Re: "The Taming of the Jew"

Cardozo School of Law

Re: "The Taming of the Jew"Author(s): Ernest SimonSource: Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 325-330Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Cardozo School of LawStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/743531 .

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Correspondence Our Spring 1993 issued devoted entirely to The Mer- chant of Venice drew quite a response. Readers took

pen in hand and their efforts kick-off Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature's first correspondence section.

Re: "The Taming of the Jew"

To the Editor:

Congratulations on your Spring 1993 issue devoted to The

Merchant of Venice. I read every article with sustained interest and

found more original and challenging ideas than is usual in scholarly

publications. I must, however, voice a general criticism: your authors tend to indulge in more speculation than is legitimate in literary criticism. This tendency becomes disturbing in Susan Oldrieve's

"Marginalized Voices in The Merchant of Venice" (5 Cardozo Studies

in Law and Literature 90 [Spring 1993]). Oldrieve's central thesis that Shylock and Portia are linked by their common situation as

marginalized outsiders of Venetian society - he as a Jew, she as a woman - remains precariously perched on a scaffolding of speculation external to the text. She writes, for example, that "Beneath Antonio's intense interest in Bassanio may be a homosexual attrac- tion or a doting friendship, but he also may be motivated by a bachelor's desire for a surrogate child who will ensure his immortal-

ity" (p. 90 - emphasis added), and she ventures that "perhaps [Antonio] believes that he can... compete with Shylock on his own terms and win" (p. 93). She categorically states that Antonio's ap- propriation of half Shylock's wealth "reminds Portia that she is the

property of the dominant male" (p. 95), and though she admits that her idea that the holy hermit mentioned in V,i,33 may be none other than the newly converted Shylock is perhaps "far-fetched," she tries to salvage her argument by venturing that, "given the Elizabethan

experience of religious conversion, it is possible" (p. 102).

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In life one can speculate about a person's motivation, for there exist around others realms of thought, feeling and experience that lie forever beyond our ken. But in fiction a character has no life outside the realm created by the author (the text); there can exist no hidden motivations beyond those given or demonstrably suggested by the text. (That is why the psychoanalysis of a literary character can be performed by a literary critic.) Antonio's possible or conceiv- able motivations are neither here nor there if they are not there, in the text; and what passes through Portia's mind at a particular moment in the trial is only wishful thinking unless the interpreter points to textual evidence - which Ms. Oldrieve does not. A sound

interpretation cannot be founded on unsupported conjectures about the characters' thoughts or motives, or on far-fetched possibilities that the author did not use - even under the deconstructionist

assumption of indeterminacy. Ms. Oldrieve concludes that The Merchant of Venice "pits

ideology against practicality" (p. 102). I agree that it is an ideological work, but the central ideological conflict is largely neglected by your contributors because they disregard the play's structuring movement: the constant alternation of scenes between Belmont and Venice.

Belmonts, by many other names, abound in Medieval literature:

Beaumont, Sch6nberg, Montescleire, Belmonte, Montebello - even Dante's bright mountain of purgatory. In this perspective, we can understand the drama as Shakespeare's play of two cities, in which Venice is the fledgling capitalist society based on transactional and contractual relationships, and Belmont the waning Medieval Chris- tian society founded on personal allegiance, fealty and faith. Belmont is a place of romance and tradition where the Christian and aristo- cratic values of mercy, generosity and selflessness prevail, where the

past controls the present, noble suitors contend for the lady's hand, and lovers are united. Venice is the place of contemporary commercial reality, where transactional values prevail, where the contract is the basis of human relationships, tradition is discarded, Launcelot

plays the fool, and the immediate present rules the minds of men: "What news on the Rialto?"

