Essay: Fate and Freedom in The Merchant of Venice

"Let me play the Fool.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." 

(Gratiano, 1.1.79-80)

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, different powers are at play, directing the fate of the characters. While many readers have focused on the thematic tension between Christianity and Judaism, the play's secondary plots involving Lancelot, Gratiano and Nerissa contain elements of the Elizabethan theological debates over Calvinist predestination. Lancelot's consultation with his conscience and "the devil" holds many parallels to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, a play whose theological content was in Shakespeare's time and still is much debated. A secularized account of the Elizabethan discourse on free will and predestination, randomness, and fate is evident in the text: Antonio feels doomed to sadness, Portia feels tied to her father's will, and Lancelot feels bound to his master, but in fact, the three are able to assert control over their futures. Multiple exhibitions of freedom in the speech and actions of the characters indicate that in The Merchant of Venice, the individual has ultimate authority over his destiny.

Perhaps the most striking allusion to Elizabethan Calvinist debates is present in the play's first appearance of Lancelot Gobbo. In Act 2, Scene 2, Lancelot the servant considers quitting the service of his master Shylock. He consults for this purpose his conscience, which provides the morally correct advice of remaining with his master, and "the fiend", who provides the morally ambiguous counsel to escape. In this scenario, Lancelot is able to choose between righteousness and sin. Such control of the individual over his sins is in defiance of sixteenth-century Calvinist doctrines, which held that God alone has influence over individual damnation and salvation (Milward 157-163). By surveying his options and choosing one, Lancelot becomes a proponent of anti-Calvinist free will.

This scene in which a man consults a moral and an immoral entity is strongly evocative of Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus, which was highly popular in the years immediately preceding Shakespeare's writing of The Merchant of Venice. Marlowe's tragedy relates the story of a man who, after selling his soul to the devil, accepts the advice of an "evil angel" and rejects the advice of a "good angel" who persuades him to repent. In this scene, the motivational influence on Shakespeare of the rivalry between Marlowe and Shakespeare about which Harold Bloom and Robert Logan wrote so extensively is striking. Lancelot Gobbo's first appearance in The Merchant of Venice both subverts and parodies Doctor Faustus' grave theological themes, and through this subversion endows Lancelot, like Gratiano, with cheek and almost heretical freedom from Calvinist divine subservience.

Allusions and subversions of Doctor Faustus are found on the level of content and style. Marlowe's protagonist is Doctor Faustus, a character whose low birth was a defiance of the conventions of Elizabethan tragedy. Shakespeare exaggerates the subversion, making Lancelot Gobbo a mock hero in the form of a servant and a fool. The great theological villain whom Lancelot serves is, in lieu of Marlowe's devil, a Jew. The conventional style also takes a temporary hit as Marlowe's blank verse Shakespeare turns, briefly, to unmetered prose. 

Molly M. Mahood, the editor of the New Cambridge edition of The Merchant of Venice, points out that the name "Gobbo" appears as "Job" in Shakespeare's third folio (94). In the biblical story of Job, God and Satan disagree about Job's piety; in Marlowe's play, Faustus consults a "good angel" and an "evil angel" who give contradictory advice regarding Faustus's optional repentance. Through the character's name, Shakespeare implicates the literary and theological precedent of Marlowe's famous devil/angel trope, thus challenging the originality of the Marlovian thematics. Whether the biblical allusion is intentional or not, Shakespeare succeeds in both mocking and outdoing his contemporary and establishing his own theological doctrine in merely twenty-four lines of speech.

Shakespeare has Lancelot consult a benevolent entity and a malevolent entity as he considers the possibility of quitting Shylock's service: 

The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me saying to me… run away. My conscience says 'No; take heed,' … 'do not run; scorn running with thy heels.' … Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation, and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew. (2.2.1-22)

As Marlowe's "good angel" and "evil angel" become Lancelot Gobbo's conscience and "the fiend", respectively, Shakespeare establishes Lancelot's power over himself. No longer are they two entities exterior to the individual and of superior, divine power. Instead, some divine power becomes internalized: the "good angel" becomes the conscience, an entity indistinct from Lancelot himself. Lancelot uses this power, and in his soliloquy expounds on the process of his reasoning behind the ultimate decision to leave Shylock. His conscience tells him to remain, while the fiend tells him to abscond. However, Lancelot reasons that Shylock is "the very devil incarnation" and therefore his conscience would certainly support his escaping from Shylock. Thus, Lancelot has manipulated his conscience and the fiend into agreeing. It is neither the fiend nor the conscience that has the ultimate say, then, but Lancelot himself, through the power of the rhetoric of a fool. 

