Shylock (page 3)

Lee Lady

Shylock's Language

A lot of Shakespearean criticism is devoted to the piecing together of various little factual (as it were) clues occurring in the text. But it seems clear to me that Shakespeare did not pay a lot of attention to these little details. In particular, by the time he got caught up in the excitement of writing Acts 3 and 4 of a play, he seems to have had very little concern for consistency with the details of what he had written in Act 1. What he did obviously care about, and obviously put a lot of effort into, was language. Language was Shakespeare's number one tool for characterization. What makes Shakespeare different from earlier writers and other writers of his own time, in fact, is that in Shakespeare different characters have different styles of speaking, and the way in which many characters speak, although stylized, seems to be a very good reflection of the ways in which people speak in real life. In this respect, Shylock is one of Shakespeare's most interesting and colorful characters. (Iago in Othello is another, as Frank Kermode points out in his very enlightening book Shakespeare's Language.) There is something about Shylock's speech patterns that is somehow very Jewish.

Shylock appears in only five scenes of the play, and in each scene his language is different. But there is something very comic about his language and at the same time a little distasteful, rather sleazy. When Shylock first appears in the play (Act 1, Scene 3), we get the following oft quoted passage:

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 be 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 bound.

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 that he is sufficient.

Of course we see right away that Shylock has values that are generally despised in romantic comedies. Namely, he looks at everything in terms of money. The style of speech here is not something that a writer can invent out of nowhere. It is a caricature, but it is a caricature of some actual person (or persons) that Shakespeare had listened to. Aside from being alien, there is something to the cadences of Shylock's speech in this scene that suggests that this is not a man one would choose to be friends with. This is a man who is always calculating. Even if he were not a Jew, he would still fit the pattern of the parasitical banker. This is not someone who will evoke a natural sympathy from an audience, even today when members of the audience may themselves be bankers.

Shylock As a Comic Villain

Although Shylock's function in the Merchant is to be the villain, he is not the classic type of villain: the type one finds in a James Bond story, for instance. In Shakespeare, this type is represented by Edmund in King Lear or Iago in Othello or Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and his mode of action is usually treachery. I am tempted to call this type of villain the "professional villain," because being a villain defines his function in life (or at least in the literary work).

This is what an Elizabethan audience might have expected in a character who is a Jew and a moneylender. This is what they had seen in Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta.

Shylock, on the other hand, is the type one might call the underdog villain. His characteristic mode is not treachery but resentment. He sees himself (with considerable justification) as a victim of perennial mistreatment, and he sees himself as finally having a chance to get what he sees as what he deserves. He doesn't talk about how much he will relish his revenge; instead, throughout the play, his constant refrain is, "I want what I'm entitled to." To me, there's almost a bit of desperation in Shylock, as if he's finally now got his big chance and he's very worried that somebody cheat him out of it.

Whereas the treacherous villain is coldly calculating, Shylock is ruled by very strong feelings and is not noticeably clever. Edmund and Iago succeed in their villainy because they are skilled at manipulating human beings. Shylock, on the other hand, seems to have no skill at all in dealing with people. He seems to be very alone in his world.

Throughout the seventeen and eighteenth centuries, Shylock was always played at a comic villain, up until Edmund Kean's performance in 1814. Not comic in the sense of a comedian who makes us laugh, but rather a ridiculous figure who is that butt of our laughter. To me, it seems clear from the language of the text that this is what Shakespeare intended, although there is certainly also some almost inescapable pathos in the portrayal of the Jew.

John Palmer, in his book Comic Characters of Shakespeare (1946), draws attention to the following passage from Act 3 Scene 3 (prior to the courtroom scene):

Antonio is in the street, escorted by his jailer.

Antonio: Hear me yet, good Shylock.

Shylock. I'll have my bond! Speak not against my bond!
I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond.
Thou call'dst me dog before thou have a cause,
But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.
The Duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder,
Thou wicked jailer, that you foolishly
Come abroad with him at his request.

Antonio. I pray thee, hear me speak.

