personal emotion crushed beneath public displays
of power. Portia's eyes follow him out the door as she realizes that her
feelings as a woman have been just as easily dismissed by the
dominant patriarchal system she has worked to support, and could as
easily again be disregarded.
At this point, the winning party approaches to ask her to dinner.
Impressed with this young "man," they want to make him part of their
social and business circle. Suddenly aware of her femininity and of her
distaste for the cliquishness of these men, Portia begs off, only to be
accosted by Antonio and Bassiano, who try to pay her off for the work
she has suddenly found so distasteful. She asks only that Bassanio
recognize her when they meet again, a line that can be taken to
express the hope that he will look past her feminine exterior to the
personhood beneath, rather than to forget the humanity masked by
her otherness as his friends forgot Shylock's. Novy argues that the pun
on "know me,"

which relates sexuality to recognition, anticipates

her emphasis on sexual identity in the return to
Belmont and her implicit victory over Antonio. In
the trial, the threat of aggression has been removed
by projection onto a scapegoat; at Belmont, it can be
dissolved in play - mock hostility which unites the
married couples more closely.22

The pun instead underscores the intimacy Portia requires and links to
it the ability to see behind appearances to people's real feelings.
Unless Bassanio can recognize her, he will never develop true
intimacy with his wife. In Act V, Portia literalizes her point by making
the sexual knowing contingent upon Bassanio's acceptance of her
emotions, her intelligence, and her financial power.

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 Immediately after the trial scene, though, she only fears that
Bassanio cannot be trusted to see beyond the materialistic comraderie
of the business world. She therefore tests him by asking for his ring.
Will he sacrifice his wife's trust to the demands of the "Old Boy
Network?" He seems to pass the test at first, but immediately Antonio
insists that their friendship take precedence over Bassanio's vows to
his wife. When Gratiano brings her the ring, Portia finds that her fears
were justified - business and power, coated with friendship, are
more important to her husband than emotional, domestic bonds. Men
count more than women. Berger points out that Bassanio's giving
Antonio Portia's ring indicates "man's assumption that men are
superior to women, that it is men who save each other and the world
and who perform great deeds and sacrifices; the pledge to a woman
can be superseded by the debt of gratitude owed a man."23 When that
exchange occurs in Act IV, Berger explains, "Once again we see how a
culture dominated by the masculine imagination devalues women and
asserts male solidarity against feminine efforts to breach the barrier. In
her own way, Portia is no less an outsider than Shylock and her "I
stand for sacrifice" is finally not much different from Shylock's "I
stand for judgment."24 Too feisty and too angered by her experience
in the courtroom to accept this subjugation, she resolves with Nerissa
that "we'll outface them and outswear them too." (IV,i,17)
The ring plot thus becomes Portia's version of what Shylock
wanted to accomplish in the trial scene, but, as Novy suggests, with
the violence removed.25 In the privacy of Belmont, Portia again takes
control of her estate and her life, and ensures that her marriage to
Bassanio will be conducted upon hers and not Antonio's terms or the
terms of the patriarchal system under which she was wed. As Richard
Weisberg explains, Portia is fed up with the mediation of others:

The legal relationship adopted as a commercial

matter by Antonio as the play began now threatens
to mediate the most personal of human relationships.
Portia, exhausted by her own courtroom tactics on
behalf of the mediators, will have none of it. It is
time for Bassanio to stand for himself; it is time for
the couple, unhindered by third-person intervention,
to consummate their marriage.26

Weisberg argues that Portia's annoyance comes from her disillusion-

ment with social and legal mediation, and from her growing
impatience with the way in which it has delayed the fulfillment
(represented as sexual consummation) of Bassanio's commitment to
her.27
I would argue, however, that her impatience arises from the

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way in which Antonio's world, including its legal system, ignores the
humanity and emotional concerns of the outsider. Her husband was
willing to sacrifice her for a business associate. Business competition
easily displaced the father's right to dispose of his property - for
which she had been willing to risk her life's happiness. Disguised as a
man, she was accepted and admired for her perceptive logic and
presence of mind; but she knows that as a woman she could never
have exercised her intellectual gifts in the Venetian court any more
than she had been permitted to exercise them in choosing a husband.
The public world has denied her feelings, her intelligence, her right to
life (Bassanio wishes she were dead for Antonio's sake). (IV,i,281-6)
These experiences send her back to the privacy of Belmont
determined to make her husband and his friends acknowledge - in
both word and deed - the interests of those whom their public world
has marginalized.
She does not again submit herself and her estate to male
governance. Portia takes advantage of her private power over
Bassanio's economic and patrilineal success to gain and maintain
control over her life. Her husband must depend upon her chastity to
maintain his reputation, his line of descent, and his control over his
estate after his death. Only as long as her children are his children will
Bassanio's public influence endure. Portia returns to Belmont as its
mistress and retains her power as a woman and a wife to the close of
the play. She also refuses to promise sexual fidelity until Antonio
commits more to Bassanio's private and emotional well-being than he
did to his public business ventures. She rebels not so much against
her husband as against the Venetian values which Antonio has taught
him. In order to purge those values from Belmont, she must ensure
that Antonio as well as Bassanio is made to recognize the importance
of people outside his commercial coterie. When Antonio offers his
soul as surety for Bassanio's vows, Portia has won. The world of men
has been forced to acknowledge the importance and power of woman.