Lancelot is none the worse for this assumption of independence. While Doctor Faustus is punished for heeding the advice of the evil angel by burning for all eternity, Lancelot is rewarded for accepting the fiend's counsel. He enters into the service of Bassanio, whom he considers a more desirable master, and his social standing even improves as he is given "a livery more guarded than his fellows'" (2.2.129-30). In the same scene, he fools his father into thinking that Lancelot has become "master Lancelot", and proclaims his own death: "Talk not of Master Lancelot, father, for the young gentleman, according to fates and destinies… is indeed deceased" (2.2.49-52). "Fates and destinies" are Lancelot himself. He decrees whom he serves, his social standing, and his time of death. Accepting the counsel of a devil has quite desirable results for Lancelot Gobbo, and the theology of heaven and hell becomes a farce of society and fashion.

It is not only the play's fools, however, who have the capacity to influence their fates. The play opens with a lengthy treatment of Antonio's seemingly helpless sadness. In the very first lines of the play, Antonio is perplexed by his own dejection:

In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me, you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,

I am to learn.

The unknown "it" that dominates this excerpt creates a powerful sense of unfocused, and therefore, disconcerting gloom. Even though this speech is followed by a treatment of Antonio's sadness that constitutes the better half of the first act, Antonio's words create a promise that is never fulfilled in the text – "I am to learn". We never do learn the reason behind Antonio's sadness. That Shakespeare simply neglected to pursue such a dominant feature of the play seems highly unlikely. Certainly the inexplicable sadness enhances the sense of foreboding that saturates the trial scene and the impending removal of the pound of flesh.

To the charge that he looks unwell, Antonio replies to Gratiano: "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano/ A stage where every man must play a part/ And mine a sad one" (1.1.77). The world, to him, is inherently tautological – "the world but as the world" – and things are the way they are simply because they must be. He is sad, he implies, after he has rejected Salarino's and Solanio's multiple guesses as to the cause of his dolor, simply because he should be. Antonio feels like a character in a play who has been assigned a tragic part, and there is nothing he can do about it. Later, Antonio agrees to the cruel contract that Shylock drew with no concern for his well-being, as though his actions have no influence over his already determined fate. 

Gratiano, however, implies that Antonio's sense of fixed doom is merely an unfortunate temporary state that is easily altered: "why should a man… creep into the jaundice/ By being peevish?" (1.1.85) Gratiano reduces Antonio's seemingly immovable, inexplicable despair to a state of mind which he has inflicted upon himself, and, it is implied, can be changed by a simple manipulation of the humors. Gratiano, a minor but engaging character, makes brief but eloquent appearances throughout the text. He calls to mind that unique brand of Shakespearean fool who, through his lighthearted joie de vivre, makes for fun, heartwarming entertainment but also surprising profundity. He is reminiscent, for instance, in his cheek and wit of 1 Henry IV's Falstaff with his propensity for poking fun at all that is noble and honorable. But this exchange between Antonio and Gratiano evokes in particular a similar tension between As You Like It's Jaques and Touchstone. "The melancholy Jaques" (AYL 2.1.41), like Antonio, is always sour and sardonic. His view of the world is, indeed, identical to Antonio's (though rather more elaborate) as demonstrated by Jaques' famous speech: "All the world's a stage/ And all the men and women merely players/ They have their exits and their entrances" (AYL 2.7.139).  Touchstone on the other hand, like Gratiano, counters Jaques's gravity with innuendo and cheek.

In contrast with Antonio, then, Gratiano does not feel attached to some greater destiny. "Let me play the Fool", he says, "with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come" (MV 1.1.79). He subverts Antonio's helpless metaphor, turning the stage into a game where one can play, instead of having to act an assigned role. Whereas Antonio's sense of pre-determined doom is intriguing and frightening, Gratiano's confidence in his personal freedom is compelling. The audience is swept away by Gratiano's effortless energetic rhetoric, and so the fool triumphs over the melancholic in this private debate between free and fixed fate.