Shylock. I'll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak.
I'll have my bond, and therefore speak no more.
I'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool,
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors. Follow not.
I'll have no speaking. I'll have my bond.    [Exits.]

I've followed John Palmer's example in emphasizing the constant repetitions of the word bond. There's an almost childish petulance here in Shylock's anger which puts us in the realm of sitcoms. (And yet Shakespeare doesn't make things completely one-sided. He still reminds us that Shylock's grievances are indeed real.)

Because today we tend to see Shylock primarily (and rightly) as a victim of unfair discrimination, we find that Shylock's misfortunes tend to make him a more sympathetic figure than a comic one. We see him as deserving sympathy rather than mockery when his daughter runs away. But if Shakespeare didn't intend Shylock to be comic, then why on earth did he give him the sort of language he did?

In Act 2 Scene 8, Solanio reports on Shylock's resonse to his daughter's flight and her theft of his money and goods in one of the play's funniest passages.

Solanio. I never heard a passion so confused,
So strange, so outrageous, and so variable
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets.
"My daughter! Oh, my ducats! Oh, my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! Oh my Christian ducats!
Justice! The law! My ducats and my daughter!
A sealèd bag, two sealèd bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stol'n from me by my daughter,
And jewels --- two stones, two rich and precious stones,
Stol'n by my daughter. Justice! Find the girl!
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats!

Solerio. Why all the boys in Venice follow him,
Crying his stones, his daughter, and his ducats.

Of course we should not take Solanio's version as a verbatim report of Shylock's statements. Like any good storyteller, Solanio has added a considerable amount of exaggeration to his account. But obviously the audience is intended to share Solanio's point of view and laugh at Shylock. Starting with the very beginning of the play, Shakespeare uses Solanio and Solerio as a useful device to give the audience information about things that have happened offstage, and I think they are clearly intended to be taken as reliable reporters.

The humor here makes it clear that the audience was expected to applaud Shylock's daughter Jessica for her treachery, thinking that it was just what the old Jew deserved. After all, as the Elizabethan audience would see it, most of Shylock's riches were got by exploiting other people's misery in any case. (Compare the way a contemporary audience feels when someone steals a lot of money from a rich drug dealer.)

If instead a production tends to play up the pathos of a father deserted by his daughter, then the actor has to suppress the humor in Salanio's report and play it only for its cruelty (which is surely there). This is possible, but difficult.

And I think it is clear that that the Elizabethan audience would have cheered Jessica's rejection (totally unrealistic as it is) of her Judaism (Act 2 Scene 3).

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. Oh, Lorenzo,
If thou keep promise, I will end this strife,
Become a Christian and thy loving wife!

To a modern audience (or at least to me, in any case), this particular speech has a bit of the flavor of bad melodrama. I feel that Shakespeare has here not done very well at what we usually expect of him, namely showing us human beings as they really are. I can believe that Shylock's daughter would run away from him, and I can even believe that she would be ashamed of being Jewish, but I can't believe that she wouldn't have any ambivalence about what she was doing.

Act 3 Scene 2, where we see Shylock's reaction to his desertion by his daughter, is probably the most comic scene of the entire play. Shylock is much less concerned with the loss of his daughter (who, incidentally, he did not treat especially kindly) than with the loss of the money and jewels she took with her.

Shylock. Why there, gone, gone, gone. A diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt! The curse never fell upon our nation [i.e. upon the Jews] until now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would that my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear! Would that she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin!

But interspersed with Shylock's wailing about the loss of his daughter and the ducats and jewels she took with her is his joy that Antonio will be ruined and will be forced to forfeit the pound of flesh he pledged.

Tubal. Yes, other men have ill luck too. Antonio, as I heard in Genoa.

Shylock. What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck?

Tubal. Hath an argosy cast away coming home from Tripolis.

Shylock. I thank God, I thank God. Is it true, is it true?

Tubal. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck.

Shylock. I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news! Ha, ha!

