Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  … kill your joys with love

  Friar Laurence finds Paris and Romeo both dead, and even as he tries to absorb this, Juliet wakes. The friar tries to persuade her to come with him so that he might bestow her in a nunnery, but with Romeo dead, she does not want to live and will not budge. The friar thinks he hears a noise and has one last chance at a boldness that might save the last pitiful remnant-Juliet's life. He misses that, too, and flees in fear of being discovered.

  Left alone, Juliet kills herself with Romeo's dagger.

  The watch, drawn by all the disturbance, now gathers, and so does the town: Montague, Capulet, the Prince. Little by little, the whole story comes out and the Prince sorrowfully states the moral:

  Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague,

  See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

  That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

  And I, for winking at your discords too,

  Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.

  —Act V, scene iii, lines 291-95

  The mutual grief ends the feud; as it might, so easily, have ended days earlier in mutual joy.

  18. The Merchant Of Venice

  The merchant of venice, written in 1596 or 1597, lays its scene in what is surely one of the most remarkable cities in history. It is a city which at its peak was richer and more powerful than almost any full-sized nation of its time. It was queen of the sea and a barrier against the formidable Turks.

  This city, Venice, which was like an Italian Athens born after its time, or an Italian Amsterdam born before, had its birth at the time of the invasion of Italy by Attila the Hun in 452. Fleeing Italians hid in the lagoons offshore along the northern Adriatic and about this colony as the nucleus Venice arose.

  While the Franks, the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy all struggled for control over Italy, Venice, under skillful leadership, managed to gain for itself a steadily increasing independence and, through trade, a steadily increasing prosperity.

  Venetian prosperity and power climbed steeply during the period of the Crusades, since it, along with several other Italian cities, had the ships to carry the Crusaders and their supplies-and charged healthily for it. By 1203 Venice could blackmail a group of Crusaders into attacking the Byzantine Empire first. In 1204 the Crusaders took Constantinople itself and the Byzantine Empire was divided as loot, with a considerable share going to Venice, which thus became a major Mediterranean power.

  Venice embarked on a long struggle with Genoa, a port on the other side of the Italian boot, and by 1380 had won completely. The war made her aware of her need for continental territories to assure herself of food supr plies despite the ups and downs of naval warfare. She spread out into nearby Italy and by 1420 northeastern Italy was hers from the Adriatic nearly to Lake Como.

  The fifteenth century, however, saw her pass her peak. The Turk captured Constantinople in 1453 and it became less easy to trade with the East The Portuguese explorers circled Africa by 1497 and, as it grew possible to bypass the Mediterranean, the Venetian stranglehold on trade with the East further diminished.

  Then, ha the sixteenth century, France, Spain, and the Empire began to use Italy as a battleground and the entire peninsula, including Venice, was reduced to misery.

  But even in Shakespeare's time, although Venice was no longer what she had been, she remained a romantic land, with the trappings of empire still about herself-an efficient, stable, and long-established government over wealthy merchants and skillful seamen with territory and bases here and there in the Mediterranean. What's more, Shakespeare's century saw Venice reach its artistic heights. Titian and Tintoretto were sixteenth-century Venetians, for instance.

  Then too, even in decline, Venice remained Europe's shield against the Turks throughout Shakespeare's lifetime and for several decades after his death.

  … why I am so sad

  The play opens with Antonio on stage. He is the "merchant" of the title and he is in conversation with two friends, Salerio and Solanio. Antonio says:

  In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

  It wearies me, you say it wearies you;

  —Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

  The sadness is never explicitly explained in the play and it may be accepted as simply setting a mood. Antonio, after all, is to spend much of the play in a position of great danger.

  However, it is possible to speculate that there is a more specific cause of sadness, one which Shakespeare does not care to elaborate upon. As will appear soon enough, Antonio has a male friend to whom he is devoted with a self-sacrificial intensity that is almost unbelievable. This friend, we are soon to find out, is about to woo a young lady in the hope of marrying her.

  Antonio may very easily be meant by Shakespeare to represent the nobility of homosexual love, something he hints at in several plays (as, for instance, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, see page I-473) without quite daring to be specific about it.

  Well then, if Antonio's friend has, in the eagerness of his new plans involving a lady, grown more distant, is not this reason enough for the poor man to be sad-and yet be unable to explain it, without disgrace, to his friends?

  … your argosies…

  His friends, however, have a more prosaic explanation. Salerio suggests that he is nervous over the state of his business affairs, saying:

  Your mind is tossing on the ocean,

  There where your argosies with portly sail-

  —Act I, scene i, lines 8-9

  The word "argosies" harks back to a city founded on the eastern shore of the Adriatic in the seventh century by refugees, as Venice had similarly been founded two centuries earlier. In this case, the founders were Greeks who were being pushed out of the interior by invading Slavs. The new city was named Ragusium, better known to us in the Italian version of the name, Ragusa.

