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The Shakespeare Story-Book
The Merchant of Venice
A Merry Bond
Shunned, hated, despised, insulted, the Jews in the Middle Ages led a cruel and embittered existence among their Christian brethren. But beaten down and oppressed as they were in most of the countries of Europe, they still prospered as far as money matters were concerned, and, in spite of the demands continually levied on them, they contrived to amass large hoards of wealth. When the great nobles or merchant princes of those days got into difficulties, it was to the Jews they turned for help, and the enormous sums charged as interest for the loan enabled the Jews to fill their coffers rapidly.
Shylock was one of the richest Jews in Venice, although he lived in a wretched, penurious style, with only a clownish lad to act as servant. Shylock had one child, a pretty, flighty daughter called Jessica, whose nature was very different from her father’s. Jessica was gay, extravagant, without much heart, and with no respect or affection for her own race and kindred. She longed to free herself from the miserly restraint of her father’s house, and to join in the amusements from which his severity debarred her. Not only this, but she had become acquainted with a handsome young Venetian called Lorenzo. She had secretly promised to become his wife, and intended on the first opportunity to elope with Lorenzo and to give up the Jewish religion.
Shylock hated all Christians, which was scarcely to be wondered at, considering the way in which he had been treated, but the special object of his aversion was a certain wealthy merchant named Antonio. Shylock hated Antonio partly because, whenever they happened to meet, the merchant treated him with contemptuous scorn, but chiefly because Antonio lent out money gratis, and so brought down the rate of usury in Venice. Antonio had also, at different times, released poor people whom Shylock had imprisoned for debt, and often on the Rialto (which was the public place in Venice, where the merchants congregated) Antonio had railed against the grasping avarice of the Jewish extortioner.
Thus Antonio had wounded Shylock in the two most intense passions of his life – his pride of race (for in his own way Shylock was a strict follower of his religion) and his love of money. Shylock brooded over his wrongs, and if ever the opportunity came when he could gratify his ancient grudge, he resolved to be bitterly revenged.
He had long to wait, but at last his chance came.
Antonio had a friend called Bassanio, a gallant, high-spirited gentleman, but one whose open-handed, generous disposition made him spend more freely than his means allowed. Bassanio was in love with a beautiful lady called Portia, and had good reason for believing that he was looked on with an eye of favour. He would gladly have come forward in earnest as a suitor for her hand, but his somewhat extravagant mode of living had for the moment exhausted his means, and it was impossible for him to appear at Belmont, Portia’s house, in the style befitting a suitor.
Antonio, who was devoted to Bassanio, had often helped him before, and on this occasion Bassanio turned to him again. Antonio was more than ready to help, and placed all he possessed at Bassanio’s disposal. But, unfortunately, at that moment he could not lay his hand on a large sum of ready money, for all his fortune was on the high seas. However, he bade Bassanio go forth, and see what his credit could do in Venice; and he promised to become surety to the uttermost of his means, in order that Bassanio might be fittingly equipped on his quest to Belmont.
In his search for money Bassanio came across Shylock, one of the chief usurers in Venice, and to him he applied for a loan. Shylock did not at first appear very willing to grant his request.
“Three thousand ducats; – well?” he said in a pondering, deliberate fashion.
“Ay, sir, for three months,” said Bassanio.
“For three months; – well?”
“For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.”
“Antonio shall become bound; – well?” echoed Shylock, still in the same slow voice.
“Can you help me? Will you oblige me? Shall I know your answer?” said Bassanio rather impatiently.
“Three thousand ducats – for three months – and Antonio bound,” murmured the Jew reflectively.
“Your answer to that?” demanded Bassanio.
“Antonio is a good man,” mused Shylock.
“Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?”
“Oh, no, no, no, no! My meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition. He hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand, moreover, on the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves – I mean, pirates; and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, sufficient. I think I may take his bond.”
“Be assured you may,” said Bassanio.
“I will be assured I may,” said Shylock, with a sudden snarl, “and that I will be assured, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio?”
“Here he comes,” said Bassanio; and at that moment Antonio joined them.
