-
Summary: Act III, scene i
- Salarino and Solanio discuss the rumors that yet another
- of Antonio’s ships has been wrecked. They are joined by Shylock,
- who accuses them of having helped Jessica escape. The two Venetians
- proudly take credit for their role in Jessica’s elopement. Shylock
- curses his daughter’s rebellion, to which Salarino responds, “There
- is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and
- ivory” (III.i.32–33).
- Salarino then asks Shylock whether he can confirm the rumors of Antonio’s
- lost vessels. Shylock replies that Antonio will soon be bankrupt
- and swears to collect his bond. Salarino doubts Shylock’s resolve,
- wondering what the old man will do with a pound of flesh, to which
- Shylock chillingly replies that Antonio’s flesh will at least feed
- his revenge. In a short monologue, Shylock says Antonio has mistreated
- him solely because Shylock is a Jew, but now Shylock is determined
- to apply the lessons of hatred and revenge that Christian intolerance
- has taught him so well.
- Salarino and Solanio head off to meet with Antonio, just
- as Tubal, a friend of Shylock’s and a Jew, enters. Tubal announces
- that he cannot find Jessica. Shylock rants against his daughter,
- and he wishes her dead as he bemoans his losses. He is especially
- embittered when Tubal reports that Jessica has taken a ring—given
- to Shylock in his bachelor days by a woman named Leah, presumably
- Jessica’s mother—and has traded that ring for a monkey. Shylock’s
- spirits brighten, however, when Tubal reports that Antonio’s ships
- have run into trouble and that Antonio’s creditors are certain Antonio
- is ruined.
-
Summary: Act III, scene ii
- In Belmont, Portia begs Bassanio to delay choosing between
- the caskets for a day or two. If Bassanio chooses incorrectly, Portia
- reasons, she will lose his company. Bassanio insists that he make
- his choice now, to avoid prolonging the torment of living without
- Portia as his wife. Portia orders that music be played while her
- love makes his choice, and she compares Bassanio to the Greek hero
- and demigod Hercules. Like the suitors who have come before him,
- Bassanio carefully examines the three caskets and puzzles over their inscriptions.
- He rejects the gold casket, saying that “[t]he world is still deceived
- with ornament” (III.ii.74), while the silver
- he deems a “pale and common drudge / ’Tween man and man” (III.ii.103–104).
- After much debate, Bassanio picks the lead casket, which he opens
- to reveal Portia’s portrait, along with a poem congratulating him
- on his choice and confirming that he has won Portia’s hand.
- The happy couple promises one another love and devotion,
- and Portia gives Bassanio a ring that he must never part with, as
- his removal of it will signify the end of his love for her. Nerissa
- and Gratiano congratulate them and confess that they too have fallen
- in love with one another. They suggest a double wedding. Lorenzo
- and Jessica arrive in the midst of this rejoicing, along with Salarino,
- who gives a letter to Bassanio. In the letter, Antonio writes that
- all of his ships are lost, and that Shylock plans to collect his
- pound of flesh. The news provokes a fit of guilt in Bassanio, which
- in turn prompts Portia to offer to pay twenty times the sum. Jessica,
- however, worries that her father is more interested in revenge than
- in money. Bassanio reads out loud the letter from Antonio, who asks
- only for a brief reunion before he dies. Portia urges her husband
- to rush to his friend’s aid, and Bassanio leaves for Venice.
-
Analysis: Act III, scenes i–ii
- The passage of time in The Merchant of Venice is
- peculiar. In Venice, the three months that Antonio has to pay the
- debt go by quickly, while only days seem to pass in Belmont. Shakespeare
- juggles these differing chronologies by using Salarino and Solanio
- to fill in the missing Venetian weeks.
- As Antonio’s losses mount, Shylock’s villainous plan becomes apparent.
- “[L]et him look to his bond,” he repeats single-mindedly (III.i.39–40).
- Despite his mounting obsession with the pound of Antonio’s flesh,
- however, he maintains his dramatic dignity. In his scene with the
- pair of Venetians, he delivers the celebrated speech in which he
- cries, “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
- senses, affections, passions . . . ? If you prick us do we not bleed?