Daniel J. Kornstein alludes to this basic ideological opposition when he points out that "Liberty of contract is of bedrock

importance to Shylock... and helped to overcome the economic

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inertia of Feudalism" (p. 37), and Charles Spinosa defines it when he refers to a battle between "customary culture" and "contractual culture" (p. 81). But neither seems to consider it the structuring dramatic conflict. To develop a full interpretation in the light of this

opposition would take more space than is afforded by a letter to the editor. But consider how both the historical background and the facts of the play fit into this perspective:

It is late in the Renaissance. A new social structure founded not on personal allegiance but on contractual obligation is in the

making. (The rise of the middle class and all that.) The notion of the social contract is being born. Although Leviathan is still over half a

century in the future, the idea has already been put forward, along with the theory of mercantilism, by Jean Bodin in Les six livres de la Ripublique (1576). The Rabelaisian feast has led to hangover and

indigestion; the optimism of the early Humanists has given way to

misgivings about the brave new world now racked by religious wars, and it is no longer taken for granted that the new ways are better than the old. Such historical conditions are likely to provoke cultural malaise. Indeed, Antonio's unfocused "sadness" at the beginning looks much like Weltschmerz or mal du siecle. He tries to be both a Christian gentleman (he charges no interest) and a venture capitalist, but he cannot reconcile the conflicting demands of the two value

systems. His virulent animus against Shylock is but the outward

expression of his hatred for the "new man" within himself, whom he can neither accept nor discard. Shylock is a "devil" to Antonio (as Marci A. Hamilton emphasizes, p. 125) because Antonio's Christian heart is possessed by Shylock's alien ethos, and the pound of flesh to be taken "nearest the merchant's heart" (IV,i,232) is the emblem of this alien possession. Shakespeare's Jew thus fulfills his classic role with respect to the Christian anti-Semite: he objectifies in pure and vulnerable form what the Christian finds most hateful within himself.

Three trials form the core of the drama. All three focus on this internal conflict of values. The trial of the caskets aims at the victory of plain traditional Christian values over ostentatious worldly material values. "Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath," says the leaden casket. The trial of the caskets tests the knights' mettle not on the field of arms but in the lists of values. And Portia is not only the prize of the worthy knight, but the very incarnation

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of the traditional values, just as Shylock is the incarnation of the "Venetian" values; her portrait is the treasure within the leaden casket. That is why she is judge and savior in the central trial. As the

Jew's ideological opposite, The Lady of Belmont must be the one to achieve the victory over Shylock. (If Shakespeare were as seriously concerned with the legal implications of the court trial as some of

your contributors suggest, a genuine learned and clever jurist would be better suited to his purpose.) Shakespeare's central theme is the conflict between the Belmont ethos and the Venice ethos, and so, his

Lady of Belmont rides to Venice to deliver her chosen knight's friend from the city's "Jewish" values. Shakespeare reverses the Medieval

pattern; here the maiden must rescue the knight in distress because

he, like the other men in the play, has been contaminated by the alien ethos. Having internalized it, they and the Christian society they represent stand helpless before its power. That is why Shylock, in his

strongest speeches, can claim human and ethical parity with the Christians. They too have reduced human bonds to transactional

relationships. They too buy human flesh for their own use: "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!" (IV,i,97-101).

The Venice ethos is a powerful reality which the Lady of Belmont cannot ignore. Like the Ursuline nuns who hire advertising agencies to attract new recruits to their life of poverty, chastity and obedience (Wall Street Journal, 8/13/93, p. 1), Portia must use the commercial values of Venice to sustain the ethos of Belmont. Shylock will not accept the Belmont values; he remains deaf to her "quality of mercy" speech. And she can neither invalidate nor set aside the

outrageous bond, for, as Antonio explains (III,iii,26-31) and Portia herself affirms (IV,i,216-221), it would be bad for business. She must therefore use the weapons of Venice to defeat the Jew, for the

weapons of Belmont are, like Shylock's knife, pointed at the Mer- chant's heart. Portia can save Antonio, but she must do so in disguise, for the Belmont ethos, which she incarnates, cannot prevail in Venice. It can henceforth dwell only in the hearts and minds of men and women; it has ceased to be public and become private. Hence the third trial: the test of the rings.