VII. The Move to the Margins

In Act V, Portia also sees to it that Antonio finds himself obliged

to her for his life and living. Ronald Sharp suggests that the "return" of
Antonio's ships is in fact a gift from Portia, one that she disguises as
"good fortune."28 It is difficult to imagine how Antonio's ships could
have returned, since everyone on the Rialto - Solanio, Solario, and
Tubal - seem certain that they have all sunk. However, even if the

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ships have survived, Portia's revelation that she was Balthasar and her
control over the news about Antonio's good fortune force him to
recognize that he is no longer center stage. There is more to the world
than the Rialto, and his life depends upon the hidden power in the
margins. He is duly humbled and perhaps even humiliated by the
realization that the brilliant young clerk who saved his life was no
more than a woman, and that this same woman wields more control
over the life of his friend and over his business transactions than he
can.

On another level, Newman explains that "Portia's unr

language and behavior exposes the male homosocial bond the
exchange of women insures, but it also multiplies the terms of sexual
trafficking so as to disrupt those structures of exchange that insure
hierarchical gender relations and the figural hegemony of the
microcosm/macrocosm analogy in Elizabethan marriage."29 Portia's
demand that her feelings and power be recognized disrupts not just
Antonio's view of the world, but also that of patriarchy and authority in
general. Her triumph in Act V is thus in some ways a recap of Shylock's
powerful "gaping pig" speech of Act IV.
Ann Parten argues that the resolution of the ring plot and
Gratiano's concluding pun on "Nerissa's ring" dissolve the fear that
Portia will remain dominant.30 Her point is convincingly stated, but for
me that joke always falls flat, even amidst the most comic of
performances. In contrast to the serious sexual and financial concerns
that Portia's authority and dignified language have just laid to rest, it is
simply too lewd to be funny. The time for such masculine flippancy is
long past, left behind in Venice at the conclusion of the trial scene.
Gratiano's tone seems uncomfortably out of place, as if an important
point has just gone over his head. The joke's consequent failure seems
to reinforce the powerlessness of the men in the face of Portia's
strength. They may try to laugh off her threat to their exclusively male
world, but their effort does not succeed. Sundelson's view of the joke
as an uneasy effort to resist being engulfed by the feminine reflects
more clearly my experience of the play.31 Antonio doesn't lose
Bassanio or his power to Shylock in public, but in private, he loses
both to Portia.
Shylock's accepting his conversion stresses the necessity of
submitting to authority, but the play's comic conclusion is comic
because it holds out the hope that in spite of this necessity, ways can
be found to retain control over personal and private concerns. It is for
this that we all - male or female - enjoy Portia and Nerissa's putting
down of Bassanio, Gratiano, and Antonio. The play would end upon a
celebratory note except for the lingering regret over Shylock's fate.
The public pain we have felt for him in Act IV still overshadows the