- If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?”
- (III.i.49–55). We
- are not meant to sympathize entirely with Shylock: he may have been
- wronged, but he lacks both mercy and a sense of proportion. His
- refusal to take pity on Antonio is later contrasted with the mercy
- shown him by the Christians. But even as we recognize that Shylock’s
- plans are terribly wrong, we can appreciate the angry logic of his
- speech. By asserting his own humanity, he lays waste to the pretensions
- of the Christian characters to value mercy, charity, and love above
- self-interest.
- Shylock’s dignity lapses in his scene with Tubal, who
- keeps his supposed friend in agony by alternating between good and
- bad news. Shylock lurches from glee to despair and back, one moment crying,
- “I thank God, I thank God!” (III.i.86), and
- the next saying, “Thou stick’st a dagger in me” (III.i.92).
- But even here he rouses our sympathy, because we hear that Jessica
- stole a ring given to him by his late wife and traded it for a monkey.
- “It was my turquoise,” Shylock says. “I had it of Leah when I was
- a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”
- (III.i.100–103). Villain though
- he may be, we can still feel sorrow that Jessica—who is suddenly
- a much less sympathetic character—would be heartless enough to steal
- and sell a ring that her dead mother gave her father.
- Bassanio’s successful choice seems inevitable and brings
- the drama of the caskets to an end. Bassanio’s excellence is made
- clear in his ability to select the correct casket, and his choice
- brings the separated strands of the plot together. Portia, who is
- the heroine of the play—she speaks far more lines than either Antonio
- or Shylock—is free to bring her will and intelligence to bear on
- the problem of Shylock’s pound of flesh. Once Lorenzo and Jessica
- arrive, the three couples are together in Belmont, but the shadow
- of Shylock hangs over their happiness.
- Critics have noticed that Jessica is ignored by Portia
- and the others at Belmont. Her testimony against her father may
- be an attempt to prove her loyalty to the Christian cause, but the
- coldness of Portia, Bassanio, and the others is an understandable
- reaction—after all, she is a Jew and the daughter of their antagonist.
- Lorenzo may love her, but she remains an object of suspicion for
- the others.
-
Summary: Act III, scene iii
- Shylock escorts the bankrupt Antonio to prison. Antonio
- pleads with Shylock to listen, but Shylock refuses. Remembering
- the many times Antonio condemned him as a dog, Shylock advises the
- merchant to beware of his bite. Assured that the duke will grant
- him justice, Shylock insists that he will have his bond and tells
- the jailer not to bother speaking to him of mercy. Solanio declares
- that Shylock is the worst of men, and Antonio reasons that the Jew
- hates him for bailing out many of Shylock’s debtors. Solanio attempts
- to comfort Antonio by suggesting that the duke will never allow
- such a ridiculous contract to stand, but Antonio is not convinced.
- Venice, Antonio claims, is a wealthy trading city with a great reputation
- for upholding the law, and if the duke breaks that law, Venice’s
- economy may suffer. As Solanio departs, Antonio prays desperately
- that Bassanio will arrive to “see me pay his debt, and then I care
- not” (III.iii.36).
-
Summary: Act III, scene iv
- Lorenzo assures Portia that Antonio is worthy of all the
- help she is sending him, and that if Portia only knew the depths
- of Antonio’s love and goodness, she would be proud of her efforts
- to save him. Portia replies that she has never regretted doing a
- good deed, and goes on to say that she could never deny help to
- anyone so close to her dear Bassanio. Indeed, Antonio and Bassanio
- are so inseparable that Portia believes saving her husband’s friend
- is no different than saving her own husband. She has sworn to live
- in prayer and contemplation until Bassanio returns to her, and announces
- that she and Nerissa will retire to a nearby monastery. Lorenzo
- and Jessica, she declares, will rule the estate in her absence.