I think that the way we interpret Jessica's running away from Shylock has a lot of influence the way we interpret Shylock's legal duel with Portia. Because by the usual logic of stories, if the first incident shows Shylock as a villain who we laugh at when his schemes go awry, then we are prepared for the same sort of thing in the courtroom. But if the first incident shows Shylock as a victim of unfair misfortune, then we will be predisposed to expect the same to be the case in the courtroom scene. (The story line leaves either interpretation perfectly possible. But I believe that the language of the text does not.)

In my article on Portia, I discuss in some detail the comedy in Shylock's appearance in the courtroom (i.e. Duke's chambers). This situation in this seen can be seen as fairly broad farce, almost something out of Molière or a sitcom like Married with Children, with Antonio standing with his chest bared and Shylock sharpening his knife, getting ready to cut. I easily imagine Shylock in this scene being played by Danny DaVito. Unless one sees that scene as comic, then the play, in my opinion, can't quite be made to fit together; if the Antonio-Shylock-Porta interaction is treated as quite serious, then it's hard to make Portia's character in the Duke's chambers mesh with what it is in the rest of the play.

The Moment Where the Play Starts to Go Off the Rails

I have noticed that in many of Shakespeare's plays there is a point, usually about half way through, where the play goes off the rails and refuses to fit into the plot Shakespeare was working from. The characters in the play start getting interested in each other and saying things to each other that are not in the script, so to speak.

This happens in King Lear, as I see in, when Lear gets shut out of the castle and is alone in the storm with the Fool, the disguised Kent, and Poor Tom. In Hamlet, it happens almost at the very beginning, when for the better part of three acts Shakespeare is more interested in Hamlet's playing the court jester as a means of pretending to be crazy than in the revenge tragedy he had intended to write, and thus leaves critics hundreds of years later baffled by, for instance, the question of why Hamlet ever talks to Ophelia the way he does. In Much Ado About Nothing, it starts when Benedick and Beatrice start sparring with each other, thus completely overwhelming what was intended to be the primary plot --- the Claudio-Hero-Don John story (c.f. the commentary by Martin Holmes in Shakespeare's Public).

In the Merchant of Venice, as I see it, this happens as soon as Shylock appears on stage: in Act 1 Scene 3, where Shylock complains of Antonio's treatment of him and then offers (sincerely or treacherously, depending on the actor's choice) to forgive him and be friends with him.

This interaction, I believe, is typical of Shakespeare's way of working. The plot Shakespeare planned to follow (and for the most part did follows) required that Shylock offer to lend Antonio the money requested, with a pound of flesh as the security. But Shakespeare couldn't leave it at that. Because Shakespeare started thinking of Antonio and Shylock as real people rather than a cardboard hero and a cardboard villain, and got interested in the question of what it would actually be like when Venice's most prominent Jewish moneylender was approached for help by Venice's most notorious anti-Semite.

At first in Act 1 Scene 3 Shylock makes an aside that shows him as a villain somewhat comparable to Richard III.

Shylock. I hate him for he is a Christian;
But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,
Even there where merchants most do congregate,
On me, my bargains, and my well worn thrift,
Which he calls interest. Cursèd be my tribe
If I forgive him.

The first six lines here show Shylock as the sort of villain one might find in a classic melodrama. Certainly his overt statement that he hates Christians would in itself be enough to determine the Elizabethan audience's attitude. But then there are a couple of incongruous words, namely the phrase "our sacred nation," and two lines later, "my well worn thrift." Here we start to see Shylock as more than a member of an evil cult that hates Christians. Shakespeare reminds his audience that Shylock's own religion is as sacred to him as Christianity was to them. And while the Signet edition of the play glosses "thrift" as "prosperity," it seems to me that there must have been even four hundred years ago a suggestion in this choice of word that however immoral the Elizabethan might consider the means by which Shylock's wealth was accumulated, nonetheless there was a lot of hard work and planning involved. Perhaps I make too much of these two phrases.

But then in Shylock's next major speech, he tells the story of Jacob and Laban as justification for the practice of charging interest on loans. Shakespeare's audience would undoubtedly have rejected this justification, but still, it does show us that there is another point of view possible and that Shylock did regard himself as a legitimate businessman and not an evildoer. This is not a passage that would change the mind of anti-Semites, but still, it is very different from what one sees in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.

