both parties thus showing that they considered the distinction between the using of flesh and metal for the medium of wealth to be the essential point in their dispute. With this notion then of flesh versus money floating in the air between them the interview goes on to the outbursts of mutual hatred which reach a climax in Antonio's challenge to Shylock to do his worst; i. iii, from 138.this challenge suddenly combines with the root idea of the conversation to flash into Shylock's mind the suggestion of the bond. In an instant he smoothes his face and proposes friendship. He will lend the money without interest, in pure kindness, nay more, he will go to that extent of good understanding implied in joking, and will have a merry bond; while as to the particular joke (he says in effect), since you Christians cannot understand interest in the case of money while you acknowledge it in the case of flesh and blood, suppose I take as my interest in this bond a pound of your own flesh. In such a context the monstrous proposal sounds almost natural. It has further been ushered in a manner which makes it almost impossible to decline it. When one who is manifestly an injured man is the first to make advances, a generous adversary finds it almost impossible to hold back. A sensitive man, again, will shrink from nothing more than from the ridicule attaching to those who take serious precautions against a jest. And the more incongruous Shylock's proposal is with commercial negotiations the better evidence it is of his non-commercial intentions. In a word, the essence of the difficulty was the incongruity between human flesh and money transactions: it has been surmounted by a discussion, flowing naturally from the position of the two parties, of which the point is the relative position of flesh and money as the medium of wealth in the past.
Difficulty of legally recognising the bond evaded:
The bond thus proposed and accepted, there follows the difficulty of representing it as entertained by a court of justice. With reference to Shakespeare's handling of this point it may be noted, first, that he leaves us in doubt whether the court would have entertained it: iv. i. 104.the Duke is intimating an intention of adjourning at the moment when the entrance of Portia gives a new turn to the proceedings. iv. i. 17.Again, at the opening of the trial, the Duke gives expression to the universal opinion that Shylock's conduct was intelligible only on the supposition that he was keeping up to the last moment the appearance of insisting on his strange terms, in order that before the eyes of the whole city he might exhibit his enemy at his mercy, and then add to his ignominy by publicly pardoning him: a fate which, it must be admitted, was no more than Antonio justly deserved. This will explain how Shylock comes to have a hearing at all: when once he is admitted to speak it is exceedingly difficult to resist the pleas Shakespeare puts into his mouth. iv. i. 38.He takes his stand on the city's charter and the letter of the law, and declines to be drawn into any discussion of natural justice; iv. i. 90.yet even as a question of natural justice what answer can be found when he casually points to the institution of slavery, which we must suppose to have existed in Venice at the period? Shylock's only offence is his seeking to make Antonio's life a matter of barter: what else is the accepted institution of slavery but the establishment of power over human flesh and blood and life, simply because these have been bought with money, precisely as Shylock has given good ducats for his rights over the flesh of Antonio? No wonder the perplexed Duke is for adjourning.
Difficulty as to the traditional mode of upsetting the bond met.
There remains one more difficulty, the mode in which, according to the traditional story, the bond is upset. It is manifest that the agreement as to the pound of flesh, if it is to be recognised by a court of justice at all, cannot without the grossest perversion of justice be cancelled on the ground of its omitting to mention blood. Legal evasion can go to great lengths. It is well known that an Act requiring cabs to carry lamps at night has been evaded through the omission of a direction that the lamps were to be lighted; and that importers have escaped a duty on foreign gloves at so much the pair by bringing the right-hand and left-hand gloves over in different ships. But it is perfectly possible to carry lamps without lighting them, while it is a clear impossibility to cut human flesh without shedding blood. Nothing of course would be easier than to upset the bond on rational grounds—indeed the difficulty is rather to imagine it receiving rational consideration at all; but on the other hand no solution of the perplexity could be half so dramatic as the one tradition has preserved. The dramatist has to choose between a course of procedure which shall be highly dramatic but leave a sense of injustice, and one that shall be sound and legal but comparatively tame. Shakespeare contrives to secure both alternatives. He retains the traditional plea as to the blood, but puts it into the mouth of one known to his audience to be a woman playing the lawyer for the nonce; iv. i. 314, 347.and again, before we have time to recover from our surprise and feel the injustice of the proceeding, he follows up the brilliant evasion by a sound legal plea, the suggestion of a real lawyer. Portia has come to the court from a conference with her cousin Bellario, the most learned jurist of Venice. iii. iv. 47; iv. i. 143.Certainly it was not this doctor who hit upon the idea of the blood being omitted. His contribution to the interesting consultation was clearly the old statute of Venice, which every one else seems to have forgotten, which made the mere attempt on the life of a citizen by an alien punishable with death and loss of property: according to this piece of statute law not only would Shylock's bond be illegal, but the demand of such security constituted a capital offence. Thus Shakespeare surmounts the final difficulty in the story of the Jew in a mode which retains dramatic force to the full, yet does this without any violation of legal fairness.
The interweaving of the two stories.
The second purpose of the present study is to show how Shakespeare has improved his two stories by so weaving them together that they assist one another's effect.
First, it is easy to see how the whole movement of the play rises naturally out of the union of the two stories. One of the main distinctions between the progress of events in real life or history and in Drama is that the movement of a drama falls into the form technically known as Complication and Resolution. Complication and Resolution.A dramatist fastens our attention upon some train of events: then he sets himself to divert this train of events from its natural course by some interruption; this interruption is either removed, and the train of events returns to its natural course, or the interruption is carried on to some tragic culmination. In The Merchant of Venice our interest is at the beginning fixed on Antonio as rich, high-placed, the protector and benefactor of his friends. By the events following upon the incident of the bond we see what would seem the natural life of Antonio diverted into a totally different channel; in the end the old course is restored, and Antonio becomes prosperous as before. Such interruption of a train of incidents is its Complication, and the term Complication suggests a happy Resolution to follow. Complication and Resolution are essential to dramatic movement, as discords and their 'resolution' into concords constitute the essence of music. The one story complicated and resolved by the other.The Complication and Resolution in the story of the Jew serve for the Complication and Resolution of the drama as a whole; and my immediate point is that these elements of movement in the one story spring directly out of its connection with the other. i. i, from 122; i. iii.But for Bassanio's need of money and his blunder in applying to Shylock the bond would never have been entered into, and the change in Antonio's fortunes would never have come about: thus the cause for all the Complication of the play (technically, the Complicating Force) is the happy lover of the Caskets Story. Similarly Portia is the means by which Antonio's fortunes are restored to their natural flow: in other words, the source of the Resolution (or Resolving Force) is the maiden of the Caskets Story. The two leading personages of the one tale are the sources respectively of the Complication and Resolution in the other tale, which carry the Complication and Resolution of the drama as a whole. Thus simply does the movement of the whole play flow from the union of the two stories.
The whole play symmetrical about its central scene.