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private resolution in Act V too darkly for the play to feel wholly comic.
Thinking of Shakespeare's own father, I am not sure that that pain
should be resolved, but if a director wishes to convey a more fully
comic closure, the text provides a way to make it possible.
When Lorenzo hears of Portia's return to Belmont, he asks who
comes with her. Stephano replies, "None but a holy hermit and her
maid." (V,i,33) Who is this holy hermit? Few productions bother with
him at all, so why does Shakespeare mention him? Portia and Nerissa
did say they were going to a convent during their husbands' absence,
but in fact they went to visit Bellario, and then on to Venice. Where
did they pick up a holy hermit?
The last person Portia and Nerissa saw before returning to
Belmont was Shylock. Could Shylock be the holy hermit, disguised in
a friar's robe like the "fantastical Duke of dark corners" in Measure for
Measure? The idea is far-fetched if one conceives of the play as it has
traditionally been staged, but given the Elizabethan experience of
religious conversion, it is possible. In this context, Shylock, disguised
in a way that identifies him as a converso, observes Portia exert in
private the personal autonomy that he was forced to give up in public.
She conveys his deed of gift to his daughter Jessica, humbles his
enemy, and shows that conforming to authority need not entail total
abdication of individual power. Although bound publicly to the role of
wife, Portia maintains individual power in her home.
Disguised as a hermit, Shylock would also represent an outward
conformity that does not necessitate abandonment of personal
autonomy, either religious or economic. As long as Shylock maintains
his Christian disguise, he will be free to go on believing and even
practicing religion as he wishes. Roth reports that "During a lawsuit
brought in 1596 against one of the Marrano merchants who had been
trading with the Peninsula in partnership with an Englishman, the
Jewish ceremonies observed at his home in Duke's Place, London,
were alluded to in Court without any sense of incongruity and (what
was more remarkable) without any untoward results."32 Apparently, in
some cases at least, the practice of Judaism was allowed in the private
sphere, even when the authorities were aware that it was occurring.
Furthermore, in spite of the Christian injunctions against usury
and Antonio's insistence that loans should be made freely and
business conducted without the contamination of interest charges, it is
likely that an Elizabethan Shylock could have continued to charge
interest on his loans. In his chapter, "Property and the Grasp of
Greed," Max James discusses 16th and 17th century treatises against
usury. He explains that "even though both Stubs and Smith declare

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that the government placed a cap on interest rates at ten percent
maximum to restrain greed, in actual fact, ten percent was usually the
minimum, and many devices were used to circumvent the law and to
charge a much higher percentage .... " He also points out that not all
usurers were Jews: "...most usurers were merchants, and...
merchants were often criticized and excoriated as severely as
usurers."33 According to Elizabethan legal practice, then, Shylock as a
Christian merchant could have continued to charge at least ten percent
interest. So, Antonio has not gained his presumed victory when he
forced Shylock to convert. In Elizabethan society, even a judgment
such as that rendered in the play would not have necessitated a
change in Shylock's methods. Instead, Antonio's desire to live
according to his period's economic ideals might have been seen by
many in the Elizabethan audience as nice, but impractical. If so, then
The Merchant of Venice, like Richard II, pits ideology against
practicality. However one reads Richard II, the ideals that Antonio
preaches in The Merchant of Venice are undercut by his satisfaction in
victimizing Shylock. Seeing a disguised Shylock achieve his revenge
both non-violently and practically might help to relieve an audience of
any discomfort with which the last act might otherwise leave them.
As the lovers enter the house with Antonio trailing awkwardly
behind, the hermit throws back his cowl. He walks slowly off stage,
alone, isolated, and still in pain, but satisfied with the revenge he has
observed, and resigned to his fate as actor of conformity, as converso,
in an authoritarian world. Portia's private victory thus becomes
Shylock's, and not just Shylock's, but also the victory of the public
playwright/London actor torn between acknowledging the necessity
for political and religious conformity and his personal drive to
recognize and celebrate individual human experience.

1. Marianne L. Novy, "Giving, Taking, and the Role of Portia in The Merchant of Venice,"
58 Philological Quarterly 137, 139 (1979).
2. Id.

3. Cecil Roth, History of the Jews in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964; reprinted
1978), p. 96. For Elizabethan women as their fathers' property, see Lawrence Stone, The
Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1977), pp. 180-191.

4. Harry Berger, "Marriage and Mercifixion in The Merchant of Venice," 32 Shakespeare

Quarterly 155, 160 (1981).

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5. Novy, supra note 1 at 151. Novy concludes her essay by stating that "Like the threat of
Shylock, whose trial postpones the consummation of marriages, otherness may seem an
obstacle to love and indeed Shylock's exorcism may be intended to remove it as an
obstacle. But the acceptance of Portia's self-assertion that we find at the end of The
Merchant of Venice is also a celebration of otherness and of the means it depends on -
financial, sexual, verbal - to give and to receive."

6. See Berger, supra note 4 at 161-162.

7. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, David Bevington, ed. (New York:
Bantam Books, 1988). Hereinafter, parenthetical line references will be in the text.

8. Karen Newman, "Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The
Merchant of Venice," 38 Shakespeare Quarterly 19, 22 (1987). Karen Newman looks at
The Merchant of Venice in the light of L6vi-Strauss' anthropological theory of cultural
exchange (in which he defines the origin and sustenance of society to be the authorized
exchange of women to ensure male bonding) and of Luce Irigaray's feminist critique of
his theory. From this perspective, Newman concludes that "Instead of choosing one
interpretation over the another, idealized male friendship or homosexuality, Irigaray's
reading of L6vi-Strauss allows us to recognize in Antonio's relationship with Bassanio a
homosocial bond, a continuum of male relations which the exchange of women entails."

