ABSTRACT
As a locus in which to ponder the ideological function of the Shakespearean text, The Merchant of Venice is an obvious, and obviously problematic, choice. At a glance, the Merchant seems to inscribe and affirm an ideological calculus that fused the interests of the state and the assertions of a providentialist Christianity with the prerogatives of an increasingly capitalist marketplace. We can perceive this calculus allegorized in the central action of the play and ratified in the ultimate thwarting of the Jewish usurer Shylock, the redemption of the Christian merchant Antonio, and the triumphs – forensic and domestic – of the bountiful aristocrat Portia, and we can see it reflected and legitimated in the sundry polarities the play has often been said to be – to use Frank Kermode's rather equivocal quotation marks – ‘“about”’: the Old Law versus the New Law, Justice versus Mercy, Vengeance versus Love (1961, 224). 1 At the same time, however, the considerable residue of qualification that attends even the most compelling efforts to schematize the play in this way has made it no easy matter to say what the Merchant is “about;” 2 and in the degree to which the play leaves us, for example, feeling troubled over the treatment of Shylock, or appears to blur the distinctions on which the polarities above depend, leading us, in effect, to ask with Portia, “Which is the merchant here? and which the Jew?” (IV. i. 170), we may wonder whether the Merchant invokes the ideologically sanctioned mythologies of the time only to question and subvert them.
