A Fury in the Words: Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice

7. The archery of Embarrassment

36 ‡ mercifixion in the merchant of venice portia It is not so expressed, but what of that? ’Twere good you do so much for charity. shylock I cannot find it, ’Tis not in the bond. (4.1.249–59) Portia then invites Antonio to comment. He obliges by sacrificing himself at some length to the tune of “Don’t worry about me,” whereupon Bassanio jumps in with his competing offer to sacrifice not himself but his wife (4.1.261–84). From the moment Portia enters and takes over the inquiry, any observer who views the courtroom event through her eyes must share her embarrassment—an embarrassment caused not by Shylock, whom she quickly disables, but by the husband with whom she has contracted to share life after Happy Ending, and by the professional scapegoat he is attached to. 7. the archery of embarrassment When Gratiano first addresses Antonio after the Sallies leave, his reaction echoes theirs: “You look unwell. You must worry too much about your business.” “No, no,” Antonio replies, “it’s just that my role on the world’s stage is to be sad” (1.1.73–79). Gratiano doesn’t buy that. He performs his own role as the resident Venetian motormouth with a long speech encouraging Antonio to make more long speeches: “stop trying to use ‘your melancholy silence as the bait to fool people’ into thinking you’re a wise man and a deep thinker.”1 Antonio promises to be more talkative (“I’ll grow a talker for this gear”). But after Gratiano leaves, he asks Bassanio what that was all about, and Bassanio tells him to ignore Gratiano because he talks too much and says nothing. Antonio then asks to hear the story Bassanio had promised to tell him about his “secret pilgrimage” to a “lady” (1.1.119–21). Bassanio responds by talking too much. He obliges Antonio with a “long-winded request for a loan.”2 1. 1.1.79–104. The phrase in single quotation marks is Lawrence Danson’s gloss. See Danson, Harmonies, 111–13, for a persuasive analysis of the play’s critique of Gratiano. 2. Ibid., 110. the archery of embarrassment ‡ 37 Bassanio’s comment on Gratiano is significant chiefly for its form: “Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are not worth the search” (1.1.114–18). This is the first and only prose passage in 1.1. Its very prosiness as a comment on an interlocutor ’s verse accentuates its critical tone. But it also has a subsidiary function. Short as it is, the comment makes us freshly aware of the iambic pentameter that carries the speakers through the remainder of the scene, and it cues us to attend to its effects: the shamefaced roguishness of one speaker and the haplessness of the other.3 The verse rhythms enliven the declamatory contest in which Bassanio leans on Antonio for help to get free of him and Antonio tries to delay this outcome while appearing to advance it. My paraphrases are interspersed in italics between the speeches. bassanio ’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate By something showing a more swelling port Than my faint means would grant continuance. Nor do I now make moan to be abridged From such a noble rate; but my chief care Is to come fairly off from the great debts Wherein my time, something too prodigal, Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio, I owe the most, in money and in love, And from your love I have a warranty To unburden all my plots and purposes How to get clear of all the debts I owe. 3. For a brilliant account of Bassanio’s dodgy behavior in this exchange, see Zvi Jagendorf , “Innocent Arrows and Sexy Sticks: The Rival Economies of Male Friendship and Heterosexual Love in The Merchant of Venice,” in Strands Afar Remote: Israeli Perspectives on Shakespeare, ed. Avraham Oz (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 17–37. See also Miriam Gilbert, Shakespeare at Stratford: The Merchant of Venice (London: Thomson Learning, 2002), 51–53. 38 ‡ mercifixion in the merchant of venice I am awash in debt...