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The rings are not tokens of contractual relationships as Kornstein argues (p. 51). An oath between lovers is not equivalent to a written contract between businessmen. Portia describes Nerissa's

gift to Gratiano as "A thing stuck on with paths upon your finger,/ And so riveted with faith upon your flesh" (V,i, 168-169 - emphasis added). The ring is a token of a private relationship founded on the Christian virtues of faith and love, values that a business contract aims to make unnecessary. In using their rings as currency to pay for

legal services, Bassanio and Gratiano have committed the Jew's sin of mixing spiritual and commercial values; for Shylock, too - in a ludicrous and pathetic way - placed material value on his wife's

wedding ring ("I would not have given it for a wilderness of mon-

keys" (III,ii,115)) and mourns his daughter and his ducats with the same tears (III,i,79ff). Furthermore, Bassanio and Gratiano have confused the public and the private; they have sacrificed Belmont to Venice; they have desecrated the bonds of love in the public arena;

they have prostituted the values the rings represent. (Significantly, it is the Merchant who prevails upon Bassanio to relinquish his ring (IV,ii,448-50)). Portia underscores this prostitution when she threatens to admit to her bed the man who now owns her ring (V,i,223-33). Shylock has been tamed (forcibly converted) but not

destroyed; the "Jewish" spirit of Venice has struck roots in Bassanio and Gratiano. Before they can be admitted into Belmont, they must confess their sin against its private ethos and relegate transactional values to the public sphere of Venice where Christian Shylocks ply their trade.

The holy hermit Portia brings to Belmont to celebrate the

wedding service cannot possibly be the converso Shylock, and she does not adopt Shylock's values in Act V, as Kornstein asserts (p. 51). Rather, the Lady of Belmont makes sure, through the trial of the

rings, that the tamed but intact Venetian Jewish spirit, which she used as her instrument in the public court of law, will gain no entry into the private court of love. And, as Susan Oldrieve suggests, Antonio, the Merchant of Venice, is embarrassingly out of place at the end, "trailing awkwardly behind" (p. 103) as the lovers enter the mansion of Belmont to consecrate and consummate their unions. The play does "pit ideology against practicality," and Portia does win a "private victory" (p. 103), but her victory does not become Shy-

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lock's. Such attempts to recast the drama in the mold of political correctness are all in vain. The liberalism of "The Taming of the Jew" is on a par with the feminism of Taming of the Shrew. The Merchant

of Venice remains irremediably Shakespeare's reactionary and anti- Semitic play - a truth that in no way diminishes its artistic merit.

Ernest Simon Associate Professor of Literature

Ramapo College of New Jersey

Re: Law and Literature... and History

To the Editor: Not long before the Law and Humanities Institute (LHI)

held its December 1992 colloquium in New York on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Atlantic Monthly published an essay by Professor Douglas L. Wilson of Knox College entitled "Thomas

Jefferson and the Character Issue" which introduced me to a locution called "presentism." The word's meaning and practice had disturbed me for several decades under the rubrics of "revisionism," "intention-

alism," and other vehicles generally used by certain members of the

academy to tar an opponent, or even for eccentric excursions of their own.

The Wilson usage turned out to be my sentiment precisely. We of LHI, and the Law and Literature movement generally, have an obligation as lawyers, as judges, literary critics, professors or

thinkers, in all our explorations, to maintain a serious regard for the

parallel role of history. Where we fail in this regard, we do so at our intellectual peril.

I am alarmed to note a current trend to export our late 20th

century thinking to distant times, places, and texts, to place a gloss upon persons, on writers, on events and literature, all for an illegiti- mate purpose, following the suggestion of Henry Ford ("history is

bunk") that we simply obliterate the course of history. This kind of

freebooting does none of us credit. I was disturbed at the LHI

colloquium on The Merchant of Venice to hear rhetoric of this

description.

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Re: "The Taming of the Jew"