And then we get to two of the most often quoted passages from the Merchant (quoted by me above), where Shylock first of all complains about the way Antonio has always treated him, saying,

Shylock. Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For such is the nature of our tribe.
You called me misbeliever, cutthroat dog,
And spat upon my Jewish gabardine,
And all for the use of that which is my own.

As I've mentioned, Shakespeare's audience probably thought of this complaint in somewhat the same way we think of Don Corleone or the other Mafia types in the Godfather when they complain about the way they are treated by the newspapers and the government. But Shylock's first sentence here, that he has borne Antonio's treatment with patience because Jews are used to being mistreated, while it might not change any minds, is certainly one that would tend to make Shylock more sympathetic to anyone who came to the play without any existing prejudice. These are powerful lines and, at the very least, deserve an answer. But neither Antonio nor any of the other characters really offer a rebuttal. Antonio responds merely that he is not asking Shylock for a loan on the basis of friendship, but rather offering Shylock the opportunity to lend money to an enemy with the hope of having revenge if that enemy should default on the loan.

And then Shylock takes the play in a very surprising direction by telling Antonio that he would really like to become friends. This is the point at which the interaction has definitely begun to deviate from the original plot. (I repeat a short passage already quoted.)

Shylock. Why look you, how you storm!
I would be friends with you and have your love,
[I would] Forget the shames that you have stained me with,
Supply your present wants, and take no doit
Of usance for my moneys. And you'll not hear me.
This is kind [i.e. generosity] I offer.

One can hear this either as sincere or as treacherous hypocrisy. Different critics, and different performances, have had diametrically different opinions on which is the "correct" reading. But what we can note is that here in Act 1, Shakespeare has opened up a question (or questions) for us which one might expect the rest of the play to explore. The groundwork has been laid for a very interesting play which would explore the clash between these two very different men with very different value systems.

But Shakespeare couldn't let the play go in the direction of a struggle of values between Antonio and Shylock without completely abandoning the story he was working from, because this story, as I see it, was one of the most constrictive ones in all his plays. Shakespeare had to get to the duel in the courtroom between Shylock and Portia, because I think that from the beginning, this was the aspect of the story that originally attracted him and that he expected to appeal to his audience. (Apparently the story of the caskets was also one that he found interesting.)

What sort of conversation would there have been between Antonio and Shylock if Shakespeare had allowed Antonio to continue in the direction he started in Act 1? Presumably Antonio would have been the representative of Christianity, of generosity, and of mercy. The Quality of Mercy speech, which seems so out of character coming out of Portia's mouth, would have been spoken by Antonio. And then Shylock would have been the representative of the sort of legalism which in some ways is inherent in Judaism. (Did Shakespeare know enough about Judaism to consciously put this in the play? We can't know, and it seems unlikely. Nonetheless, many people do see this conflict of values as one of the key elements of the play.)

But Shakespeare's source story had Portia, not Antonio, dueling with Shylock in the courtroom and that situation, a woman in disguise outsmarting all the males, was one that always attracted Shakespeare and appealed to his audience. So Shakespeare turned away from the Antonio-Shylock story and forced his play back on the rails. It is Portia in her courtroom speech who is the one who champions the Christian virtue of mercy, and then turns around and defeats Shylock by the sort of pilpul one might expect of a Jewish rabbi, more or less, subsequently offering him very little in the way of mercy. (Being thus, cynics might claim, a typical representative of Christian hypocrisy.) And the play's title character, Antonio, is left without any real role in the play except as a plot device, a Merchant in Distress for Portia to rescue. He turns into a surprisingly passive and somewhat fatalistic character who, after that first interaction, is not capable of any further conversation with Shylock.

In creative writing classes, students learn that the essence of drama is conflict. Yet Shakespeare, after laying down the basis for a conflict between Shylock and Antonio, seems to go out of his way to avoid developing that conflict.

