Characters in “The Merchant of Venice"
A Critical Essay by William Hazlitt
An essay by William Hazlitt, on Shakespeare’s characters in
“The Merchant of Venice,” From the book Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays By William Hazlitt,
This is a play that in spite of the change of manners and of
prejudices still holds undisputed possession of the stage.
Shakespeare's malignant has outlived Mr. Cumberland's benevolent
Jew. In proportion as Shylock has ceased to be a popular bugbear,
'baited with the rabble's curse', he becomes a half favourite with
the philosophical part of the audience, who are disposed to think
that Jewish revenge is at least as good as Christian injuries.
Shylock is A GOOD HATER; 'a. man no less sinned against than
sinning'. If he carries his revenge too far, yet he has strong
grounds for 'the lodged hate he bears Anthonio', which he explains
with equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the depositary of
the vengeance of his race; and though the long habit of brooding
over daily insults and injuries has crusted over his temper with
inveterate misanthropy, and hardened him against the contempt of
mankind, this adds but little to the triumphant pretensions of his
enemies. There is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice mixed
up with the gall and bitterness of his resentment. The constant
apprehension of being burnt alive, plundered, banished, reviled, and
trampled on, might be supposed to sour the most forbearing nature,
and to take something from that 'milk of human kindness', with which
his persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire of revenge
is almost inseparable from the sense of wrong; and we can hardly
help sympathizing with the proud spirit, hid beneath his 'Jewish
gaberdine', stung to madness by repeated undeserved provocations,
and labouring to throw off the load of obloquy and oppression heaped
upon him and all his tribe by one desperate act of 'lawful' revenge,
till the ferociousness of the means by which he is to execute his
purpose, and the pertinacity with which he adheres to it, turn us
against him; but even at last, when disappointed of the sanguinary
revenge with which he had glutted his hopes, and exposed to beggary
and contempt by the letter of the law on which he had insisted with
so little remorse, we pity him, and think him hardly dealt with by
his judges. In all his answers and retorts upon his adversaries, he
has the best not only of the argument but of the question, reasoning
on their own principles and practice. They are so far from allowing
of any measure of equal dealing, of common justice or humanity
between themselves and the Jew, that even when they come to ask a
favour of him, and Shylock reminds them that 'on such a day they
spit upon him, another spurned him, another called him dog, and for
these courtesies request hell lend them so much monies'--Anthonio,
his old enemy, instead of any acknowledgement of the shrewdness and
justice of his remonstrance, which would have been preposterous in a
respectable Catholic merchant in those times, threatens him with a
repetition of the same treatment--
I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
After this, the appeal to the Jew's mercy, as if there were any
common principle of right and wrong between them, is the rankest
hypocrisy, or the blindest prejudice; and the Jew's answer to one of
Anthonio's friends, who asks him what his pound of forfeit flesh is
good for, is irresistible:
To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my
revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hinder'd me of half a million,
laughed at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation,
thwarted my bargains, cool'd my friends, heated mine enemies; and
what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not
bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we
not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like
you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a
Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a
Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why
revenge. The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go
hard but I will better the instruction.
The whole of the trial scene, both before and after the entrance of
Portia, is a masterpiece of dramatic skill. The legal acuteness, the
passionate declamations, the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit
and irony interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in
the different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the
catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who is his own counsel,
defends himself well, and is triumphant on all the general topics
that are urged against him, and only Tails through a legal flaw.
Take the following as an instance:
Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? You have among
you many a purchas'd slave, Which, like your asses, and your dogs,
and mules, You use in abject and in slavish part, Because you bought
them:--shall I say to you, Let them be free, marry them to your
heirs? Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds Be made as soft
as yours, and let their palates Be season'd with such viands? you
will answer, The slaves are ours:--so do I answer you: The pound of
flesh, which I demand of him, Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will
have it; If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the
decrees of
The keenness of his revenge awakes all his faculties; and he beats
back all opposition to his purpose, whether grave or gay, whether of
wit or argument, with an equal degree of eamestness and self-
possession. His character is displayed as distinctly in other less
prominent parts of the play, and we may collect from a few sentences
the history of his life--his descent and origin, his thrift and
domestic economy, his affection for his daughter, whom he loves next
to his wealth, his courtship and his first present to Leah, his
wife! 'I would not have parted with it' (the ring which he first
gave her) 'for a wilderness of monkeys!' What a fine Hebraism is
implied in this expression!
Portia is not a very great favourite with us, neither are we in love
with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a certain degree of affectation
and pedantry about her, which is very unusual in Shakespeare's
women, but which perhaps was a proper qualification for the office
of a 'civil doctor', which she undertakes and executes so
successfully. The speech about mercy is very well; but there are a
thousand finer ones in Shakespeare. We do not admire the scene of
the caskets; and object entirely to the Black Prince, Morocchius. We
should like Jessica better if she had not deceived and robbed her
father, and Lorenzo, if he had not married a Jewess, though he
thinks he has a right to wrong a Jew. The dialogue between this
newly married couple by moonlight, beginning 'On such a night', &c.,
is a collection of classical elegancies. Launcelot, the Jew's man,
is an honest fellow. The dilemma in which he describes himself
placed between his 'conscience and the fiend', the one of which
advises him to run away from his master's service and the other to
stay in it, is exquisitely humorous.
Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate character, He is the jester
of the piece: yet one speech of his, in his own defence, contains a
whole volume of wisdom,
Anthonio. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage,
where every one must play his part; And mine a sad one.
Gratiano. Let me play the fool: With mirth and laughter let old
wrinkles come; And let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart
cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man, whose blood is warm
within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? Sleep when he
wakes? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish? I tell thee
what, Anthonio--I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;--There
are a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing
pond: And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be drest
in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; As who should
say, 'I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark'! O,
my Anthonio, I do know of these, That therefore only are reputed
wise, For saying nothing; who, I am very sure, If they should speak,
would almost damn those ears, Which hearing them, would call their
brothers fools. I'll tell thee more of this another time; But fish
not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool's gudgeon, this
opinion.
Gratiano's speech on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit
in taking off the force of passion, is as full of spirit and good
sense. The graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, after
the tragic business is dispatched, is one of the happiest instances
of Shakespeare's knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not
mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa and their
husbands about the rings, which is amusing enough, but the
conversation just before and after the return of Portia to her own
house, begining 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank', and
ending 'Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, and would not be
awaked'. There is a number of beautiful thoughts crowded into that
short space, and linked together by the most natural transitions.
When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock we expected to see,
what we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age and
ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the
venom of his heart congealed in the expression of his countenance,
sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of
his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his
revenge. We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from
other actors, not from the play. There is no proof there that
Shylock is old, but a single line, 'Bassanic and old Shylock, both
stand forth,'--which does not imply that he is infirm with age--and
the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not
imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to say that his
body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind,
which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion. That he
has but one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other
person in the piece: and if he is intense and inveterate in the
pursuit of his purpose, he shows the utmost elasticity, vigour, and
presence of mind, in the means of attaining it. But so rooted was
our habitual impression of the part from seeing it caricatured in
the representation, that it was only from a careful perusal of the
play itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in general the
best place to study our author's characters in. It is too often
filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, handed
down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of THE GREAT VULGAR
AND THE SMALL.--''Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and gross do
merely gender in it!' If a man of genius comes once in an age to
clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry,
"Tis a bad school: it may be like nature, it may be like
Shakespeare, but it is not like us." Admirable critics!
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