ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with what we might call a "revenge comedy," The Merchant of Venice, which deals in both monetary and retaliatory payment. Despite its fairy-tale ogre plot, The Merchant of Venice is set in a world familiar to Elizabethans: the fanciful trial with its disguised doctor and dramatic courtroom reversals is at bottom a piece of debt recovery litigation, which was increasing nightmarishly at that time. Also familiar were the chains of borrowers: Craig Muldrew shows that most Elizabethans were both borrowers and lenders, just as Bassanio borrows from Antonio, who borrows from Shylock, who borrows from Tubal. The play opens upon a delicate borrowing situation: Bassanio has wasted through extravagance a good deal of money borrowed from Antonio, and now wants to borrow again. If Bassanio's borrowing situation was delicate—approaching a creditor whose previous loans he has never repaid—Antonio's borrowing situation appears desperate: he seeks money from one he has reviled, kicked, spat on.