The merchant repeated the request that Bassanio had already made, and pressed Shylock for his answer. Could he oblige them with the loan? Then for a moment of ungovernable fury Shylock’s long-hoarded venom broke forth. He reminded Antonio of the pitiless contempt with which he had always treated him, of the way in which he had publicly heaped insults and abuse on him.
“It now appears you need my help,” continued Shylock bitterly. “You come to me and you say, ‘Shylock, we would have money’ —you say so, that spurned me as you would a stranger cur over your threshold! Money is your suit! What should I say to you? Should I not say, ‘Hath a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or shall I bend low, like a slave, and, with bated breath and whispering humbleness, say this, ‘Fair sir, you spat on me on Wednesday last; you spurned me such a day; another time you called me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much money’?”
“I am as like to call you so again, to spit on you again, to spurn you, too,” burst out Antonio. “If you will lend me this money, do not lend it as if to a friend, but rather as if to your enemy, from whom, if he fails to pay, you can with better face exact the penalty.”
Then Shylock suddenly turned round, and became very fawning, and pretended that his only wish was to be friends with Antonio and have his love. He would supply his present needs, he said, and not take one farthing of interest. The only condition he imposed was that Antonio should go with him to a notary, and there, in merry sport, sign a bond that if the money were not repaid by a certain day the forfeit should be a pound of flesh, cut off and taken from what part of the merchant’s body it pleased Shylock.
“Content, in faith; I’ll seal to such a bond, and say there is much kindness in the Jew,” said Antonio.
“You shall not seal to such a bond for me,” cried Bassanio, aghast at the idea of such an agreement.
“Why, do not fear, man,” said Antonio; “I will not forfeit it. Within the next two months – that’s a month before the forfeit becomes due – I expect the return of thrice three times this bond.”
And Shylock chimed in, pointing out that even if the bond did become forfeit, what should he gain by exacting the penalty? A pound of man’s flesh would be of no use to him – not nearly so profitable as the flesh of mutton, beef, or goat.
“Yes, Shylock, I will seal this bond,” declared Antonio; and it was useless for Bassanio to argue further, although his mind misgave him at such a sinister agreement.
The Three Caskets
Portia, the lady whom Bassanio hoped to win for his wife, had inherited great wealth, but there was one strange clause in her father’s will. She was not free to choose her own husband. Her father had ordained that there should be three caskets – one of gold, one of silver, one of lead – and Portia’s portrait was to be placed in one of these caskets. Every suitor had to make his choice, and whoever was fortunate enough to select the one containing the portrait was to be rewarded with the lady’s hand.
The report of Portia’s wealth and wondrous beauty spread abroad, and many adventurers came in search of her. Portia liked none of them, and felt much aggrieved to be so curbed by her dead father’s will. Her waiting-maid Nerissa tried to console her by reminding her how wise and good her father had always been. Holy men, she said, had often at their deaths good inspirations, and it would very likely come to pass that the casket would never be rightly chosen except by someone who rightly loved.
Portia listened, but she was scarcely convinced. Among her suitors there was not one for whom she felt anything but ridicule or contempt. She was therefore delighted when Nerissa went on to tell her that the gentlemen were departing to their own homes, and intended to trouble her no further, unless she could be won by some other means than those imposed by her father.
“I am glad the parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for there is not one among them but I doat on his very absence!” said Portia gaily. “Heaven grant them a fair departure!”
“Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came here in company of the Marquis of Monferrat?” asked Nerissa.
“Yes, yes, it was Bassanio,” answered Portia quickly; then, more slowly, as if she would not have Nerissa notice her eagerness, “I think he was so called.”
“True, madam. He, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.”
“I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of your praise,” said Portia.
At that moment a serving-man entered to say that four stranger lords desired to take their leave of the lady Portia, and that a forerunner had come from a fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brought word that his master would be there that night.
“Come, Nerissa,” said Portia, with a little gesture of half-comic despair. “While we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.”
The caskets were duly set out in order, and the Prince of Morocco was to make his choice. The first, of gold, bore this inscription:
“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.”
The second, of silver, carried this promise:
“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.”
