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Merchant of Venice Characters Analysis features
noted Shakespeare scholar William Hazlitt's famous critical
essay about the characters of The Merchant of Venice.
THIS is a play that in spite of the change of manners
and prejudices still holds undisputed possession of
the stage. Shakespear's malignant has outlived Mr. Cumberland's
benevolent Jew. In proportion as Shylock has ceased
to be a popular bugbear, "baited with the rabble's
curse," he becomes a half-favourite with the philosophical
part of the audience, who are disposed to think that
Jewish revenge is at least as good as Christian injuries.
Shylock is a good hater; "a man no less sinned
against than sinning." If he carries his revenge
too far, yet he has strong grounds for "the lodged
hate he bears Anthonio," which he explains with
equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the depositary
of the vengeance of his race; and though the long habit
of brooding over daily insults and injuries has crusted
over his temper with inveterate mis-anthropy, and hardened
him against the contempt of mankind, this adds but little
to the triumphant pretensions of his enemies. There
is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice mixed
up with the gall and bitterness of his resentment. The
constant apprehension of being burnt alive, plundered,
banished, reviled, and trampled on, might be supposed
to sour the most forbearing nature, and to take something
from that "milk of human kindness," with which
his persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire
of revenge is almost inseparable from the sense of wrong;
and we can hardly help sympathising with the proud spirit,
hid beneath his "Jewish gaberdine," stung
to madness by repeated undeserved provocations, and
labouring to throw off the load of obloquy and oppression
heaped upon him and all his tribe by one desperate act
of "lawful" revenge, till the ferociousness
of the means by which he is to execute his purpose,
and the pertinacity with which he adheres to it, turn
us against him; but even at last, when disappointed
of the sanguinary revenge with which he had glutted
his hopes, and exposed to beggary and contempt by the
letter of the law on which he had insisted with so little
remorse, we pity him, and think him hardly dealt with
by his judges. In all his answers and retorts upon his
adversaries, he has the best not only of the argument
but of the question, reasoning on their own principles
and practice. They are so far from allowing of any measure
of equal dealing, of common justice or humanity between
themselves and the Jew, that even when they come to
ask a favour of him, and Shylock reminds them that "on
such a day they spit upon him, another spurned him,
another called him dog, and for these curtesies request
he'll lend them so much monies"—Anthonio, his old
enemy, instead of any acknowledgment of the shrewdness
and justice of his remonstrance, which would have been
preposterous in a respect-able Catholic merchant in
those times, threatens him with a repetition of the
same treatment—
"I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too."
After this, the appeal to the Jew's mercy, as if there
were any common principle of right and wrong 'between
them, is the rankest hypocrisy, or the blindest prejudice;
and the Jew's answer to one of Anthonio's friends, who
asks him what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for,
is irresistible—
"To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing
else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me,
and hinder'd me of half a million, laughed at my losses,
mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation, thwarted my bargains,
cool'd my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his
reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a
Jew hands, organs, dimensions, 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 winter and summer that
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?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you
in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? why revenge. The
villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go
hard but I will better the instruction."
The whole of the trial-scene, both before and after
the entrance of Portia, is a master-piece of dramatic
skill. The legal acuteness, the passionate declamations,
the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony
interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear
in the different persons, and the completeness and suddenness
of the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who
is his own counsel, defends himself well, and is triumphant
on all the general topics that are urged against him,
and only fails through a legal flaw. Take the following
as an instance:—
"Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no
wrong?
You have among you many a purchas'd slave,
Which like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish part,
Because you bought them:—shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? you will answer,
The slaves are ours:—so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice;
I stand for judgment; answer; shall I have it?"
The keenness of his revenge awakes all his faculties;
and he beats back all opposition to his purpose, whether
grave or gay, whether of wit or argument, with an equal
degree of earnestness and self-possession. His character
is displayed as distinctly in other less prominent parts
of the play, and we may collect from a few sentences
the history of his life—his descent and origin, his
thrift and domestic economy, his affection for his daughter,
whom he loves next to his wealth, his courtship and
his first present to Lear, his wife! "I would not
have parted with it" (the ring which he first gave
her) "for a wilderness of monkies!" What a
fine Hebraism is implied in this expression!
Portia is not a very great favourite with us; neither
are we in love with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a
certain degree of affectation and pedantry about her,
which is very unusual in Shakespear's women, but which
perhaps was a proper qualification for the office of
a "civil doctor," which she undertakes and
executes so successfully. The speech about Mercy is
very well; but there are a thousand finer ones in Shakespear.
We do not admire the scene of the caskets: and object
entirely to the Black Prince, Morocchius. We should
like Jessica better if she had not deceived and robbed
her father, and Lorenzo, if he had not married a Jewess,
though he thinks he has a right to wrong a Jew. The
dialogue between this newly-married couple by moonlight,
beginning "On such a night," etc., is a collection
of classical elegancies. Launcelot, the Jew's man, is
an honest fellow. The dilemma in which he describes
himself placed between his "conscience and the
fiend," the one of which advises him to run away
from his master's service and the other to stay in it,
is exquisitely humourous.
Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate char-acter.
He is the jester of the piece: yet one speech of his,
in his own defence, contains a whole volume of wisdom.
"Anthonio. I hold the world but as the world,
Gratiano,
A stage, where every one must play his part;
And mine a sad one.
Gratiano. Let me play the fool;
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Anthonio—
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;—
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond:
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be drest in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
O, my Anthonio, I do know of these,
That therefore only are reputed wise,
For saying nothing; who, I am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
Which hearing them, would call their brothers, fools.
I'll tell thee more of this another time:
But fish not with this melancholy bait,
For this fool's gudgeon, this opinion."
Gratiano's speech on the philosophy of love, and the
effect of habit in taking off the force of passion,
is as full of spirit and good sense. The graceful winding
up of this play in the fifth act, after the tragic business
is despatched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespear's
knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not
mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa
and their husbands about the rings, which is amusing
enough, but the conversation just before and after the
return of Portia to her own house, beginning "How
sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank," and
ending "Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion,
and would not be awaked." There is a number of
beautiful thoughts crowded into that short space, and
linked together by the most natural transitions.
When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected
to see, what we had been used to see, a decrepit old
man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning
with deadly malice, with the venom of his heart congealed
in the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose,
gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of
his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that
of his revenge. We were disappointed, because we had
taken our idea from other actors, not from the play.
There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single
line, "Anthonio and old Shylock, both stand forth,"—which
does not imply that he is infirm with age —and the circumstance
that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not
imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to
say that his body should be made crooked and deformed
to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped
with prejudices and passion. That he has but one idea,
is not true; he has more ideas than any other person
in the piece; and if he is intense and inveterate in
the pursuit of his purpose, he shews the utmost elasticity,
vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining
it. But so rooted was our habitual impression of the
part from seeing it caricatured in the representation,
that it was only from a careful perusal of the play
itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in general
the best place to study our author's characters in.
It is too often filled with traditional commonplace
conceptions of the part, handed down from sire to son,
and suited to the taste of the great vulgar and the
small.—" 'Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and
gross do merely gender in it!" If a man of genius
comes once in an age to clear away the rubbish, to make
it fruitful and wholesome, they cry, " 'Tis a bad
school: it may be like nature, it may be like Shakespear,
but it is not like us." Admirable critics!
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