Table Of ContentTHE MERCHANT OF VENICE:
Choice, Hazard and Consequence
THE MERCHANT OF
VENICE
Choice, Hazard and Consequence
JOAN OZARK HOLMER
Macmillan Education
ISBN 978-0-333-52264-6 ISBN 978-1-349-23846-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23846-0
© Joan Ozark Holmer 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1995
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1995
ISBN 978-0-312-12411-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holmer, Joan Ozark.
The Merchant of Venice: choice, hazard and consequence / Joan
Ozark Holmer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-12411-3 (cloth)
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Merchant of Venice.
I. Title.
PR2825.H64 1995
822.3'3-dc20 94-33031
CIP
To my family,
for all their love and support
Contents
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xix
List of Abbreviations xxi
1 'Truth will come to light': The Historical Prism 1
2 '0 me, the word "choose''': Structure and Language 40
3 'Give and hazard': Friends and Lovers 95
4 'Pardon this fault': Antonio and Shylock 142
5 A Daniel come to judgement': The Trial 183
I
6 'Joy be the consequence': Union and Reunion 246
Notes 285
Bibliography 342
Index 356
vii
List of Figures
1 Diagram of structural unity 50
2 Diagram of biblical genealogy 74
viii
Preface
In the course of this book I will embrace Hamlet's conclusion
that 'the play's the thing' (2.2.604). In my focus on the playa
difficult question will be debated: does Shakespeare fashion an
artistic unity out of the richly varied and often contradictory el
ements that constitute The Merchant of Venice? This fundamental
question, voiced in sundry ways, vexes both textual and perform
ance criticism up to the present moment and will probably con
tinue to do so. The more we discover about this play and its
significant contexts, the more we realise we need to know about
Shakespeare, sixteenth-century literature, Elizabethan England,
Renaissance Europe, and ourselves. I will explore Shakespeare's
artistic choices and risks, analysing how and why Shakespeare
refashioned materials available to him (both old and new sources)
as well as what novelties he added to create what has become
his most frequently performed comedy, and for our century, what
has also become his most controversial comedy. This study will
attempt to demonstrate that this play possesses a profoundly complex
dramatic unity. What most effectively prevents our appreciation
of this complexity is quite simply oversimplification, whether
through lack of knowledge or lack of perception, and all of us
may be guilty of oversimplification to various degrees. The play's
inherent dynamic energy almost attacks us as we confront the many
twists and turns in the staging of its intricately interrelated plots.
Wrestling with this play over the years has confirmed for me
that there shall probably never be a 'final' interpretation or any
single reading or approach that does justice to the orchestrated
whole of The Merchant of Venice. Perhaps the most daunting chal
lenge that scholars, directors, actors, and teachers face is keeping
the 'whole' of the play in 'play', whether in one's own mind and
heart or on stage in the minds and hearts of many others. It is
always easier to get a relative grip on 'parts' of the play, such as
its 'economics' or the Christian-Jew issue, but the consequent
danger lies in fallaciously substituting the part for the whole.
I suggest that The Merchant of Venice is paradoxically more than
the sum of its parts. The play in its entirety is bigger, more inclusive
ix
x Preface
and elusive, than anyone of us, including myself, who spend
countless hours in the library and in the theatre, enjoying it,
wondering about it, and trying to pluck out the heart of its mys
tery. Therefore, this study suffers from no delusion of pretend
ing to be 'the final word' on the play. New discoveries will always
be forthcoming, and pre-existing interpretations will have to be
refined to accommodate new evidence. However, any 'perform
ance', whether of an actor or a critic, must become temporarily
'fixed' for the moment of its reception by another. Different modes
of production vary in degree of fluidity; although the actor can
revise a gesture in the next day's performance, the critic will have
to wait considerably longer before revising in print. Therefore,
Hiis particular study of the play at this point in time is intended
to explore new ways of seeing the play in light of the question of
dramatic unity and therein contribute to what I see as the on
going debate over this inexhaustible play and the unending search
it provokes for me and for others.
But if we are going to focus on 'the play', what do we mean
by 'the play'? The play-script as performed? The play-text as written
and as read? In the past thirty years literary criticism and re
search have witnessed some extraordinary changes in questions
asked, methods used, approaches taken, and ideas examined,
proliferating sites of meaning as well as fundamental reconsider
ation of such formerly basic terms as 'performance', 'meaning',
'text', and 'play'. Both aspects of the play, as script and as text,
necessarily complement each other, go hand-in-glove, as it were.
However, script and text allow for different modes of question
ing and representation of response. The greater the separation in
time between the play's two historicities - the immediate era of
its production versus subsequent eras of its production - theo
retically the greater the need for mediation, whether that mediation
concerns stage conventions, language, social customs, or ideas.
In other words, Shakespeare's audiences presumably needed much
less 'glossing' than we do. Although his audiences were by no
means homogeneous, they enjoyed an arguably lesser degree of
heterogeneity than audiences today, especially regarding differ
ences in races, religions, politics, and languages. An actor, for
example, has to find a dramatic gesture, intonation, or facial ex
pression that will convey to a modern audience the bawdy innu
endo of some word (e.g., 'ring') now no longer perceived as bawdy
but whose former bawdy sense has been sufficiently glossed by
Preface xi
Shakespearian scholars. The actor is 'spared' the drudgery of work
in the library's stacks, but the scholar is also 'spared' the actor's
imaginative work of active 'translation'.
In an ideal world both should collaborate, sharing each other's
wealth, and positive signs of such collaboration are increasingly
visible in various guises - dramaturgs in repertory companies
and actors in the classrooms. But in the real world of rehearsal
deadlines and page limits we too often need to pick and choose,
to become increasingly focused or specialised. As my wise men
tor, Dan Seltzer, was fond of observing in class, the study of
Shakespeare involves the art of amputation. No one can do it all,
and some of the deliberate limitations of my book concern gen
eral theoretical debates about Shakespeare and the review of per
formance criticism, matters large enough and important enough
to constitute separate books in their own rights. The Merchant of
Venice already enjoys an extensive history of performance criti
cism, which I have not the space to review. However, James C.
Bulman's recent book on the subject opens, not surprisingly, by
calling attention to the 'crucial problem in staging The Merchant
of Venice', namely 'how to balance its two distinct and seemingly
unrelated plots' because 'Venice and Belmont seem to belong to
different plays,.1 This is the very problem I seek to understand here.
I, therefore, have chosen to focus on the play-text and to at
tempt to provide new information of an analytical and descrip
tive nature that could prove useful to a director, actor, or
performance critic. But I try to stop short of prescribing how this
information could or should be enacted on stage. Let us consider
briefly one example that illustrates my rationale. One of the most
exciting and provocative videocassettes to use in teaching this
play derives from the 'Playing Shakespeare' series, coordinated
by John Barton. In this videotape, entitled 'Exploring a Charac
ter', Patrick Stewart and David Suchet, who take turns playing
Shylock, discuss with Barton how they envision the role and why
they make the choices they do. Stewart and Suchet, in a work
shop format, enact pivotal moments from the play, back-to-back
and exchanging roles with each other. The viewer is privileged
to witness simultaneously fine acting and alternative interpreta
tions, despite identical text and essentially identical direction from
Barton. In their discussion of Shylock, however, emphasis is placed
on the subject of money, but virtually no emphasis is placed on
modes of money, the importance of how money is obtained, whether
