The Merchant of Venice contains two parallel plots. The main plot is the conflict between Antonio, a Venetian businessman, and Shylock, a Jewish usurer, over the lawsuit of cutting a pound of meat. The subplot is the story of Portia, a rich woman, choosing relatives according to her father's orders. In addition, it is interspersed with the story of Shylock's daughter Jessica eloping with Lorenzo with money.
Through these interrelated plot conflicts, Shakespeare showed the struggle between two outlooks on life in the Renaissance. He affirmed and praised Antonio, Portia and others' humanistic life ideals with friendship and love as the core, and denied and condemned Shylock's mercenary attitude towards life. Finally, he praised the victory of humanistic life ideal with the failure of Shylock and the happy ending of three lovers' marriage.
Antonio is a big businessman in Venice, everyone. "He has a merchant ship to Tripoli and another to the West Indies ... He has a third ship in Mexico and a fourth ship in Britain, and he also does business in overseas countries. He generously helps people in need and regards wealth as a means of a happy life. He attaches great importance to friendship, for the happiness of his friends, as he sincerely expressed to his friend Bassanio:
As long as your plan is as aboveboard as you have been doing, then my wallet can be used casually and I can be controlled by you; I am willing to use all my strength to help you achieve your goal.
On the contrary, Shylock is a greedy and vicious usurer, who regards the accumulation of wealth itself as the purpose of life. Antonio looked down on Shylock, and Shylock hated Antonio even more. In the third scene of Act 1, Shylock has a narrative that clearly shows why he hates Antonio:
I hate him because he is a Christian, but especially because he is a fool and borrows money without interest, which depresses the interest of our Venice money lending business. If I catch him one day, I must avenge myself on him.
As it happens, Bassanio is going to Belmont to propose to Portia and ask Antonio for help. When Antonio himself was unable to help his friends because he was short of money for a while, Shylock took the opportunity to retaliate and put forward harsh loan conditions: if he didn't pay back at maturity, he would cut off a pound of Antonio's flesh. Soon, the debt was due, and Antonio could not repay it because of the shipwreck of his cargo ship. Shylock appealed to the Duke according to the laws of Venice, insisting that Antonio fulfill the conditions. The mediation of the Duke was of no help. Bassanio's proposal was successful at this moment, and the clever and witty Portia learned the story and had a clever plan. He disguised himself as a judge and came to the court in Venice to save him. She suggested to Shylock: Cutting meat can't bring a drop of blood, and you can't cut more or less. As a result, Shylock lost the case. Instead of revenge, he lost his property.
Through the story of "One Pound of Meat", Shakespeare mainly shows Antonio and Shylock's two opposing views on wealth. Being bourgeois, Antonio is generous, while Shylock is greedy for money. Their contradiction objectively reflects the contradiction between the emerging commercial capital and the old usury capital at that time. The former is beneficial to the development of production, while the latter plays a role in hindering the development of production.
The script affirms the former and criticizes the latter. Thus playing a progressive role in history. However, Shakespeare was a bourgeois writer in the Renaissance, and he could not consciously realize this. He only praised Antonio's practice of "exchanging needed goods and never paying interest" from a humanitarian point of view, expressed warm praise for his efforts to help his friends get a happy marriage and a happy life, and even signed a life-threatening contract, and mercilessly exposed Shylock's greed, cruelty and extreme selfishness, that's all.
Interlaced with the story of "a pound of meat", there is the story of Portia's three boxes choosing relatives. Through this story, Shakespeare mainly wants to show that true love cannot be measured by wealth. On her deathbed, Portia's father decided a way to choose a marriage for her: whoever can choose one of the three boxes of gold, silver and lead to hide her portrait will match her and get married.