One domain in which Antonio does exhibit confidence is his business transactions. Even if we do not take Antonio at his word when he assures Solanio and Salarino that he is unconcerned about his ventures at sea, his behavior in his negotiations with Shylock abolishes ambivalence regarding his assurance.  Of Antonio's argosies, Shylock remarks: "ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land rats, and water rats, water thieves and land thieves - I mean pirates - and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks" (1.3.18-21). Shylock addresses the possibility that Antonio's business will fail, leading to his failure to return the loan, an option which Antonio refuses to acknowledge: "Why, fear not … I will not forfeit it [the bond]. Within these two months, that's a month before this bond expires, I do expect return of thrice three times the value of this bond" (1.3.149-152).

Naomi Micalowicz in her forthcoming essay on the generic problem of The Merchant of Venice notes that Antonio's exaggerated confidence in the success of his ventures can be seen as an example of hubris. Hubris, defined by Aristotle as arrogance displayed by a tragic hero, seems in the play to lead to hamartia, or a fatal flaw when Antonio signs the blood bond with Shylock. Although Shakespeare was probably not familiar with Greek dramas in their original version, critics now generally concede that he read the Elizabethan English-language translations of Seneca's ten tragedies, which influenced both the style and the content of Shakespeare's work (Spearings 460). Just as Shakespeare had no qualms in parodying the works of his contemporary playwrights such as Marlowe, he does not hesitate to take liberties with ancient Greek conventions (not least by incorporating classically tragic elements in a comedy). Instead of hubris and hamartia resulting in Antonio's ultimate destruction, his pride is rewarded: in a deus ex machina, three of his argosies are "richly come to harbor", and, of course, he never has to fulfill the fatal terms of the unreturned loan. Antonio thus escapes a fate to which he would certainly have been doomed had he been a protagonist of the Greek tradition. By adhering to a structural tradition and then diverging from it, Shakespeare allows his play its own literary fate.

Nerissa and Portia, much like Antonio and Gratiano, embody a struggle between two paradigms. Portia's father has in his will left orders for the devising of the casket test: to marry Portia, a suitor must choose the correct casket out of gold, silver and lead. She finds suitor after suitor to be unsatisfactory: "When he [the Duke of Saxony's nephew] is best he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst he is little better than a beast" (1.2.71). Unwilling to passively accept the future that has been construed for her by her father, Portia expresses her intent to direct the outcome of the choice of the Duke's nephew: "for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within, and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge" (1.2.78).

Nerissa, on the other hand, has faith in Portia's father's arrangement for her. "Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their death have good inspirations. Therefore the lottery that he hath devised … whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love" (1.2.23). She counsels Portia to follow the path her father has paved for her, even though it has not served Portia well in the past: Portia fears that if the trend of men choosing the wrong casket or fearing to hazard a choice at the risk of eternal bachelorhood continues, she "will die as chaste as Diana" (1.2.87). Nerissa maintains that "Hanging and wiving goes by destiny" (2.9.82).

In Act 1, Scene 2, after Portia derides four of her suitors, she and Nerissa agree that Bassanio "of all the men … was the best deserving a fair lady". When Bassanio journeys to Belmont to choose a casket, Portia ensures that he does not make a hasty choice, urging him to "pause a day or two" so she can enjoy his company (3.2.1). "I could teach you how to choose right", she says, "but then I am forsworn" (3.2.10-11). However, as Joan Holmer notes in her article "Loving Wisely and the Casket Test", Portia does not meekly await her fate. Perhaps it is in the day or two that he postpones his choice that Portia has her musicians compose a song that rhymes heavily with "lead", to be sung as Bassanio deliberates his choice, thus avoiding forswearing her obligation to her deceased father by informing Bassnio of the winning casket outright. Furthermore, as Holmer points out, in her conversations with Bassanio she uses the word "hazard", which appears on the inscription on the leaden casket, as well as the words "venture" and "sacrifice", its synonyms. Portia attains her heart's desire via careful manipulation of language. Like Lancelot, she transitions from dissatisfaction to contentment by defying a binding agreement. 

Word choice plays a central role not only in Portia's dialogue with Bassnio, but in the rest of the casket scenes as well. Portia's first lines in Act 2, Scene 1 closely mirror Antonio's opening lines in the play: "By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world." Portia's words conjure the image of a feeble female overwhelmed by her surroundings, suggesting thematic identity with Antonio's helplessness; unlike Antonio, however, she does not succumb to her feelings. Portia explores the source of her displeasure: "O me, the word 'choose'! I may neither choose who I would, not refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father" (1.2.19). Portia seems to take issue not with the signified behind the word, but rather with the signifier "choose" itself. A clear desire emerges: though she may not choose, she wishes she could choose. By covertly directing Bassanio's choice of casket, of course, she fulfils her wish. Ironically, she has exerted her own, figurative will, overriding her father's literal, corporeal will. Portia's father wrote a will, influencing the course of reality with his words. Portia echoes her father's method: she speaks a word, obeys its power, and makes it her reality. Her "little body" thus triumphs over the "great world".