Consider again Shylock's most powerful speech.

Shylock. Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, passions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

It is as if Shylock is saying here, "All I ever wanted was just to be treated with the respect due to any human being. I know you don't approve of my religion and you don't like the way I earn my living. But just acknowledge that it is you Christians, after all, who have forced us Jews to become money lenders. And much as you may dislike money lending, it is an essential activity without which commerce in Venice could not function. I don't ask for your approval; all I want is to be treated with a little common decency. Give me that much and I will forget about the pound of flesh."

We today, juding the play from our post-Holocaust perspective, undoubtedly put more stress on this speech than an Elizabethan audience did. But how could any audience hear this speech without at least momentarily seeing that there was more to Shylock than a mere comic villain?

This speech is delivered not to Antonio but to Salerio. Why would a playwright as skillful as Shakespeare have one of the most powerful speeches of his play delivered to a minor character, someone who is little more than a spear-carrier, and have it never responded to?

It would have been very difficult for Antonio to respond to such a speech (except by acknowledging that his own attitudes had been wrong). A response by Antonio would have made for an interesting play.

In the courtroom scene, there is the natural opportunity for Antonio either to apologize, at least in part, for the way he has treated Shylock in the past, or to state adamantly that his opposition to usury and to heathenism is correct and he is willing to die rather than say otherwise. But instead, he is silent, and after that first interchange in Act 1, never has another meaningful word to say to Shylock.

In addition to other factors, I think that Shakespeare didn't want to develop the Antonio-Shylock conflict because he didn't want a play full of overtly anti-Semitic statements. Despite working from a story that was, as I have explained, profoundly anti-Semitic, I think that Shakespeare, for whatever reason, did not want to take sides in the controversy about Lopez and the Jews.

Although I believe that Shakespeare took it for granted that his audience would see Shylock as a villain and, I believe, a comic character, yet I think there was something about Shylock that attracted Shakespeare's interest and made him wonder what it would really be like to be Shylock: to be a Jew in Elizabethan society. Shakespeare keeps putting in little bits that remind us that Shylock is, after all, another human being.

On the whole, it was easy for Shakespeare's audience to laugh at Shylock's distress over Jessica's desertion, since he seems more concerned with the loss of his money and jewels than the loss of his daughter.

But what of the following speech?

Tubal. One of [the sailors] showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

Shylock. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise; I had it of [my wife] when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Why did Shakespeare put this in? Was Shakespeare a writer who deliberated over what he wrote, calculating the effect that his lines would produce in an audience? Or did he simply write whatever felt the most right for him at the moment? Undoubtedly, he was sometimes the one and sometimes the other, although to me the texts themselves seem to indicate that he let himself be guided by instinct more often then by calculation. But in either case, here is a line that seems to momentarily show Shylock as a human being, not someone who only cared about money. He was once married, and his wife presumably died, and a memento of her is now more precious to him than many times the monetary value of the ring. If we are laughing at him for having his money and jewels stolen, can we go on laughing at this point? Well, I guess that Solerio and Solanio could. But just for a moment, Shakespeare makes his audience pause before continuing in the direction he is taking them in. (And incidentally, if the audience is playing really close attention, I think that they will be given pause in their assessment of Jessica by the fact that she was willing to trade a valuable ring of her father's for a monkey.)

What makes the Merchant so difficult for us (and so interesting) is that it contains many lines which clearly show Shylock as a villain, and yet it also contains lines which show him as a victim of unfair discrimination. Certainly in the four centuries since Shakespeare's time there have been many people who have seen Shylock as a sympathetic character and many performances which showed him this way. I don't think it makes sense to believe that this view is simply stupid. The pathos is in fact in the play, and it is impossible to completely suppress those passages which show it. Without the pathos, the play would not be interesting to us.

Although the Merchant never actually addresses the issues that it raises, yet it won't simply let them lie, either. And that's one of the things that makes it so troublesome for us. It seems to me that Shakespeare restrained himself from writing the play that really interested him, and yet he couldn't resist including little snippets of it from time to time.