The Merchant of Venice Read Free

is wholly belied by her bravura performance in the cross-dressed role of Balthasar, interpreting the laws of Venice with forensic skill that reduces the duke and his magnificoes to amazement. On leaving Belmont, she says that she and Nerissa will remain in a nunnery, the ultimate place of female confinement, until Bassanio’s financial difficulties are resolved. She actually goes to the public arena of theVenetian court, moving from passive (the woman wooed) to active (the problem solver). In the robes of a lawyer instead of those of a nun, she excels in the art of debate, deploying a rhetorical art calculated to delight Queen Elizabeth, who loved nothing more than to outmaneuver courtiers, diplomats, and suitors in the finer points of jurisprudence and theology.
    “The quality of mercy is not strained”: the quality of Portia’s argument (and Shakespeare’s writing) unfolds from the several meanings of “strained.” Mercy is not constrained or forced, it must be freely given; nor is it partial or selective—it is a pure distillation like “the gentle rain from heaven,” not the kind of liquid from which impure particles can be strained out. As in
Measure for Measure
, Shakespeare explores the tension between justice and mercy, here interpreted in terms of the opposition between the Old Testament Jewish law of “an eye for an eye” and Christ’s New Testament covenant of forgiveness. When Shylock refuses to show mercy and stands by the old covenant, Portia’s art is to throw his legal literalism back in his face: the corollary of his demand for an exact pound of flesh is that he should not spill a drop of Venetian blood. But if the quality of mercy is not strained, then neither should be that of conversion: a bitter taste is left when Shylock is constrained to become a Christian.
“… AND WHICH THE JEW?”
    Commerce, with which Venice was synonymous, depends on borrowing to raise capital. Christianity, however, disapproved of usury, the lending of money with interest. The Jewish moneylender was early modern Europe’s way out of this impasse. Venice was famous for its ghetto in which the Jews were constrained to live, even as they oiled the wheels of the city’s economy. Shakespeare does not mention the ghetto, but he reveals a clear understanding of how the system worked when Shylock refuses Antonio’s invitation to dinner: “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” There is sociability and commerce between different ethnic and religious groups, but spiritual practices and customs are keptdistinct. Shylock will not go to dinner because his religion prevents him from eating pork, but ultimately he regards questions of business as more important than those of faith: he hates Antonio “for he is a Christian, /
But more
, for that in low simplicity / He lends out money gratis and brings down / The rate of usance here with us in Venice.”
    The historical reality in the age of Shakespeare was that Christians did lend money to each other with interest, while Judaic law as well as Christian frowned upon extortion. What one person regards as immoral exploitation another may regard as legitimate business practice. Shylock makes exactly this point when referring to “my bargains and my well-won thrift, / Which he [Antonio] calls interest.” There are Christian usurers in other plays of the time. Besides, Shylock does
not
charge interest on the three thousand ducats he lends Antonio: instead, he takes out a bond, albeit of a rather unusual kind, as his insurance policy. One of the play’s key puns, alongside those on terms that are both commercial and emotional such as “dear” and “bond,” is “rate,” which in the dialogue between Bassanio and Shylock about Antonio refers first to the question of interest rates and then to berating in the sense of abuse. The berating of Jew by Christian, and vice