Particularly interesting insight on Shakespeare's considerations in writing the play can be found in points of departure from The Merchant of Venice's probable source, the Gesta Romanorum. Raymond Waddington in his article "Blind Gods – Fortune, Justice and Cupid in The Merchant of Venice" compares the casket inscriptions in the Gesta Romanorum to those on the caskets in The Merchant. Waddington points out that while Shakespeare simply switches the inscriptions on the gold and silver caskets, the inscription on the lead casket undergoes an essential change. The original work's inscription reads: "Who so chooseth mee, shall finde that God hath disposed for him". The emphasis in the original work is explicitly religious; the chooser is asked to put his faith in the fate that God has chosen for him. Shakespeare, however, not only secularizes the inscription, but transfers the power of providence from God to the individual: "Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath" (MV 2.7.9). While the former inscription seems to subscribe to the notion of predetermined destiny, a Calvinist doctrine, the latter eradicates this, endowing the chooser with ultimate responsibility for his actions. The casket test turns into a power play in which in order to emerge triumphant the suitor must choose, ironically, freedom to choose. Morocco picks the golden casket, choosing "what many men desire", and Arragon, in the form of the silver casket, gets "as much as he deserves".  The choices of Arragon and Morocco render them passive receivers, whereas Bassanio's decision to "hazard all he hath" makes him a symbolic advocate of his own will.

As we have seen, although the men in the play do exert influence over their affairs, the women in The Merchant of Venice are remarkably independent. If Gratiano is reminiscent of Touchstone, then certainly Portia's character is strikingly similar in spirit to As You Like It's Rosalind. In As You Like It, Rosalind dons male clothing and has her cousin Celia dress like a peasant, upon which the cousins flee to the Forest of Arden. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises herself and Nerissa in male attire, after which the two make away to Venice. Once there, Portia and Nerissa maintain their male identities until after they have obtained their goal, that is, to save Portia's husband's best friend, in the same way, that Rosalind reveals her identity only after Orlando has promised to marry her female self. The two display matching attitudes toward men: neither fits the convention of the passive, mild female and instead Portia and Rosalind actively engage in the pursuit of Bassanio and Orlando, respectively. These behaviors are in clear defiance of the gender hierarchy of Early Modern England (Amussen 200-207), in which men had uncontested legal and social power over women. Shakespeare's women stray from the destiny that society has designated for their sex.

Portia, however, takes this defiance of social conventions one step further.  While Rosalind's displays of authority are confined to affairs of the heart, Portia steps out of the domestic sphere to which Elizabethan women were largely constrained, and into the exclusively masculine public-legal domain. When Shylock is ready to collect his pound of flesh, the men in the courtroom are largely helpless. "Shylock… I think … thou'lt show thy mercy," the Duke implores Shylock ineffectively (4.1.17-20). They are, it seems, paralyzed by the conviction that Shylock is not earnest about his intent to claim the bond: "Why, I am sure if he [Antonio] forfeit thou [Shylock] wilt not take his flesh" (Salarino, 3.1.40). Alternately, they are immobilized by their perceived legality of the bond: "the Duke cannot deny the course of law" (Antonio, 3.4.26). It is Portia, disguised as Doctor Belthazar, who finally has the presence of mind to save Antonio and punish the agent of his distress.

Through the existence of tension between opposite points of view, The Merchant of Venice reflects the philosophical and theological disagreements of Shakespeare's time. Without suffocating the play with ponderous debates over divinity and sin, Shakespeare manages to inject elements of his contemporary theology into his characters' speech and actions, even turning the religious debate into entertainment through the bluntness and antics of Gratiano, Lancelot, and Portia. In their various displays of individuality and control, the play's characters defy those roles that their peers, their superiors, and the conventions of their age carved out for them. In the stage that is the world, using their wit, rhetoric, and "mirth and laughter", they are able to pick their own parts to play, be it fool or hero or heroine.

Fate and freedom

Image by Eugenia Maximova

Works Cited

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