  Ragusa was, for a time, a flourishing trading city, much like Venice itself, or like Genoa and Pisa. Ragusa was particularly known for its large merchant ships, which were called ragusea. In English the first two letters were transposed and the word became "argosy."

  It is clear from these opening exchanges, then, that Antonio is an extremely wealthy merchant, but one whose business involves extreme risk. Antonio, however, pooh-poohs the chances of these risks coming to pass.

  … two-headed Janus

  But if Antonio is not worried about business and is merely irrationally sad, then, says Solanio with a touch of impatience, he might just as well be irrationally merry. Solanio says:

  … Now by two-headed Janus,

  Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:

  Some that will evermore peep through their eyes

  And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper,

  And other of such vinegar aspect

  That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile

  Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 50-56

  In other words, some people are, by simple temperament, happy; others sad.

  As for Janus, he is the most familiar of the purely Roman (that is, non-Greek) gods. He was the god of doorways and therefore the god of going in and going out. (The word "janitor" is derived from his name.) It is an easy extension from that to seeing in him the god of beginnings and endings, of comings and goings (and January, the beginning of the year, is named in his honor.)

  In the Roman forum Janus was honored with a temple whose gates were open in time of war and closed in time of peace. Rome's military history was such that for seven centuries they were hardly ever closed.

  Though on Roman representations he is shown with two identical faces in opposite directions, it is possible to improve on that. Since he is the god of beginnings and endings, he might be imagined to have one face turned toward the past and the other toward the future.

  It could easily be imagined that the past-viewing face was cheerful, since the pains of the past were over, while the forward-viewing face was sad, since th
ere was uncertainty as to what the pains of the future might be-hence the figure of speech in Solanio's statement.

  … let my liver rather heat.. .

  Three other friends of Antonio enter: Bassanio, Gratiano, and Lorenzo, while Salerio and Solanio leave.

  Gratiano also notes Antonio's sadness and he too advocates merriment for its own sake. He says to Antonio:

  Let me play the fool!

  With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,

  And let my liver rather heat with wine

  Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 79-82

  The link between liver and wine might seem at first blush to indicate that Shakespeare had a prescient knowledge of the connection physicians would eventually draw between cirrhosis of the liver and alcoholism.

  Nothing of the sort. The liver is the largest gland in the body, weighing three or four pounds in man and being correspondingly large in other mammals. It is easy to equate size and importance and to argue that the liver is so large because it has a peculiarly important function and must therefore serve as the seat of life and of the emotions. (The similarity between "liver" and "live" is not accidental.)

  Contributing to this also is the fact that ancient priests, looking for prognostications of things to come, would often study the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods. This is natural, since the liver is so large and varies so in detail from animal to animal that it is particularly easy to study. Yet it is not the ease that can be advanced as a reason, so special importance must be insisted upon instead.

  In Belmont …

  It is Bassanio with whom Antonio is in love and the strength of the lat-ter's affection is quickly shown. Bassanio has been living beyond his means and is deeply in debt. He has been forced to borrow and says, frankly:

  … To you, Antonio,

  I owe the most in money and in love,

  —Act I, scene i, lines 130-31

  But Antonio is willing to continue the support. He says earnestly to Bassanio:

  … be assured

  My purse, my person, my extremest means

  Lie all unlocked to your occasions [needs].

  —Act I, scene i, lines 137-39

  Surely the attachment on Antonio's side can only be love in its fullest sense. Yet it may be one-sided. Bassanio's affection may be nothing more than friendship, for he seems to have no hesitation in attempting to draw on Antonio's support for a competing love.

  Bassanio explains that he may be in a position to repay all he has borrowed if only Antonio will be willing to invest a bit more. He says:

  In Belmont is a lady richly left;

  —Act I, scene i, line 161

  In short, Bassanio knows of a rich heiress and if he can marry her, he can pay off all his debts. All he needs is enough money to appear a respectable suitor; he cannot go as a beggar.

  (The beginning of Bassanio's speech makes him sound like a fortune hunter, but the play will amply show that he wants the woman for herself and that the money is secondary. He stresses the money now because he wants to explain that he will be able to pay off his debt to Antonio, and not that he is greedy for wealth for himself.)

  As for Belmont, that may well be a fictitious name for the estate left to the heiress. In the Italian tale from which this portion of the plot is derived, the place is Belmonte, and there is a Belmonte in Italy, on the western shore of the Italian toe, a little over five hundred miles south of Venice. Probably there is no connection, and as far as the play is concerned, it doesn't matter where Belmont is, but it is interesting that a Belmonte exists.

