Essay on Romantics and Merchants in The Merchant of Venice :: Merchant Venice Essays

Romantics and Merchants in The Merchant of Venice  Ã‚   Shakespeare's comedies usually follow a clearly defined pattern. He presents a conflict, and the characters eventually resolve the conflict in a relatively happy ending, which involves marrying off the hero and his entourage to the heroine and her companions, leaving the villain outside the "magic circle" of protagonists. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio is presented as the hero, and Shylock the villain, but neither is within the circle of marriages at the end of Act V. In fact, Antonio's depression exposed at the beginning of the play seems unresolved at the end, and he goes on his melancholy way, as he supposes he must. Can The Merchant of Venice, then, be considered a true comedy? The strongest argument discounting Merchant as a true comedy is that though Antonio appears to be the major protagonist in the story, he is also as far outside the magic circle as his villain, Shylock. While Bassanio, Portia, and their associated parties marry off at the end of Act V, Antonio is left to his ships and his money, still going about his depressed way. At the beginning of the play, Antonio expresses his dissatisfaction with his situation to his friends. "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one" (I.i.81-83). Throughout the play, and Shylock's relentless pursuit of his macabre repayment, Antonio remains in this dreary, defeated state. He seems almost too eager to end his suffering at the hands of his debtors and his apparently lost business. "Grieve not that I am fall'n to this for you," he tells Bassanio in court, "for herein Fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom: it is still her use to let the wretched man outlive his wealth, to view...an age of poverty, from which ling'ring penance of such misery doth she cut me off" (IV.i.278-284). He begs the court to make no more attempts to save his life, comparing such futile endeavors to abate the flood waters or question the wolf's killing of sheep (IV.i.71-84). Completely resigned to his grisly fate, he announces, "I am a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death. The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground, and so let me" (IV.i.116-118). Even in Act V, after the dispute with Shylock is decided in Antonio's favor, the melancholy merchant plays no role in the resolution of the play.