William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice 1596-1599

1. William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice 1596-1599

2. Aristotle 384-322 B.C. 1564-1616

7. THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY DUKE of Venice PORTIA, the lady of Belmont NERISSA, her gentlewoman PRINCE OF MOROCCO Portia’s suitors PRINCE OF ARRAGON BALTHASAR Portia’s servants STEFANO

8. THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY BASSANIO LEONARDO, Bassanio's servant ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice, Bassanio's friend GRAZIANO, Bassanio's friend LORENZO, Bassanio's friend, in love with Jessica SOLANIO SALARINO Venetian gentlemen, Antonio's friends SALERIO (Go to 19)

9. The Plot • There two several plots and sub plots in The Merchant of Venice. • The main plot is revolves around Bassanio, who needs a loan of three thousand ducats so that he can marry Portia, a wealthy Venetian heiress. • He approaches his friend Antonio, a merchant for the ducats. • Antonio is short of money because all his wealth is invested in his fleet, which is currently at sea.

10. The Plot • He goes to a Jewish money lender, Shylock, who hates Antonio because of Antonio’s anti-semiticbehaviourtowards him. • Shylock nevertheless agrees to make the short-term loan, but he makes a condition – the loan must be repaid in three months or Shylock will exact a pound of flesh from Antonio. • Antonio agrees, confident that his ships will return in time.

11. The Plot • The other plot regards the terms of Portia’s father’s will, where all suitors must choose from among three caskets, one of which contains a portrait of her. • If he chooses that he may marry Portia. They fail the test and are rejected. • As Bassanio prepares to travel to Belmont for the test, his friend Lorenzo elopes with Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (a secondary plot).

12. The Plot • Bassaniochooses the lead casket, which contains her picture, and Portia happily agrees to marry him immediately. • Meanwhile, they get news that two of Antonio’s ships have been wrecked and Antonio’s creditors are pressuring him for repayment. • Word comes to Bassanio about Antonio’s predicament, and he hurries back to Venice, leaving Portia behind. • Portia follows him, accompanied by her maid, Nerissa.

13. The Plot • They are disguised as a male lawyer and his clerk. • When Bassanio arrives the date for the repayment to Shylock has passed and Shylock is demanding his pound of flesh. • Even when Bassanio offers much more than the amount in repayment, Shylock, now infuriated by the loss of his daughter, is intent on seeking revenge on the Christians. The Duke refuses to intervene.

14. The Plot • Portia arrives in her disguise to defend Antonio. • Given the authority of judgment by the Duke. • Portia decides that Shylock can have the pound of flesh as long as he doesn’t draw blood, as it is against the law to shed a Christian’s blood, and he cannot draw a gram more o less, but be an exact pound. • Since it is obvious that to draw a pound of flesh would kill Antonio, Shylock is denied his suit.

15. The Plot • Moreover, for conspiring to murder a Venetian citizen, Portia orders that he should forfeit all his wealth. • Half is to go to Venice, and half to Antonio.

16. The Plot • Antonio gives his half back to Shylock on the condition that Shylock bequeath it to his disinherited daughter, Jessica. • Shylock must also convert to Christianity. A broken Shylock accepts. • News arrives that Antonio’s remaining ships have returned safely. • With the exception of Shylock, all celebrate a happy ending to the affair.

19. The Text: • The Merchant of Venice has long been considered the most problematic of Shakespeare’s plays. • Its mingling of the commonly separated worlds of romance and of commerce; • the dark presence of Shylock, a figure too powerful to serve comfortably as the type of comic countervoice. • Also we have the modern disability to take lightly the anti-Semitic sneers of such characters as Launcelot Gobbo and Gratiano have caused critical unease.

20. Launcelot Gobbo

21. Old Gobbo

22. Old Gobbo and Launcelot Gobbo

23. Graziano

24. Nerissa

25. The Text: • The play is usually treated in terms of period, sources, genre, or allegory. • When examined directly, it is most often approached in part, and a single figure or theme is isolated for discussion. • Critics who attempt to deal with the play as a whole frequently, even in the midst of praise, express dissatisfaction with its artistry. • Shakespeare is lauded for his ingenious interweaving of the main stories, but the fifth act ring trick is often considered anti-climatic and thematically unnecessary.

26. Introduction: • He is praised for his creation of “flesh and blood characters”, but the hero, Antonio, is found peculiarly inconsistent and unrealized; • the romantic hero, Bassanio, is accused of being a fortune hunter, the lovers Jessica and Lorenzo are covered with opprobrium, the clown Launcelot Gobbo is condemned as one of Shakespeare’s most pointless comic creations, and the play’s senex-villain, Shylock, is as often as not treated as the play’s true, though suppressed, hero.

27. For me, the whole plot is triggered by the transaction Bassiano makes with Shylock: • 1.3 Enter Bassanio with Shylock the Jew • SHYLOCK Three thousand ducats. Well. • BASSANIO Ay, sir, for three months. • SHYLOCK For three months. Well. • BASSANIO For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. • SHYLOCK Antonio shall become bound. Well. • BASSANIO May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your answer? • SHYLOCK Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio hound.

