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ONE Sacred and Secular in The Merchant of Venice
- Duquesne University Press
- Chapter
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ONE Sacred and Secular in The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice contains an extraordinary number of biblical allusions. It repeatedly echoes or cites passages from the Gospels, from Ecclesiasticus, from Corinthians, and from the Old Testament at large. To an Elizabethan audience, familiar with the Bible from regular readings both in church and in the family setting, those allusions would have created a complex of connective filaments and associations, both verbal and thematic, that affect cumulatively the overall message of the play. The scriptural element is not obtrusive, the drama being dramatically energized and variegated by such nonscriptural elements as Bassanio’s journey to the magical world of Belmont, the clowning of Launcelot Gobbo, and the lively theme of misplaced rings with which it concludes. But the plethora of biblical allusions, however latent, signals the existence of a subdued yet pervasive concern with some religious theme. That subdued theme, marking the play’s traditional or 1 centripetal aspect, will be explored in the first half of the chapter, after which we shall turn to the subversive or centrifugal elements relevant to our present concerns. Shakespeare was no pietist. The religious elements in his plays do not, in general, involve matters of doctrinal or sectarian dispute. They indicate only the author’s allegiance to the broadest moral principles of Christianity, to the ideals of compassion, altruism, and forgiveness as represented by Cordelia, Edgar, or Desdemona. Even the plays dealing most prominently with those Christian virtues, such as Measure for Measure, lack the proliferation of biblical references and quotations that distinguish this play, which includes a dispute over the theological lessons to be derived from Jacob’s method of increasing his flock, reiterated allusions to whited sepulchers, the parody of Isaac’s blessing in Gobbo’s encounter with his father,1 and Shylock’s premature assumption that Portia is a Daniel come to judgment. In that latter instance, only an audience familiar with the story of Susanna and the Elders in the Apocrypha would grasp the irony of Shylock regarding himself as an innocent Susanna about to be vindicated, while those witnessing the court proceedings identify him more accurately, together with his friend Tubal, with the corrupt elders of that story, perverting justice to serve their own ends. In a justly admired article, Barbara Lewalski many years ago defined the underlying theme of the play as the victory of the New Law over the Old, the triumph of Christian ethics over Hebraic legalism.2 Antonio, embodying the ideals of selflessness, generosity, and love, eminently fulfills in his generous loan to Bassanio the Gospel injunction: “Giue to euerie man that asketh of thee: . . . do good, and lend, looking for nothing in return, and your rewarde shalbe great” (Luke 6:30, 35).3 In that context, Shylock, associated by his Jewish ancestry with the Old Testament, represents the antithesis of Christian benevolence. Shylock, however, represents not the Old Testament itself—for that body of law was no less insistent upon the 2 Tradition and Subversion in Renaissance Literature [54.234.143.240] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:40 GMT) requirement to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to provide interest-free loans to the needy, and to care for the widow and the orphan. Shylock embodies instead the code of the Pharisees as they are depicted with hostility in the New Testament, the rabbis viewed there as perverters of the covenant, as mere “scribes” insisting upon the letter of the law rather than the mercy implicit within it, to be revitalized by the New Law: “Wo be to you, Scribes and Pharises, hypocrites: for ye tithe mynt, & annyse, & cummyn, & leaue the weightier matters of the law, as iudgement, and mercy and fidelitie. These ought ye to haue done, and not to haue left the other” (Matt. 23:23). The identification of the Pharisee with the sterner aspects of law, with the revenge principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, had been dictated in large part by a theological factor. Within the Old Testament, God, the sole ruler of the universe, had been not only the arbiter of justice and executor of vengeance but also the source of divine love and mercy. He was indeed a zealous God, “visiting the iniquitie of the fathers vpon the children, vpon the third generation and vpon the fourth of them that hate me,” but he was at the same time a God of benevolence, “shewing mercie...