ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the battle between the young and the old in Merchant is couched in terms of the tension between blood and manners or, put another way, between biology and behavior. The body Miranda imagines as being "good" yet producing a "bad" son is illuminated by the early modern notion that the pregnant body must rid itself of the cause of its imbalance. Early modern medicine would concur with Miranda that bad sons could come from good wombs, for with the child-symptom expelled, the mother-patient would be healed. Children in the play are shown to behave similarly to their parents: Lancelet, whose father "had a kind of taste", has gotten his lover pregnant; Portia toys with those in the courtroom just as her deceased father plays with her suitors. The marital bond is, to some degree, similar to that between parents and children, as critics have noted regarding Merchant.