28. BASSANIO Your answer to that. • SHYLOCK Antonio is a good man. • BASSANIO Have you heard any imputation to the contrary? • SHYLOCK Ho, no, no, no, no. My meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition. He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men. There be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land thieves-I mean pirates -and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, sufficient.

29. Three thousand ducats; I think I may take his bond. • BASSANIO Be assured you may. • SHYLOCK I will be assured I may, and that I may be assured, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio? • BASSANIO If it please you to dine with us. (pp. 118-119). • SHYLOCK (aside) Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you a so following; but I will not eat with you, I will not drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here? (pp. 118-119).

30. And the loan is sealed in blood: • SHYLOCK This kindness will I show. Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond, and, in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me. (p. 125)

31. Portia

33. Bassanio

35. Jessica

36. Lorenzo

37. The Bond • Reading the critics one looks in vain for the presence of what might be called the plays “magnetic center” - that governing idea which provides the cohesive force for all parts of this seemingly diffuse play. • Yet, without committing the folly of trying to state specifically what The Merchant of Venice means, it still seems possible to discover the common denominator which links such apparently disparate elements as the three main actions of the play:

38. The Bond • the pound-of-flesh plot • the casket plot • and ring plot • and the two sub- actions: the Lorenzo/Jessica elopement and the Launcelot Gobbo change of masters. • The unifying theme of The Merchant of Venice lies in its pervasive examinations of bonds: • the natural bonds of blood and service which make society possible

39. The Meaning • the emotional bonds of love and friendship which make society endurable. • and the unnatural monetary bonds of the world of trade, which all this linking together persons who share no other human tie, can gain such hold that they smother and destroy all the rest. • The importance of the bond theme has been noted before, particularly in regard to Shylock’s “merry bond” with Antonio, but its central significance for all the actions of the play has not been sufficiently emphasized.

40. The Bond • Both major and minor characters are caught in the tensions generated by the plays effort to wring a festive resolution from the diverse impulses radiating from these conflicting human bonds. • Shakespeare uses the subsidiary story of Lorenzo and Jessica to emphasize the dominance of this theme in the play’s structure.

41. Lancelot Gobbo • The problem faced in the play by all but the single-minded Shylock, that of evaluating the claims of contradictory demands, is the burden of Gobbo’s first appearance. • In II.iiLancelot must arbitrate between the conflicting demands of his natural inclinations and his sense of duty. • His conscience tells Lancelot that he must remain a faithful servant to his master, Shylock, but “the fiend” (the devil) advises him to run away from his indenture:

42. Lancelot Gobbo

43. Lancelot Gobbo • “Fiend,” (devil) say I, “you counsel well.”-To be rul’d by my con science, I should stay with the Jew my master, who God bless the mark is a kind of devil; and to run away from the Jew,I should be ruled by the fiend, who saving your reverence is the devil himself. (131) • Lancelot’s decision to follow the advice of the fiend sets his tone for the rest of the play, for Launcelot, a “merry devil” (II.iii.2, p. 139), makes mockery of both legal and natural bonds. • Though “bound” to Shylock he will “run as far as God has any ground” (II.ii. 105-106, p. 134), if not permitted to enter the service of Bassanio.

44. Lancelot Gobbo • His attitude toward the marriage bond, if Lorenzo’s reference to his “getting up of the Negro’s belly,” (making the Moor (negress) woman pregnant) is any clue, is of a piece with his attitude toward his obligation to his master. • “The Moor is with child by you Lancelot!” (III.v.35-36, p. 185) Lorenzo accuses, but Lancelot’s reply is meaningless doubletalk.

45. Lancelot Gobbo • His disregard for the bonds of society even extends to an implied mockery of the relationship of God and people, for he “blames” Lorenzo for Jessica’s conversion, declaring • “we were Christians enough before, e’en as many as could well live one by another: this making of Christians will raise the price of hogs, - if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money” (III.v.19-23, p. 185). • In terms of the structure of the playhowever, Lancelot's most significant mockery is that directed toward the bond between father and child.

46. Jessica’s Betrayal • Having witnessed Lancelot's comic defection we are in some sense prepared to find Jessica agreeing, “Our house is hell” (II. iii. 2, p. 139), and deciding to run away. • Lancelot, after teasing Old Gobbowith a false report of his death, is recognized as “mine own flesh and blood” (II. ii. 88, p. 134), but Jessica’s disavowal of Shylock is beyond jest.

47. Jessica’s Betrayal • Jessica Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father's child! But though I am a daughter to his blood I am not to his manners. (II. iii. 16-19, p. 139)

48. Jessica

49. Jessica’s Betrayal • Unable to satisfy both father and lover, she proclaims, “O Lorenzo, / If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, / Become a Christian and thy loving wife!” (II. iii. 19-21, p. 139). • In choosing lover over father, Jessica places herself in a long line of Shakespearean heroines.

50. Jessica’s Betrayal • Like Portia, she is associated with caskets and wealth, but the “casket” she throws to Lorenzo is stolen from her father, and her conversation with her lover, though it refers ostensibly to embarrassment at her masculine disguise, suggests a deeper uneasiness about the course she has taken: • “What, must I hold a candle to my shames? They in themselves (goodsooth) are too too light. Why, “tis an office of discovery (love), And I should be obscur”d. (II.vi. 41-45, p. 147)