Fie Upon Your Law

Abstract

The Merchant of Venice is surely the Shakespearean play most closely linked in the popular mind with law. The crucial trial scene sears the legal and popular conscience like nothing else in Shakespeare. Over the centuries, The Merchant of Venice has spawned more commentary by lawyers than any other Shakespeare play. Books and articles in large number have flowed from the busy pens of attorneys and others seeking to understand and explain the legal meaning of this play. And yet for all that has been previously written by lawyers about the play, there is still more to be said. Commentary on the legal aspects of the trial in The Merchant of Venice is divided. One critic, not a lawyer, thinks the trial scene is so controversial that each reader must decide, like a Supreme Court justice, where to stand in the conflict.' The vast majority of scholarly commentary - an eight-to-one ratio - agrees with Portia's ruling.2 For such scholars, the ruling of the court is a victory of the liberating spirit over the deadly letter of the law, of mercy over legalism, and of reasonable discretion over Shylock's demand for literal-minded justice. According to these majority commentators, Shylock gets just what he deserves - severe punishment for his miserly vengefulness. The consensus view is that the play dramatizes the struggle in Shakespeare's England for supremacy between the common law courts and the equitable Court of Chancery. The minority view disagrees with Portia's judgment.3 Those dissenters see Shylock as a victim of injustice, as the hero of the play, as shown no mercy by Portia, and as trapped by secret legalities. Rather than a fiend, Shylock strikes the minority as a tragic victim of religious and ethnic prejudice. Portia's judgment, to these contrarians, is a triumph of vengeance in the guise of justice. The more I think about The Merchant of Venice, the more I find myself in the minority camp. As the sharp split of opinion might indicate, The Merchant of Venice has a persistent and uncanny grip on human imagination. Shakespeare's play strikes at the subconscious with a force extremely rare in literature, even in classics. When Dustin Hoffman played Shylock in London and on Broadway in 1989 and 1990, it was an international cultural event. And Laurence Olivier's film version of Merchant still captivates us. Part of what makes a classic is its capacity