- Portia then sends her servant, Balthasar, to Padua, where
- he is to meet her cousin, Doctor Bellario, who will provide Balthasar
- with certain documents and clothing. From there, Balthasar will
- take the ferry to Venice, where Portia will await him. After Balthasar departs,
- Portia informs Nerissa that the two of them, dressed as young men,
- are going to pay an incognito visit to their new husbands. When
- Nerissa asks why, Portia dismisses the question, but promises to
- disclose the whole of her purpose on the coach ride to Venice.
-
Summary: Act III, scene v
- Quoting the adage that the sins of the father shall be
- delivered upon the children, Launcelot says he fears for Jessica’s
- soul. When Jessica claims that she will be saved by her marriage
- to Lorenzo, Launcelot complains that the conversion of the Jews,
- who do not eat pork, will have disastrous consequences on the price
- of bacon. Lorenzo enters and chastises Launcelot for impregnating
- a Moorish servant. Launcelot delivers a dazzling series of puns in
- reply and departs to prepare for dinner. When Lorenzo asks Jessica
- what she thinks of Portia, she responds that the woman is without
- match, nearly perfect in all respects. Lorenzo jokes that he is
- as good a spouse as Portia, and leads them off to dinner.
Analysis: Act III, scenes iii–v
-
Analysis: Act III, scenes iii–v
- Once the play reaches Act III, scene iii, it is difficult
- to sympathize with Shylock. Whatever humiliations he has suffered
- at Antonio’s hands are repaid when he sees the Christian merchant
- in shackles. Antonio may have treated the moneylender badly, but
- Shylock’s pursuit of the pound of flesh is an exercise in naked
- cruelty. In this scene, Shylock’s narrowly focused rhetoric becomes
- monomaniacal in its obsession with the bond. “I’ll have my bond.
- Speak not against my bond,” (III.iii.4) he
- insists, and denies attempts at reason when he says, “I’ll have
- no speaking. I will have my bond” (III.iii.17). When
- Antonio tells Solanio that Shylock is getting revenge for his practice
- of lending money without interest, he seems to miss the bigger picture.
- Shylock’s mind has been warped into obsession not by Antonio alone,
- but by the persecutions visited on him by all of Christian Venice.
- He has taken Antonio as the embodiment of all his persecutors so
- that, in his pound of flesh, he can avenge himself against everyone.
- The institution of law comes to the forefront of the play
- in these scenes, and we may be tempted to view the law as a sort
- of necessary evil, a dogmatic set of rules that can be forced to
- serve the most absurd requests. In the thirty-six lines that make
- up Act III, scene iii, Shylock alludes to revenge in only the vaguest
- of terms, but repeats the word “bond” no less than six times. He
- also frequently invokes the concept of justice. Law is cast as the
- very backbone of the Venetian economy, as Antonio expresses when
- he makes the grim statement that “[t]he duke cannot deny the course
- of law. . . . / . . . / Since that the trade and profit of the city
- / Consisteth of all nations” (III.iii.26–31).
- Trade is the city’s lifeblood, and an integral part of trade is
- ensuring that merchants of all religions and nationalities are extended
- the same protections as full-blooded Venetian citizens. In principle,
- the duke’s inability to bend the law is sound, as the law upholds
- the economy that has allowed Antonio and his friends to thrive.
- However, Shylock’s furious rants about justice and his bond make
- it seem as if his very law-abiding nature has perverted a bastion
- of Christian uprightness.
- Shylock remains in control of events in Venice, but Portia,
- his antagonist, is now moving against him. Her cross-dressing is
- a device typical of women in Shakespeare’s comedies. Indeed, the
- play has already shown Jessica dressed as a boy in her escape from
- Shylock’s house. Dressing as a man is necessary since Portia is
- about to play a man’s part, appearing as member of a male profession.
- The demands placed upon her by her father’s will are gone, and she
- feels free to act and to prove herself more intelligent and capable
- than the men around her.
- The conversation between Jessica and Launcelot in Act
- III, scene v, does little to advance the plot. It acts as comic
- relief and conveys the impression of time passing while the various
- characters converge on the Venetian courtroom. Jessica’s subsequent
- description of Portia’s perfection to her husband is odd, given
- how little attention Portia paid to her, but Jessica recognizes
- that Portia is the center of the social world that she hopes to
- join.
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