“They lose it that do buy it with much care.”
Antonio replies:
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
Every one who has followed me so far will admit that this is Shakespeare's most usual and most ingenuous attitude towards life; “I do not esteem worldly possessions,” he says; “life itself is too transient, too unreal to be dearly held.” Gratiano's reflection, too, is Shakespeare's, and puts the truth in a nutshell:
“They lose it that do buy it with much care.”
We now come to the most salient peculiarity in this play. When Bassanio, his debtor, asks him for more money, Antonio answers:
“My purse, my person, my extremes! means,
Lie all unlocked to your occasions.”
And, though Bassanio tells him his money is to be risked on a romantic and wild adventure, Antonio declares that Bassanio's doubt does him more wrong than if his friend had already wasted all he has, and the act closes by Antonio pressing Bassanio to use his credit “to the uttermost.” Now, this contempt of money was, no doubt, a pose, if not a habit of the aristocratic society of the time, and Shakespeare may have been aping the tone of his betters in putting to show a most lavish generosity. But even if his social superiors encouraged him in a wasteful extravagance, it must be admitted that Shakespeare betters their teaching. The lord was riotously lavish, no doubt, because he had money, or could get it without much trouble; but, put in Antonio's position, he would not press his last penny on his friend, much less strain his credit “to the uttermost” for him as Antonio does for Bassanio. Here we have the personal note of Shakespeare: “Your affection,” says the elder man to the younger, “is all to me, and money's less than nothing in the balance. Don't let us waste a word on it; a doubt of me were an injury!” But men will do that for affection which they would never do in cool blood, and therefore one cannot help asking whether Shakespeare really felt and practised this extreme contempt of wealth? For the moment, if we leave his actions out of the account, there can be, I think, no doubt about his feelings. His dislike of money makes him disfigure reality. No merchant, it may fairly be said, either of the sixteenth century or the twentieth, ever amassed or kept a fortune with Antonio's principles. In our day of world-wide speculation and immense wealth it is just possible for a man to be a millionaire and generous; but in the sixteenth century, when wealth was made by penurious saving, by slow daily adding of coin to coin, merchants like this Antonio were unheard of, impossible.
Moreover all the amiable characters in this play regard money with unaffected disdain; Portia no sooner hears of Shylock's suit than she cries:
“Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond;
Double six thousand, and then treble that,
Before a friend of this description
Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault.”