Chance as fair, and choose as true:
Shakespeare does not say 'more fair,' 'more true.' i. ii. 30-36.This equal balancing of the alternatives will appear still clearer when we recollect that it is an intentional puzzle with which we are dealing, and accordingly that even if ingenuity could discover a preponderance of reason in favour of any one of the three, there would be the chance that this preponderance had been anticipated by the father who set the puzzle. The case becomes like that of children bidden to guess in which hand a sweetmeat is concealed. They are inclined to say the right hand, but hesitate whether that answer may not have been foreseen and the sweetmeat put in the left hand; and if on this ground they are tempted to be sharp and guess the left hand, there is the possibility that this sharpness may have been anticipated, and the sweetmeat kept after all in the right hand. If then the Caskets Story places before us three suitors, going through three trains of intricate reasoning for guidance in a matter on which their whole future depends, whereas we, the spectators, can see that from the nature of the case no reasoning can possibly avail them, we have clearly the Problem of Judgment by Appearances drawn out in its ideal form; and our sympathies are attracted by the sight of a process, belonging to our everyday experience, yet developed before us in all the force artistic setting can bestow.
Solution of the problem: the characters of the choosers determine their fates.
But is this all? Does Shakespeare display before us the problem, yet give no help towards its solution? The key to the suitors' fates is not to be found in the trains of reasoning they go through. As if to warn us against looking for it in this direction. Shakespeare contrives that we never hear the reasonings of the successful suitor. By a natural touch Portia, who has chosen Bassanio in her heart, is represented as unable to bear the suspense of hearing him deliberate, and calls for music to drown his meditations; iii. ii, from 43; esp. 61.it is only the conclusion to which he has come that we catch as the music closes. The particular song selected on this occasion points dimly in the direction in which we are to look for the true solution of the problem:
iii. ii. 63.
Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
'Fancy' in Shakespearean English means 'love'; and the discussion, whether love belongs to the head or the heart, is no inappropriate accompaniment to a reality which consists in this—that the success in love of the suitors, which they are seeking to compass by their reasonings, is in fact being decided by their characters.
To compare the characters of the three suitors, it will be enough to note the different form that pride takes in each. ii. i, vii.The first suitor is a prince of a barbarian race, who has thus never known equals, but has been taught to consider himself half divine; as if made of different clay from the rest of mankind he instinctively shrinks from 'lead.' ii. vii. 20.Yet modesty mingles with his pride, and though he feels truly that, so far ii. vii. 24-30.as the estimation of him by others is concerned, he might rely upon 'desert,' yet he doubts if desert extends as far as Portia. ii. vii, from 36.What seizes his attention is the words, 'what many men desire'; and he rises to a flight of eloquence in picturing wildernesses and deserts become thoroughfares by the multitude of suitors flocking to Belmont. But he is all the while betraying a secret of which he was himself unconscious: he has been led to seek the hand of Portia, not by true love, but by the feeling that what all the world is seeking the Prince of Morocco must not be slow to claim. Very different is the pride of Arragon. ii. ix.He has no regal position, but rather appears to be one who has fallen in social rank: compare ii. ix. 47-9.he makes up for such a fall by intense pride of family, and is one of those who complacently thank heaven that they are not as other men. The 'many men' which had attracted Morocco repels Arragon:
ii. ix. 31.