9. See Stone, supra note 3 at p. 118. In concluding his chapter on "Family

Characteristics," Stone explains that children were often sent out of the home to be
raised by other families. As a result, nuclear family bonds were weakened so bonds based
upon mutual political or economic interests could be strengthened. He writes that "This
was a family group was held together by shared economic status and political interests,
and by the norms and values of authority and deference. This was a family type which
was entirely appropriate to the social and economic world of the 16th century, in which
property was the only security against total destitution, in which connections and
patronage were the keys to success, in which power flowed to the oldest males under the
system of primogeniture, and in which the only career opening for women was in
marriage. In these circumstances the family structure was characterized by its hierarchical
distribution of power, held together not by affective bonds but by mutual economic
interests." To an Elizabethan audience, therefore, Antonio's paternal bond to Bassanio
would seem much more logical and familiar than it does to us today.

10. See Bevington, ed., supra note 7 at 104 for a translation of this story.

11. See Max James, "Our House is Hell": Shakespeare's Troubled Families (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989), pp. 12-16. See also Stone, supra note 3 at p. 190.

12. David Sundelson, "The Dynamics of Marriage in The Merchant of Venice," 4

Humanities in Society 245-262 (1981).

13. Carol Leventen, "Patrimony and Patriarchy in The Merchant of Venice," A Matter of
Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, Valerie Wayne, ed., afterword
by Catherine Belsey (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p.70.

14. Newman, supra note 8 at 25.

15. The Merchant of Venice (BBC television broadcast, 1981).

16. See Lawrence Danson, The Harmonies of The Merchant of Venice (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1978), pp. 165-169; Barbara K. Lewalski, "Biblical Allusion and Allegory
in The Merchant of Venice," 13 Shakespeare Quarterly 327, 334 (1962); reprinted in

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Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Merchant of Venice, Sylvan Barnet, ed. (New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 33-80. My reading exists in an unpublished essay,
"Reconciliation and Closure in The Merchant of Venice."

17. See F.W. Brownlow, "John Shakespeare's Recusancy: New Light on an Old Docu-
ment," 40 Shakespeare Quarterly 186 (1989). The document naming John Shakespeare as
a recusant is dated 1592, a date close to the earliest date of 1594 given for the
composition of The Merchant of Venice. Brownlow also points out that the authorities
tended to deal gently with most recusants, and that a common explanation for their
absence from church was debt. In the law and social culture of Elizabethan England,
there was evidently a connection between debt and religious nonconformity that may
have laid the groundwork for Shakespeare's development of a similar connection in
Merchant.

18. See further Daniel Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the
Middle Ages (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1977); David Berger, The Jewish-
Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 5739-1979), pp. 30-32; Egal
Feldman, Dual Destinies: The Jewish Encounter with Protestant America (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1990); and Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide (New
York: The Seabury Press, Inc., 1974). Cecil Roth also traces the origin of anti-semitism to
the Jews' refusal to convert, but shows that under John's reign, political and economic
concerns also became powerful motivators. See Roth, supra note 3 at 32.

19. Richard Popkin, "A Jewish Merchant of Venice," 40 Shakespeare Quarterly 329, 329-
331 (1989).

20. See Roth, supra note 3 at 139-144 and Maurice Freedman, A Minority in Britain: Social
Studies of the Anglo-Jewish Community (London: Mitchell Valentine, 1955), p.9. Roth's
chapter "The Middle Period" recounts the history of other Jewish groups in England,
suggesting that they were not completely absent from England during Elizabeth's reign.

21. Bonds - Made and Broken (New York Bar Association reading, December 11, 1992).
The reading was part of a symposium on "Legal Aspects of The Merchant of Venice." See
"Editor's Preface" to this number.

22. Novy, supra note 1 at 147.

23. Berger, supra note 4 at 161.

24. Id.

25. See Novy, supra note 1 at 148-149.

26. Richard Weisberg, Poethics, And Other Strategies of Law and Literature (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 102.
27. Id. at 101.

28. Ronald A. Sharp, "Gift Exchange and the Economies of Spirit in The Merchant of
Venice," 83 Modern Philology 250, 263 (1986).

29. Newman, supra note 8 at 32.

30. Anne Parten, "Re-establishing Sexual Order: The Ring Episode in The Merchant of
Venice," 9 Women's Studies 145, 145-155 (1982).

31. See Sundelson, supra note 12 at 252-257.

32. Roth, supra note 3 at 141-142.

33. James, supra note 11 at 97-98.

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