Portia is a clever girl with new ideas. She is obviously dissatisfied with such a method of choosing marriage according to her parents' orders. She said, "Oh, what choice! I can neither choose the person I like nor refuse the person I hate; The mind of a living daughter is bound by the will of a dead father. " However, because she lived in the feudal society where the capitalist relationship was just budding, she was born in a noble family and was restricted by class, so she had to obey her dead father's wishes. However, the result of the choice shows that the prince of Morocco wants "what everyone wants" or the prince of Aragon wants "what he deserves". They all only value appearance, and each chose the gold box and the silver box and suffered the fate of failure.
Only Bassanio, "prepared to sacrifice everything" for the value of love itself, decided to choose the lead box and won the victory of love. What Shakespeare preached here is obviously the humanistic ideal of love and freedom.
"One pound of meat" and "three boxes of relatives" were combined when Portia attended the court meeting. Thanks to Portia's intelligence, he defeated Shylock and got Antonio out of trouble. But the comedy didn't end there. After a climax in court, Shakespeare wrote the fifth act full of music, moonlight and love. In Belmont, full of bright moonlight and soft music, Bassanio and Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica all got a happy ending.
From the above simple analysis, we can see that among Shakespeare's comedies, The Merchant of Venice is basically a lyric comedy, although it is full of social satire. It contains the exposure and criticism of some negative phenomena of feudalism and capitalism, mainly affirming and praising the humanistic ideal of life and the new generation with humanistic thoughts.
The play begins with Bassanio going to Belmont to propose to Portia, and ends with three couples getting together. Love and friendship form the ideological basis of this comedy. He affirmed Antonio's generosity and Portia's affectionate wit, praised their humanistic thoughts such as selfless friendship, faithful love and happy life, and compared them with the selfish, cold and pure money relationship represented by Shylock. This is the central idea of the whole play.
The Merchant of Venice successfully created a typical image of Shylock as a usurer, which is vivid and complicated. Through his selfish and vicious behavior, he exposed and criticized the decadent effect of money on people. Shylock, Hamlet and Falstaff are regarded by critics as the three most complicated typical characters in Shakespeare's plays. Marx, Engels and Lenin quoted this image many times in their works. His personality is very complicated.
First of all, he was a usurer in the primitive accumulation of capital era. His philosophy is: "As long as it's not stealing, it's always good to know how to use abacus." What he pursues is "to generate interest as quickly as a ewe gives birth to a lamb". Antonio hates Antonio because he borrows money without interest, which affects his income from borrowing money. When Antonio can't repay the loan, Shylock must cut off a pound of flesh from Antonio. Neither the Duke's advice nor Greciano's anger can shake Shylock's determination: "I must fulfill the contract." He'll want to kill Antonio, and soon. Because in his view, "as long as Venice does not have him, business is my call." His servant can't stand his abuse and needs to find a new master; His daughter is so greedy and vicious that she doesn't want to stay in her hellish home and run away with her lover.
In the first scene of the third act, Du Bo went to Genoa to inquire about his daughter's whereabouts. When he came back to report to him, Shylock was sad not because he lost his daughter, but because his daughter took his money and jewels and had to spend more money to find her. In order to kill Antonio, Shylock, who was in urgent need of money, did not hesitate to pay off the government, because as he said, "As long as Venice does not have him, business depends on my word." For describing Shylock's character, this short sentence is simply the finishing touch!
Later, Shylock lost the lawsuit, and the court decided to give half of his property to Antonio. He said, "No, take my life with my property. I don't need your forgiveness. ..... You took away the root of my family's survival, that is, you beat me to death. " For Shylock, money is life and everything.
However, Shakespeare did not write Shylock as a simple villain. Shylock is not only a usurer, but also a Jew who was bullied in Christian society. As we know, in medieval Europe, a large number of Jews engaged in currency business. According to the propaganda of the Christian church, Jews are the sworn enemies of Christianity. From the Middle Ages to the early modern times, there are many stories about Jews secretly killing Christian children in folklore and ballads.
Therefore, for economic and religious reasons, Jews became the object of discrimination and persecution in European society at that time. Shakespeare, a humanist writer, regarded Shylock as a Jewish usurer, condemned his cruel exploitation and sympathized with the racial discrimination he suffered. In the play, when Shylock talks about his hatred for Antonio, these two reasons are always intertwined.