The third, dull lead, had this blunt warning:
“Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.”
Long and carefully the Prince of Morocco pondered, seeking to discover the hidden meaning that lay in each mysterious inscription. But at last his decision was made.
“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.”
“Why, that’s the lady,” reflected the Prince. “All the world desires her; they come from the four corners of the earth to behold fair Portia. One of these three caskets contains her picture. Is it likely that lead contains her? That is too base a thought. Or shall I think she is immured in silver, when gold is ten times more valuable? Give me the key. I choose here.”
“There, take it, Prince,” said Portia, “and if my picture is there, then I am yours.”
The Prince of Morocco unlocked the golden casket. And what did he behold?.. Not the fair image of the lovely Portia, but a grinning skull. In the empty eye there was a written scroll, and this is what it said:
“All that glisters is not gold;
Often you have heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled.
Fare you well; your suit is cold.”
“Cold indeed; and labour lost: then farewell, heat, and welcome, frost!” sighed the Prince; and there was nothing left for him to do but to take a dignified departure.
The next suitor to put in an appearance was the Prince of Arragon, but he was no more fortunate than the Prince of Morocco. His choice fell on the silver casket, but for all his reward he found the portrait of a blinking idiot. Portia gladly saw him depart, and at the same moment arrived a messenger to announce the coming of a young Venetian lord. Some instinct made Portia guess who was approaching, and she was not mistaken; it was indeed the lord Bassanio.
Very different were the feelings with which Portia watched this suitor make his choice from those she had experienced on former occasions. She had even begged Bassanio to pause for a day or two, for if he chose wrongly she would lose his company. But Bassanio replied that he must choose at once, for as matters were now he lived upon the rack. His chief dread was that Portia might not care for him, but the lady soon comforted him on that point. Even if he lost the prize, he would have the consolation of knowing that he was really loved.
Portia bade Nerissa and the rest stand all aloof, and ordered sweet music to sound while Bassanio made his choice.
Like the Prince of Morocco and the Prince of Arragon, Bassanio stood long in reflection before the fated caskets. But, unlike these Princes, he made a happier choice. The gold and the silver he rejected, for he knew how often appearances were deceitful; but the humble lead, which rather threatened than promised anything, attracted his fancy.
“Thou meagre lead, thy paleness moves me more than eloquence,” he said. “Here I choose; joy be the consequence!”
Bassanio unlocked the leaden casket, and there he found the portrait of the lady Portia, with her golden hair and her eyes smiling back at him in greeting.
With the picture was a scroll, on which was written:
“You that choose not by the view,
Chance as fair and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content and seek no new.
If you be well pleased with this,
And hold your fortune for your bliss,
Turn you where your lady is
And claim her with a loving kiss.”
“A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave I come by note to give and to receive,” said Bassanio, following the advice of the scroll. He was almost dazed at his own good fortune, and scarcely dared to believe it could be true until it was confirmed and ratified by the lady herself. But Portia left him no doubt on that point, and her love and joy overflowed in a generous surrender of herself and all her possessions to her new-found “lord, her governor, her king.”
“This house, these servants, and myself are yours, my lord,” she ended. “I give them with this ring, which when you part from, lose, or give away, let it foretell the ruin of your love.”
Bassanio declared he had no words in which to answer; there was nothing but a wild sense of joy. And as for the ring, he would never part with it as long as he lived.
The happiness resulting from Bassanio’s choice of the right casket did not end with themselves, for now another couple stepped forward, and craved permission to be married at the same time as the lord and the lady. One of Bassanio’s companions had come with him to Belmont, a gay, feather-brained young fellow called Gratiano. This lively chatterer had fixed his affections on Nerissa, the waiting-woman, and their fate, too, hung on the caskets, for Nerissa promised that if Bassanio succeeded in winning her mistress, she would consent to marry Gratiano. Nerissa, further, in imitation of Portia, gave her own wooer a ring; and Gratiano, like Bassanio, swore that he would never part with it.
“Revenge!”
