Shakespeare

Masterpieces 13offense is not that he claims intimacy with him but that he dares to “thou” himin public, which to any Elizabethan must have seemed like a capital offense.Here, I fancy, a foreigner could probably get more sense from Shakespeare thanwe can, for on the Continent this tradition is still very much alive.There are two passages in The Merchant of Venice which reveal itssignificance. In the scene between Antonio and Bassanio the two friends use theformal “you” for the greater portion of the time. Then Bassanio mentions Portia,and it is as if a quiver of pain runs through Antonio. In his next speech he burstsout “Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea,” and the whole scene becomessuffused with emotion. The second is the scene between Antonio and Shylock.Again Antonio uses the formal “you” until Shylock rates him for his anti-Semitism and Antonio snarls back “I am as like to call thee so again.”Anyone who reads the Belmont scenes with care will notice how Bassaniois addressed as “Your Honour,” and though he “thous” Gratiano (a friend ofAntonio’s), is never, “thoued” by him.GRA.BASS.GRA.My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady,I wish you all the joy that you can wish,For I am sure you can wish none from me:And when Your Honours mean to solemnizeThe bargain of your faith, I do beseech youEven at that time I may be married too.With all my heart so thou can’st get a wife.I thank your Lordship, you have got me one.My eyes, my Lord, can look as swift as yours. 8But Antonio is only one part of Shakespeare, the part that loved a lord. Theother is Shylock. Shylock engaged the real contradiction in his nature, for he isthe underdog out for revenge. Shakespeare takes great care to confine his aim torevenge. Though like Marlowe’s Jew he is the villain of the play he is neverallowed to say the sort of things Barabas says:As for myself, I walk abroad at nightAnd kill sick people groaning under wallsSometimes I go about and poison wells.Undoubtedly, Shakespeare has taken great pains to see that he neverbecomes a really unsympathetic character: in us, as in Shakespeare, there is anunderdog who has felt “the insolence of office and the spurns that patient meritof the unworthy takes,” and we know what it is to desire revenge, even to theextreme of murder. Heine tells the story of the English girl who sat near himduring a performance, and who at the trial scene burst out with “O, the poor manis wronged!” That, of course, is the risk which Shakespeare ran Shylock, like