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

2. Antonio’s Blues

antonio’s blues ‡ 23 he wasn’t paying close attention or else he didn’t think Shylock’s terms were objectionable—or else something like this, some threat to his personal being, was what he wanted to elicit and put on display. He goes on to assure Bassanio that the surgical outcome is unlikely. Yet he seems happy enough to find it on the table. Bassanio of course protests. But he protests in such a jingly couplet that his words rhetorically mock his melodramatic offer of selfsacri fice: “You shall not seal to such a bond for me!/I’ll rather dwell in my necessity” (1.3.149–50). Bouncy though it is, this appreciation of Antonio’s charitable risk taking is no doubt just what the merchant wants to hear. It must only confirm him in his folly. Shylock is well aware that Antonio has been “prodigal” (3.1.37). Early in his discussion with Bassanio, he itemizes the many ventures Antonio has “squandered” abroad. If in Shakespeare’s time “squandered ” chiefly meant “widely scattered,” Shylock pushes it toward its later connotation of prodigality by prefacing his list of Antonio’s ventures with “his means are in supposition” (1.3.13–18). For his part, Antonio must know as much about his own ventures as Shylock does. Therefore he knows what he is getting into when he accepts Shylock’s terms. Sparks may fly between Shylock and Antonio in this scene, but its focus is on the embarrassing spectacle of Antonio showing off before Bassanio. While Bassanio remains suspicious , Antonio all but slaps Shylock on the back: “The Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind” (1.3.173). Auditors and readers may cringe at Antonio’s heartiness, but the same sentiment will be repeated in seriously altered form at 4.1.384: let Shylock “presently become a Christian.” Antonio is a problem. 2. antonio’s blues Let’s approach this problem by homing in on the play’s first speech, in which Antonio responds to the busybodies Salerio and Solanio. They have obviously just commented on his dejection: In sooth, I know not why I am so sad, It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, 24 ‡ mercifixion in the merchant of venice What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself. (1.1.1–7) The short line visually opens up a space, dramatizes a blankness, that pleads to be filled in. “I am to learn” at first registers as “I don’t know yet, I still have to find out.” We soon discover that it is anticipatory. If Antonio is sad, uneasy, apprehensive, it must be because he’s waiting to hear about the courtship venture Bassanio had “promis’d to tell me of” (1.1.119–21)—waiting to hear about the “lady” who is Antonio’s next rival. And we learn more, as Thomas Cartelli notes, “from the successive disclosures of . . . Antonio’s love for Bassanio, Bassanio’s love for Portia, and Antonio’s hatred of Shylock.”1 But already in his stagey and head-scratching doldrums we begin to sense Antonio’s fondness for the pleasures of victimization. His encounter with Bassanio retrospectively redefines the tone of his responses to Salerio and Solanio—or, to use Dover Wilson’s nickname for them, the two Sallies.2 It becomes clear that he wishes they would just go away. He listens impatiently and puts them off with replies that are either uninformative or misleading.3 Solanio’s farewell conveys tart awareness of Antonio’s impatience while hinting at a reason for it: Here comes Bassanio your most noble kinsman. Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well, We leave you now with better company. (1.1.57–59) Salerio chimes in with echoing pique: “I would have stay’d . . . /If worthier friends had not prevented me” (59–61). “Your most noble kinsman”: some editors note that this relationship is not mentioned elsewhere in the play. Solanio’s epithet may only sig1 . Thomas Cartelli, “Shakespeare’s Merchant, Marlowe’s Jew: The Problem of Cultural Difference,” Shakespeare Studies 20 (1988): 257. 2. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson, The Merchant of Venice, New Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 100–104. 3. See 1.1.1–7 and 41– 45. [3.15.3...