March-April issue: Shakespeare: Not of an Age, But for All Time

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Villiany, Taught and Executed: Reflections on The Merchant of Venice

It would be a mistake to think that literature exists only to give us simple morality lessons. It instead exists to display human experience. It manifests before us some human beings in human circumstances, faced with human dilemmas and choices, acting for human reasons, and enduring the human consequences. It does not direct our moral considerations; it merely informs them. But oh, what information is supplied! Treat a man like a beast, and he will grow brutal. Give that brutal man an opportunity to slay his tormentor, he will leap at it. Realize such revenge, and destruction will be consummated. Let mercy present itself as an option against a deadly earnest, and some may nobly seize upon it. We can then assign moral praise or blame according to our own lights, but through literature we must first get our facts straight.

The Merchant of Venice portrays the power and claim of mercy in our affairs, but first shows forth that no one seeks revenge out of thin air; there is always a reason, otherwise it would not be revenge. Except for the restraint of proportion, there is little to no natural check against it as such boiling spite is emulsified with some sense of justice. Resolute and narrow in its vision, it
is frequently impervious to reason, even to the caution of the unforeseen ruin that so often attends such pursuits. Unflinching, it can usually yield to nothing other than grace; that is, the whole paradigm shift that grace can effect on the vengeful mind, radically altering the perspective to consider mercy, if the will is not walled up in stubbornness.