By Fredric Dannen
“There’s a double meaning in that!” exclaims Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, after the sharp-tongued Beatrice disdainfully summons him to dinner. Convinced that Beatrice is in love with him, Benedick twists Beatrice’s words around until her terms of contempt become terms of endearment.
Benedick’s idiocy is funny; rather less funny is the way overzealous literary scholars do the same thing to Shakespeare’s text, finding double meanings where none exist. Years ago, I met a purported Shakespeare scholar at a party who informed me of a hidden message in Henry V, when Pistol beseeches the Welsh Captain Fluellen to remove the leek he wears in his cap to commemorate Saint Davy’s Day and put salt on it and eat it. “Salt in Latin is sal,” she said. “Sal plus leek equals Salic. Shakespeare was making a sly reference to the Salic law of kingly succession.” Oh, really.
It’s true that Shakespeare’s plays are replete with puns and bawdy jokes, but those are a far cry from encoded messages. He was a dramatist, not a cryptographer.
Some readers take the idiocy even further by trying to unearth clues that Shakespeare’s plays were secretly written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, a theory that falls apart in at least dozen different ways on examination. I invite anyone with an open mind on the subject to read James Shapiro’s excellent book, Contested Will. People who promote the de Vere-wrote-Shakespeare theory are called Oxfordians, and I once made the mistake of trying to reason with one. When I asked him for evidence of de Vere’s authorship, he pointed to the final scene of The Merchant of Venice, in which several consecutive lines end with the word “ring.” Shakespeare clearly repeated the word for comic effect, but this Oxfordian insisted that since a ring is in the shape of an “O,” the passages were not humorous cadence but rather the Earl of Oxford’s hidden signature.
Which brings me around to The Merchant of Venice, a play that modern audiences find troubling because its villain, the moneylender Shylock, is a Jew. For those who don’t know the story, a Venetian named Bassanio needs money to court a woman in another city, and turns to Antonio, a merchant friend, for the sum of 3,000 ducats. Antonio’s capital is tied up in risky shipping ventures, and to accommodate Bassanio he must borrow from Shylock, who professes hatred for Antonio. Shylock proposes that in “a merry sport,” Antonio sign a bond to provide surety in the form of “an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.” Antonio defaults on the loan but Shylock is thwarted from killing him. The play is classed as a comedy because, except for the villain, the story ends happily.
Back when I was in high school, getting my real education from the public library, I took out a book by Brooklyn College English Professor Bernard Grebanier called The Truth About Shylock. It’s long been out of print, which is a shame, but I recently got my hands on a used copy and reread it. I remember having liked the book, but could not recall much of its contents.
Though I ultimately hit a place where Grebanier’s reading of the play and mine diverge completely, I was delighted with his insights. Grebanier gleefully debunks those scholars who find hidden meaning in everything. He dismisses the notion that Shakespeare wrote the play with any anti-Semitic intention–and I agree with him. Unlike Chaucer, whose “Prioress’s Tale,” fairly drips with hatred for Jews, Shakespeare has too much humanity in him to write with venom. Grebanier points out that in 1290, Edward I expelled all Jews from England; they were not to be readmitted until 1655, during the dictatorship of Cromwell. Thus, there were virtually no Jews in England during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and it is likely he never met one. The Jewish diaspora had become unfamiliar and, Grebanier argues persuasively, Shylock’s exoticism simply made him a colorful villain.
The play is not about Shylock but Antonio, the merchant of the title. It is easy to forget that because Shylock is a much richer part for an actor than Antonio, the way Malvolio in Twelfth Night is a better role than the Duke, though the latter is a more central character. Shylock has been portrayed by the likes of Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Pryce, F. Murray Abraham, and Al Pacino. Not many actors of name are beating down the door to play Antonio.
Nevertheless, the merchant is the protagonist. Antonio has the first line in the drama, and at the very outset we learn he is depressed: “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.” Shakespeare frequently uses the same themes in his comedies and tragedies, the difference being the outcome. In both Much Ado and Othello, a villain uses deceit to drive a lover into a jealous rage. One play ends happily, the other doesn’t. There is another Shakespeare play in which the protagonist is defined by his melancholy: Hamlet. It is worth noting that had Hamlet been slain before Act V, the play would not have been a tragedy, because he longed for death, and only the fear of damnation prevented him from committing suicide. He recovers his love of life just in time to have his life taken from him.Grebanier loses me on page 137 of his book when he states that Antonio’s “melancholy is not particularly put to any dramatic use.” I could not differ more. His depression, in my view, is what the play is about. When Shylock proposes a forfeiture of a pound of flesh, Bassanio is horrified, and Antonio is delighted. After Antonio defaults, he makes the feeblest attempt to reason with Shylock, then shrugs, “Let him alone,” and adds, “I am a tainted wether of the flock,/Meetest for death.” Antonio’s willingness–eagerness–to give an enemy the power to kill him can only be the deliberate act of a man seeking to end his own life without committing the sin of suicide. He is more fortunate than Hamlet–his enemy is thwarted. There is nothing encrypted about it; the story is right on the surface. The Merchant of Venice is about a man seeking his own doom and receiving salvation.
