“To give and to receive”: Performing Exchanges in The Merchant of Venice

Lars Engle observes that The Merchant of Venice "is unusual", among Shakespearean plays, "in that hardly any relationship between two characters is left as solely emotional or erotic. All have some explicit economic or legal analogue," and concludes that "the pattern of credit and debit, payment and profit, is drawn in this play with nearly the precision of an auditor's report. The exchanges govern the society depicted in The Merchant of Venice. Even Old Gobbo offers a dish of doves in exchange for his son's position. John Russell Brown argues that "The Merchant of Venice presents in human and dramatic terms Shakespeare's ideal of love's wealth, its abundant and sometimes embarrassing riches", but Girard finds "symmetry between the explicit venality of Shylock and the implicit venality of the other Venetians". The play does not contrast amorous and financial economies, but conflates them into a single system of exchanges; moreover, as Pope's note shows, this has long disquieted readers.