ABSTRACT

The figure of Shylock, as Barton perceives, is crucial to any effort to read The Merchant of Venice as a play that, finally, achieves comic balance. And it is not simply modern sensitivity to anti-Semitism that raises questions. The basic form of the play is tripartite: Bassanio’s casket scene, Shylock’s trial, and the ring episode are equal partners in a drama concerned primarily not with law versus mercy, but with the law itself and its complex relations to vice, virtue, and vicissitude. ” Knowledge of the good does not guarantee good actions. Individual conscience is not enough; church law and state law are necessary. “It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.” Even those who know best do not universally act as they preach. The urgency Portia feels is indicated by the pace in which she gives her directives to the seemingly catatonic Bassanio. Portia’s role, then, has been to use the law to save the law.