The letter of the law

Laws and contracts are plot generators in both The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. It is Antonio's (perhaps unaccountable) willingness to enter into the bond with Shylock that generates the crisis of the trial scene in 4.1, providing incidentally the occasion for Portia's tour de force performance as a "young and learned doctor" of law. In Measure for Measure, the long-deferred performance of the contract between Angelo and Mariana provides the legal premise for the famous plot device of the 'bed-trick'. The disguised Duke assures Mariana of the contractual basis of her sleeping with Angelo when he says "Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. / He is your husband on a precontract" (4.1.70-71).

Both plays seem to suggest, by their plots, the wrongheadedness of sticking to the letter of the law. Shylock condemns himself by sticking to the terms of his bond, by craving only "the law" and nothing more. Angelo likewise insists upon the law, thereby preparing judgment for himself. Justifying his rigorous condemnation of Claudio, Angelo declares, "When I that censure him do so offend /Let mine own judgment pattern out my death" (2.1.29-30). It will only take Angelo until the next scene -- his first meeting with Isabella -- to reach that when.

And yet, laws and contracts aren't exactly cancelled by the comedic endings. Those with secret or super-clever knowledge, like Portia and the Duke, seem to be able to insist on super-literal meanings of the law which magically dissolve difficulties. So, Portia sticks even closer to the literal terms of Shylock's bond than Shylock, insisting that he may take his pound of flesh but no blood. And Angelo in fact hasn't condemned himself by his own rigor against fornicators, since he isn't a fornicator himself. In Shakespeare's time, a betrothed couple who had consummated their betrothal by sleeping together would indeed have been regarded as legally married.

Fairy Tale Endings

You may have noticed that when Bassanio makes his choice of the leaden casket, he falls at the end of his speech of deliberation into one of those rhyming couplets that seem to signal a transition into a different mode -- perhaps one that it is more magical, more fraught with significance, more like a mythological than a realistic action.

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence,
And here choose I -- joy be the conseqence!

Sigmund Freud, in a classic essay on the "The Theme of the Three Caskets", links this choice between three to a similar choice in another of Shakespeare's plays. Lear, however, makes the wrong choice, preferring the shiny flatteries of his two elder daughters to the silent love of Cordelia, his youngest. Freud interprets Bassanio's choice between three caskets as a choice between three women as well. (For Freud -- as you might expect! -- caskets, boxes, any sort of container stands in for woman.) But the choice of the third isn't a choice: it's inevitable that the third is chosen. Freud connects both Cordelia's silence and the pale lead of the third casket with death. Death is the inevitable third. But for Bassanio, a supremely desirable woman substitutes for death, putting off the inevitable. This is the wild wish fulfillment of dreams and of all comedies.

The wish-fulfillment woman, though, still retains something of death, and thus of the uncanny, about her. And this is something that might adhere to Portia, and make it difficult for us to picture what life will really be like for Mr and Mrs Bassanio of Belmont.

What's so funny about The Merchant of Venice?

The play definitely begins on a dreary note, with Antonio's "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad. / It wearies me, you say it wearies you." And however you respond to the character of Shylock, you can hardly say that what happens to him is funny. In fact, the humanity of Shylock ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?"), which Shakespeare emphasizes even while playing with the anti-semitic stereotypes that his audience would have taken for granted, makes one wonder if the play shouldn't be reclassified as a tragedy.

So what makes the play a comedy? It was definitely classed with the comedies, coming right after Midsummer Night's Dream in the first complete publication of Shakespeare's plays, the posthumous "First Folio" of 1623.

It depends of course on how one defines a comedy. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines comedy as "a play, film, etc., of an amusing or satirical character, usually with a happy ending." This is certainly an operative definition for us when we go looking for a comedy to rent in the video store.

The literary critic Northrop Frye, however, defined comedy rather differently (and he had Shakespeare's comedies, including his late comedies or 'romances' specifically in mind). Frye's definition is this:

A comedy is not a play which ends happily: it is a play in which a certain structure is present and works through to its own logical end, whether we or the cast or the author feel happy about it or not.

So, Frye's definition of comedy is not about happiness or amusement or satire but about a certain kind of inevitable, driving structure -- as inevitable as spring following on winter. Frye in fact sees the structure of Shakespearean comedy as "natural," just like the progression of seasons.

In his 1965 book, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance, he outlines the structural stages of a comedy thus:

Stage I: irrational law, obstacles, obstinate father, winter
Stage II: disguise, veiling identity (especially sexual), confusion, misunderstanding
Stage III: clarification, metamorphosis, fertility, spring, forgiveness

It is easy to see how The Merchant of Venice ends with the clarification of veiled identities (e.g. Portia and Nerissa). But forgiveness?