The ending of Merchant satisfies the main requirement for a comedy: multiple marriages that ensure the continuation of the community. Furthermore, Antonio, the titular merchant, is rescued from death and financial ruin. Yet, there are hints in the play that the future is not all rosy. After all, Bassanio and Gratiano fail the Ring Test (and have professed that they love Antonio more than their wives), Bassanio has a history of debt that motivated his marriage in the first place, Lorenzo and Jessica flirt by comparing themselves to doomed lovers and Antonio is left as lonely and melancholy at the end of the play as he is at the beginning. Not to mention that Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity, cutting him off from his friends and co-religious but not welcoming him into the insider community.
While these marriages ensure community, do they ensure happiness? While many of the characters at the end of the play are prosperous, are they happy? Is this a happy ending? Do you consider this play a comedy -- or a comedy in name only?
Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice" is not a comedy because although the play ends with 3 marriages, including that between Bassanio and Portia, the story is, in reality, the tragedy of Antonio and Bassanio’s unfulfilled love. When Antonio prepares for his imminent demise in the courtroom, he gives what he believes to be his last words:
ReplyDeleteANTONIO. Give me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well.
Grieve not that I am fall’n to this for you…
Commend me to your honorable wife,
Tell her the process of Antonio’s end,
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death,
And when the tale is told, bid her be the judge
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
Repent but you that you shall lose your friend…
BASSANIO. Antonio, I am married to a wife
Which [sic] is as dear to me as life itself,
But life itself, my wife, and all the world
Are not with me esteemed above thy life.
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil, to deliver you (The Merchant of Venice 4.1.277-299).
The act of extending a hand to someone is common when a suitor greets a lady (such as when Morocco or Arragon meet Portia). In this fashion, Shakespeare hints at a much deeper force at work between Antonio and Bassanio than simply friends: Bassanio is the recipient of Antonio the Suitor’s unrequited love. Furthermore, Antonio mentions variations on the word “love” twice in the speech, a repetition that is another clue to something past a “bromance” between the two (4.1.287, 4.1.289). A final piece of evidence that Antonio is closeted is how he calls himself Bassanio’s “friend” right after professing unbounded love: because of the hostile social attitude to differences in sexuality and religion, Antonio cannot reveal himself fully (4.1.290). Bassanio’s response is greater proof still of intimacy beyond fraternity. By casting Portia aside (in fact, “all the world”) in favor of Antonio, Bassanio indicates his equally romantic feelings (4.1.294-299). Indeed, describing the value of his wife in superlatives is a defense mechanism to disguise his closeted homosexuality (4.1.294-295). The surreptitious bond between the Merchant of Venice and Bassanio is thus what makes the play tragic: there is mutual desire unable to achieve outward expression in Venice, a city of prejudice.
The play "The Merchant of Venice" is not a comedy in the slightest besides in name and technically the definition of a play in a technical sense. A play being considered a comedy is that there's multiple marriages at the end and it fulfills that duty but besides that there's nothing comedic about the play. Truly however the story is about the downfall of Shylock's life, an innocent man that got screwed over by a system that's supposed to keep him safe. Starting with losing his daughter, and the ring of his deceased wife Leah first. “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter,
ReplyDeleteFled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter!" (Act 2, Scene 5)
It matters who his daughter runs away with because of how religion works inside of Venice, he probably won't see his daughter ever again. Not only is this sad but she gets his ring and he loses that as well. Not only that but then he gets messed up with the law because of so many different types of technicalities. Sure, the way he goes on about it is very rough and he's a rather sour person, but he's getting revenge for repeated attacks on his religion, person, character, and he's considered a person of note in the Jewish community. Attack, after attack, after attack, all he wanted was a little bit of get back because of it. The Portia comes in and annihilates any chance of him getting any of his stuff back, and it's supposed to be seen as a win for the "good guys". Not only that but at the end he's forced to be converted. At the end of it all he's lost a daughter, money, a ring, and his religion and due to that his people. You can't look at it any way and not see this truly as a tragedy for shylock.