  Her name is Portia.. .

  Bassanio has seen the lady and knows her to be beautiful and virtuous. He says:

  Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued

  To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia;

  —Act I, scene i, lines 165-66

  Brutus' Portia-that is, his wife-appears as a pattern of Roman virtue in Julius Caesar (see page I-281), a play Shakespeare wrote some two years after The Merchant of Venice.

  … Calchos' strand

  Bassanio goes on in his lyrical praise of Portia to say:

  … her sunny locks

  Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,

  Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strond,

  And many Jasons come in quest of her.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 169-72

  The tale of the Golden Fleece is one of the most famous in Greek mythology. Two children, the son and daughter of a king of Thebes, had a wicked stepmother. With the help of the gods they were whisked away from Thebes on the back of a winged ram with a golden fleece (see page I-541). The ram flew them to what must have seemed the end of the world to the very early Greeks-the easternmost shore of the Black Sea.

  On the way, the girl, Helle, fell off and drowned in one of the narrow waterways between the Aegean and the Black seas, a waterway known as the "Hellespont" in consequence. The boy, however, was carried safely to the kingdom of Colchis (called Colchos in this Shakespearean passage). The King of Colchis, Aeetes, sacrificed the ram and suspended the Golden Fleece from a tree, leaving it under the guard of a never sleeping dragon.

  To attain that Golden Fleece and bring it back to Greece was a worthy aim for an adventurer, and Jason, an exiled Thessalian prince, undertook the quest. With a fifty-oared ship, the Argo, and a crew of heroes, he penetrated the Black Sea and won the Fleece.

  … the County Palatine

  When Bassanio is done explaining, Antonio promptly offers to finance the project in a characteristic burst of selflessness. With that done the scene shifts at once to Belmont, where we meet Portia and her companion, Nerissa.

  It seems that Portia's father, in dying, has left three caskets behind, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead. Each suitor must choose one of the caskets, and only he who picks the correct casket, the one with Portia's portrait inside, can marry her. If the suitor loses, he must swear to leave at once and never to reveal which casket he had chosen.

  There are many suitors come to take their chances and Portia has an opportunity to display her mocking wit at their expense (and Shakespeare has a chance to air his prejudices).

  Nerissa mentions a prince of Naples first and he is dismissed by Portia at once as interested only in horses and horsemanship. Nerissa then says:

  Then is there the County Palatine.

  —Act I, scene ii, line 44

  In the early Middle Ages a "count palatine" was a high official who served in the King's household; that is, in the palace. Eventually, the title came to be inherited only as a tide and without any special house-holdly duties.

  In only one case did the title remain prominent, and that was hi connection with a tract of land along the middle Rhine River whose ruler remained the Count Palatine. The territory was therefore known as the "Palatinate." Its capital was at Heidelberg.

  In Shakespeare's time the Palatinate was a center of German Calvinism, a form of religion which was similar to English Puritanism. In 1592, just a few years before The Merchant of Venice was written, Frederick IV succeeded to the title. He was a sincere Calvinist (he was called "Frederick the Upright"), which meant he was grave and solemn to a degree.

  It was perhaps with that in mind that Shakespeare has Portia say with respect to him:

  He hears merry tales and smiles not;

  I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher

  when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly

  sadness in his youth.

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 46-49

  There was a "weeping philosopher"; he was Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived about 500 B.C. and whose gloomy view of life caused him to weep over the follies of mankind. (There was also a "laughing philosopher," Democritus of Abdera, who lived about 400 b.c. and whose cheerful disposition enabled him to laugh over the follies of mankind.)

  … every man in no man.. .

  A reference to a French suitor has Portia say:
>
  Why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's,

  a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine;

  he is every man in no man. If a throstle sing,

  he jails straight a-cap'ring;

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 57-60

  This is, in part, the old stereotype of the Frenchman-a frivolous person without strong convictions who takes on the coloring of his surroundings. In this case, Shakespeare may even have a specific case in mind.

  In 1593, just three years before The Merchant of Venice was written, the French Protestant leader Henry of Navarre (pictured so favorably in Love's Labor's Lost, see page I-423) accepted Catholicism to establish himself as King Henry IV. To English Protestants this was a perfect case of French lack of principle.

  … his behavior everywhere

  An English suitor does not escape Portia's sharp tongue either. Concerning him, she says:

  How oddly he is suited [outfitted]!

  1 think he bought his doublet in Italy,

  his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany,

  and his behavior everywhere.