Meanwhile, in Venice, things were not going well, either for Shylock or for Antonio. The three months for which Antonio had borrowed the money had almost expired, when a dreadful blow fell on the Jew. Jessica, his only child, fled with a Christian. Not only this, but she carried off with her rich plunder of money and jewels, stolen from her father’s hoards. Shylock was almost out of his mind with rage and grief, and from his frenzied ravings it was difficult to say which loss he felt the most – that of his ducats or his daughter. Jessica, in her heedless extravagance, squandered money right and left, and even a precious turquoise ring which her mother had given to Shylock before their marriage was not held sacred – Jessica bartered it at Genoa to a sailor in exchange for a monkey!
The news of his daughter’s reckless prodigality cut Shylock to the heart, but he had one source of consolation to which he turned with savage glee. Antonio, the merchant, had met with heavy losses, and one ship after another had been wrecked at sea. On the Rialto it was reported that Antonio must certainly be bankrupt.
“Let him look to his bond!” cried Shylock. “He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond! He was wont to lend money for Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond!”
“Why,” said one of Antonio’s friends, “I am sure if he forfeit you will not take his flesh. What’s that good for?”
“To bait fish withal,” said Shylock, with a snarl like a tiger. “If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He has disgraced me and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies: and what’s his reason? I am a Jew!.. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, 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, as 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 also 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 villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
And Shylock’s resolution was like rock – nothing could shake it. When the bond fell due, and Antonio failed to meet it, Shylock had him arrested, and insisted on the case being brought to trial before the Duke of Venice. No arguments could move him, no appeals for mercy – not even the offer of the money, if Antonio could have got it.
“I’ll have no speaking; I will have my bond,” was his only answer.
The Venetian gentleman with whom Jessica had fled to get married – Lorenzo – was a friend of Antonio and Bassanio. The young husband and wife in their flight happened to come across another friend of theirs who was conveying the news of Antonio’s disaster to Bassanio, and at his request Lorenzo and Jessica went with him to Belmont. They reached the house at the very moment when everyone was in the full tide of joy after the successful choosing of the casket. Portia made them welcome, and Salerio handed a letter to Bassanio. The latter turned so pale on reading it that Portia guessed something terrible must have happened. She claimed her right as promised wife to share in all that concerned Bassanio, and he told her without hesitation how matters stood.
“Is it your dear friend who is thus in trouble?” asked Portia, when she had heard the account of Antonio’s troubles, and how it was for Bassanio’s sake he had run such a risk.
“The dearest friend to me, the kindest man!” answered Bassanio, “the most unwearied in doing courtesies, and the most unsullied in honour.”
“What sum does he owe the Jew?”
“For me, three thousand ducats.”
“What! no more? Pay him six thousand and cancel the bond. Double six thousand, and then treble that, before such a friend shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault!” exclaimed Portia. “First go with me to church and call me wife, then hasten to Venice, to your friend. You shall have gold to pay the debt twenty times over… But let me hear the letter of your friend.”
“Sweet Bassanio,” ran the letter, “my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since, in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and me if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure; if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.”
“O love, despatch all business and begone!” cried Portia.
The two marriages were hastily solemnised, and then Bassanio and Gratiano started at once for Venice.
When they were gone, Portia announced to Lorenzo and Jessica that during her husband’s absence she intended to retire into seclusion, and she committed the management of her house and estate into their hands. Then she gave some hurried directions to a serving-man – Balthasar; he was to carry a letter with all speed to Padua, to a learned cousin of Portia’s – Doctor Bellario.
“Look what notes and garments he gives you,” she said, “and bring them with all imaginable speed to Venice, to the public ferry. Waste no time in words, but get you gone. I shall be there before you… Come, Nerissa,” she continued, “I have work in hand that you do not yet know of; we shall see our husbands before they think of us!”
“Shall they see us?” asked Nerissa.
“They shall, Nerissa, but in such a guise they will not know us. I’ll wager you anything, when we are both dressed like young men, I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two, and wear my dagger with a braver grace! But come, I’ll tell you my whole device when we are in my coach, which waits for us at the park gates. Hasten, for we must measure twenty miles to-day.”