The Merchant of Venice Act 3 – “The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

The Merchant of Venice Act 3 – “The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

From where he lived in Bishopgate in London (near present day Liverpool Street Station), Shakespeare could see and hear the docks. The waterway near Tower Bridge extended much further up in those days to near Cable Street. He would have heard much about the comings and goings of ships and trade in his local ale houses and 1596 was a year when many ships had not come home to port. Until the invention and eventual adoption of Harrison’s clocks in the 18^thCentury, inaccurate measurements of time at sea and longitude meant that somewhere from about a quarter of all English ships seemed to sink or suffer damage in transit on rocks or reefs. As the June rains subsided and the sun finally hit the London sky, people would have meandered through the streets to The Rose or the newly built Blackfriars Theatre to escape from their world into exotic worlds like the Italy shown in ‘The Merchant of Venice’. When the actors playing Salarino and Solanio entered the stage to start Act 3 of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, the news that Antonio had probably lost most or all his ships is one that would hit the hearts of all of Shakespeare’s audience and reminded them of the many English ships and Englishmen still at sea.

Shylock enters and accuses Salarino and Solanio of aiding in the elopement of his daughter Jessica. Shylock confirms his resolve to take the bond of a pound of flesh from Antonio. They berate Shylock but Shylock points out that Antonio treated him with so much distain because he was a Jew that now he will exact the same Christian lessons on Antonio:

“ …He hath disgraced me … and what’s his reason?

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?

Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions

Senses, affections, passions?

… If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by

Christian example? Why revenge. The villainy you

Teach me. I will execute and it shall go hard

But I will better the instruction.”

Salarino and Solanio go off to find Antonio, while Shylock discusses how he is particularly upset that his daughter Jessica took a ring when she ran away and traded it for a monkey. Shylock is made happier by the thought Antonio it seems certain that Antonio will forfeit his life to repay his debt. He insists that he wants to make his choice now. He examines the three caskets and dismisses the gold one because “the world is deceived by ornament” and the silver casket because it is a “pale and common drudge. He chooses the lead casket because its “paleness moves me more than eloquence” on opening it finds a portrait of Portia and a poem which commends him on his choice and urges him to “claim her with a loving kiss”. Portia then gives Bassanio a ring to confirm her love and asks him never to part with it. Shakespeare has a habit of making even the most insignificant moment take on a dramatic gravity later in a play. Then Nerissa and Gratiano announce that they also are in love. To top this off Lorenzo and Jessica arrive but a letter they carry strikes a more sombre note.

It seems that Antonio’s ships are all lost and that Shylock insists on taking his pound of flesh. Bassanio decides he will now return and Portia offers to put up the money so Bassanio can pay twenty times the debt. Jessica points out that she overheard her father say:

“That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh

Than twenty times the value of the sum…”

As we venture back to Venice, we see Shylock escorting Antonio to prison and repeating that he will exact his bond and that the Duke of Venice will have to grant Shylock his justice. Solanio discusses with Antonio the repercussions if the Duke does not uphold the law. Antonio’s final comment to the gaoler expresses his final desire that Bassanio “…see me pay his debt…”

Across the seas to Belmont, Portia tells Lorenzo that she sees helping and saving Antonio, her husband’s best friend, as no different from saving her husband. She declares that she and Nerissa will go to a monastery until her husband returns and that in the meantime, Lorenzo and Jessica should run her estate. Secretly, she in fact sends her servant Balthasar to Padua to see Dr Bellario with documents and letters about Antonio’s case to seek advice. She then reveals her plan to Nerissa for the two of them to disguise themselves as young men and visit their husbands in disguise. When asked by Nerissa the reasons for doing this, Portia tells her that she will tell her the reasons later. Perhaps Shakespeare had already decided that the old dramatic or comic convention of having a young male actor playing a woman dress up as a young man was what was needed at this point in the play even before he had decided the reason and purpose of such cross-dressing exploits.

In a bizarre and narratively insignificant scene in a garden at Portia’s Belmont house, Launcelot repeats to Jessica the odd saying that “… the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children…” while Jessica claims that her marriage to Lorenzo will give her salvation. The scene is over-the-top and Jessica’s admiration for Portia along with Launcelot’s puns and humour give the audience a light and humorous interlude while having the added advantage of allowing time for a set change and a number of actors to change costumes.