ABSTRACT
The search for the way in which Shakespeare's ideal of love's wealth informs The Merchant of Venice might begin by tracing recurrent words and images, but it would have to proceed by evaluating the contrasted attitudes of a whole range of characters, and would, at last, be concerned with a wider, and necessarily less precise, account of the characterization and action of the play as a whole. In the sonnets Shakespeare could define and elaborate an ideal of love's wealth—a commerce in which giving is more important than getting and in which the lover's powers of giving appear to be of no account before the wealth of the beloved—but in The Merchant of Venice this ‘idea’ is endowed with ‘feature’ and ‘form and pressure’ in a representation of human action. In this comedy the defining words of argument or the images of poetic statement are only part of the complex image of human action, thought, and feeling which is the two or three hours' traffic on the stage; in other words, the poetic ‘idea’ of love's wealth is here apprehended and presented in terms of a lively and complex dramatic action. Shylock's pungent thrusting dialogue, quickening in malice, triumph, or mockery, and hesitating in calculation or pain, the ordering of his entries and exits, his frequent asides, and the smallest of the actions and gestures which arise from his dialogue are all as representative of his possessiveness and hatred as the actual words with which he claims the forfeit due upon his bond; and the contrast with the generosity and love of Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio is apprehended in similarly lively and complex dramatic details.