In the third scene of the first act, Shylock talked about Antonio's insult and his resentment twice before asking Antonio to sign an absurd contract to cut a pound of meat. When he saw Antonio coming to him, he said in the narration: ... He hated our sacred nation, and even insulted me in public in places where businessmen gathered, saying that my hard-earned money was exploited and dirty. If I spare him, our country will never turn over.
Then, when Antonio borrowed 3000 yuan from him, he couldn't help saying to his face: Mr. Antonio, many times you scolded me in communication, saying that I exploited and made profits. I have been hesitating, shrugging and not arguing with you, because it is the characteristic of our nation to endure persecution. You called me a heretic, a murderous dog, and spat on my Jewish robe because I earned some interest with my own money. In this way, Shylock's revenge against Antonio has a reasonable and complicated motive. The audience or readers despise Shylock's greed, hate his cruelty and sympathize with his humiliation.
Shylock's famous line in the first scene of the third act: "He once humiliated me, took away hundreds of thousands of dollars of business from me, laughed at my losses, satirized and insulted my nation, destroyed my business, alienated my friends and incited my enemies;" What is his reason? Because I'm Jewish. Don't Jews have eyes? Don't Jews have five senses, four limbs, no consciousness, no feelings and no blood? ..... so you bully us, we won't retaliate? ..... "This is an irresistible cry of grief and anger from an insulted and hurt race.
When Shakespeare, a humanist writer, created the image of Shylock, a Jewish usurer, he not only focused on depicting the cruel exploitation he suffered, but also ignored the racial discrimination he suffered. This is the achievement of Shakespeare's realistic art. Ignoring any aspect will lead to a one-sided understanding of Shylock's image. Seeing only the racial discrimination suffered by Shylock, I feel inappropriate sympathy for him. Like Heine, it is of course a misunderstanding of the image. But he didn't see the racial discrimination he suffered at all, and he lacked a comprehensive and reasonable explanation for his revenge.
The incident went to court, and the contradiction intensified, showing a new nature. A new contradiction has been added to the contradiction between Antonio and Shylock's different outlook on life, that is, the contradiction between legal principle and humanitarian principle on debt repayment. According to bourgeois law, Shylock's claim for compensation according to the contract is completely legal, and neither Antonio nor the Duke can deny this. Therefore, Shylock insists that "legal judgment" is legal. However, it is against the principle of humanity or compassion to ask for a pound of meat, which is heartless. There are irreconcilable contradictions here. As a humanist writer, Shakespeare believes that the principle of humanity is higher than the principle of law.
It was not until Portia used the only loophole in the contract to let him cut off a pound of meat, but he could not cut more and less, and shed a drop of blood that this contradiction was solved. This solution not only meets the requirements of the law, but also does not violate the principle of humanity. The audience's nervous heart relaxed. As a ruthless usurer, Shylock also got his due punishment. This is exactly what Shakespeare wants to emphasize.
After all, Shakespeare is a bourgeois writer in the Renaissance, and his works are bound to be limited by the times and classes. In The Merchant of Venice, he enthusiastically praised the selfless friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, the sincere love between Bassanio and Portia and the happy life of Belmont. He especially praised Antonio and Portia, and used them to embody his ideal of humanistic life. However, Antonio himself is a wealthy businessman, and Portia is also a rich woman. Their friendship, love and life are inseparable from money, and they are beyond the scope of bourgeois morality. Under the historical conditions at that time, Shakespeare affirmed that these new bourgeoisie and its anti-feudal struggle had historical progress. Today, it needs to be treated critically.
For today's audience, the value of this comedy mainly lies in Shakespeare's clever pen to shape the image of a typical usurer Sherlock. Through his own activities, he profoundly exposed and criticized the mercenary nature of exploitation in the early stage of capitalist development.