Shylock Is Anything but a Villain in ‘Merchant’

The article on “The Merchant of Venice” (“Shylock: The Stereotype Is Still a Problem,” Calendar, June 5) suggests at one point that whilst other characters in the play are not flawless, Shylock is “the worst of the worst.” But is that really the case? If you see or read the play, almost the entire list of characters becomes a simply dreadful manifestation of the Christian ethic at work and play.

Shylock, on the other hand, is admittedly a rather tired, older man, not surprisingly a little envious of the more privileged position of the Gentile businessmen around him with whom, despite his differences, he has to trade. Though widowed, Shylock is still unquestionably faithful to the image of his former wife, Leah; long and trusting in his friendship with Tubal, and utterly devoted to the well-being of the only progeny from his marriage, the luckless Jessica.

Is not Shylock’s reaction to the events which beset him in the latter stages of this play amazingly reasonable? The good man’s daughter is abducted and his heirlooms (and collateral) stolen by a group of people he has openly favored at some risk to his person and his livelihood.

There cannot be too much question that Antonio, the merchant of the play’s title, knew about the abduction of Jessica, and was it not Antonio who Shylock went out of his way to befriend with a quite ridiculous contract over the loan of a substantial amount of money, and all this at a time in Venetian law when Christians were doing all sorts of side deals to beat the technicality that they, good Christians, should not be seen to be moneylenders?

If Shylock had been basically a mean man, in the Venice of his day, he certainly could have stung Antonio for a serious interest in the initial loan of the ducats, not played some fanciful and meaningless game around a fatuous clause involving “a pound of flesh.” It is as clear as it needs to be that Shylock, whatever else he was, was not a fool, and would realize that this was not a serious deal, as it was being made over such a ludicrously phrased bond.

Shylock makes the “gesture” to Antonio thinking that it cannot do him or his household any harm, and as gestures go it was a meaningful and generous one. In exposing himself with this act of kindness to Antonio and his friends, Shylock is put upon, baited, ridiculed, robbed, has his staff enticed away from his service, and to add insult to mortifying injury, the very people whom he has befriended, seduce and abduct his beloved daughter in the middle of the night, taking with them the prized ring his wife had given him before their marriage.

Well, what would you do? Your only daughter abducted, your life savings stolen along with her by a group of hoodlums? We know what Charles Bronson would do in such circumstances if it were a Michael Winner movie. He’d take the neighborhood apart with state-of-the-art light artillery, law or no law, Duke or no Duke.

Shylock, not being under the tutelage of Winner and being a civilized man, does nothing of the sort. Driven to the point of derangement over the loss of his daughter, Shylock in his Lear-like dementia vainly attempts to seek recourse in the law and asks the Duke of Venice to uphold his bond.

Of course Shylock’s was an untenable demand, and of course the Duke, had he been remotely interested in justice or fair play, would have taken the maddened old man to one side and asked him some questions concerning the real problem and having ascertained the undeniable truth, settled the entire matter out of court.

Thankfully, Bill Shakespeare was too bright to let that happen. He recognized a good courtroom drama when he smelled one in his inkwell. When it comes to courtroom drama, Shakespeare could have taught Erle Stanley Garner, Agatha Christie and the writers of “L.A. Law” more than a thing or two about the genre--in fact some of us think he did.

Bill and his Duke let the panoply of the law run its sometimes tiresome course. First, seemingly, the course is in favor of the embittered Shylock, but who can doubt that inevitably this course will turn into a torrent which will run in full spate against the alien.

From the outset of the trial, Shylock does not stand as much chance as a coracle on the white waters of the Colorado, and a fair trial goes down the tubes.

Neither, in my opinion, does Bill wish it to seem like a fair trial, or a just trial. Brilliantly, Shakespeare makes a mockery of Venetian, and I imagine, Elizabethan law, and gets into some pretty nifty verbiage concerning the “quality of mercy” which, coming as it does from the merciless mouth and tongue of Portia, has to be a rather wry joke.

Listen to the “mercy” in Portia’s earlier speeches regarding the various international array of suitors she has kept waiting, poor benighted individuals who were pouring money and gifts into her coffers only to be given the high-handed brushoff whenever the good lady of Belmont thought fit.

Shylock is not (repeat NOT) the villain in “The Merchant of Venice,” certainly not “the worst of the worst,” not by a long chalk. Shylock is arguably the only sensitive human being in the middle of a cacophony of self-engrossed and as it happens money-oriented, idle, libidinous, purse-snatching, so-called Christians.

I, for one, had always thought that was what Shakespeare was getting at in his circuitous and darkly humorous way.