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The Merchant of Venice
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Acts IV-VChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act IV, Scene 1 Summary
Antonio, Bassanio, Gratiano, Salerio, and Shylock gather in court where the duke of Venice will rule on Antonio and Shylock’s contract. The duke demands that Shylock provide a reason why he continues to demand a pound of Antonio’s flesh, even though Bassanio has arrived to repay the 3,000 ducats and more, if necessary. Shylock has no answer, aside from the fact that it suits his passions and he is lawfully permitted to do it. When the duke begs him to show mercy, Shylock turns the question around and asks why the duke doesn’t free his slaves and marry them off to his heirs. Before letting the duke respond, Shylock says, “You will answer, ‘The slaves are ours!’ So do I answer you: The pound of flesh which I demand of him / Is dearly bought; ‘tis mine and I will have it” (4.1.98-101).
The duke says he has no choice but to rule in Shylock’s favor, unless Dr. Bellario arrives to provide expert testimony supporting a contrary ruling. At that moment, Nerissa enters dressed as a male law clerk. She delivers a letter from Dr. Bellario stating that in his stead he has sent a brilliant young doctor of the law named Balthazar who is currently waiting outside the courtroom. The duke agrees to admit “Balthazar,” who is actually Portia dressed as a man.
After an appeal to Shylock’s sense of mercy fails, Portia as Balthazar reaches the same conclusion as the duke: that to rule in Antonio’s favor would be a harmful precedent threatening Venice’s ability to enforce contracts. She gives Shylock one last chance to accept three times the original bond amount, which he rejects. Shylock also rejects Portia’s request to have a surgeon present while the moneylender cuts the flesh, under the rationale that there is no such stipulation in the original bond.
As Shylock prepares his knife to cut Antonio’s flesh, Portia suddenly seizes on the moneylender’s draconian adherence to the wording of the original bond. She tells him that the bond allows him a pound of flesh but not any of Antonio’s blood. Should he spill even a single drop of blood while cutting the flesh, he will be in violation of the contract.
Knowing he is defeated, Shylock says he will accept the principal as payment. Portia, however, reminds him that he already refused the principal in open court. What’s more, Portia accuses the moneylender of attempted murder, which for an “alien” like Shylock carries a penalty of forfeiting half his holdings to the intended victim and the other half to the state.
As she did of Shylock, Portia asks Antonio if he would like to show mercy. Antonio says that Shylock can keep the half-share owed to Antonio, as long as he stipulates in his will that the money will go to Jessica and Lorenzo upon his death. Finally, Shylock must also convert to Christianity as part of the terms. Shylock begrudgingly accepts.
When the proceeding is over, Bassanio—still unaware that Portia is Balthazar—offers her the 3,000-ducat principal. She refuses but says she will instead accept his ring, the one Bassanio swore never to remove. At first, Bassanio refuses, and Portia leaves. At Antonio’s urging, however, Bassanio sends Gratiano to find “Balthazar” and deliver the ring.
Act IV, Scene 2 Summary
Act V, Scene 1 Summary
As Lorenzo and Jessica lounge blissfully in the moonlight, Portia and Nerissa return to Belmont, claiming to have just left the monastery. Shortly thereafter, Bassanio, Gratiano, and Antonio arrive at the estate. At first, Portia and Nerissa feign outrage at Bassanio and Gratiano for giving away the rings. They even threaten to share their beds with the law doctor and clerk as revenge.
When Antonio begs for Bassanio’s forgiveness, however, Portia and Nerissa reveal their ruse at last. Portia tells Lorenzo and Jessica that they will inherit Shylock’s fortune upon his death. In a final twist of good fortune for Antonio, Portia says she came across a letter confirming that the shipwreck rumors were overblown and that three of his vessels survived their journeys.
Act IV-V Analysis
Act IV provides the dramatic climax of the play, during which Shylock enters into a battle of wits with a disguised Portia in the duke of Venice’s court. While 16th-century audiences no doubt relished watching the evil Jew be humiliated and forced to convert to Christianity, scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries more often respond to the extent to which Shylock’s testimony lays bare the hypocrisy of Christian society and its system of laws. The crux of Shylock’s argument is that he is entitled to Antonio’s flesh under the same system that in virtually every other instance works to the benefit of Christians and the detriment of Jews. Indeed, it is only when a Jew stands to benefit from the system that the Christian characters take issue with the law’s enforcement. Bassanio is most brazen in his hypocrisy, pleading with the disguised Portia, “To do a great thing, do a little wrong. / And curb this cruel devil of his will” (4.1.224-25).
Shylock, meanwhile, points out that the system enshrines atrocities that far outweigh a single pound of a single man’s flesh. Speaking to the duke and his magistrates, Shylock says that if he should give up his claim on Antonio’s flesh, so too should they give up their enslaved people, whom they force to live and work under terrible conditions. He preempts their response to this request, stating, “You will answer / ‘The slaves are ours.’ So do I answer you: / The pound of flesh which I demand of him / is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it” (4.1.98-101). Whether realizing it or not, Shylock exposes the brutality endemic to a capitalism system that turns human flesh into a commodity.
Shylock’s blunt-force rhetoric is contrasted with Portia’s eloquence. Nowhere is this clearer than in her famous speech which begins, “The quality of mercy is not strained. / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes” (4.1.190-93). This lofty sentiment reflects what most scholars believe is Shakespeare’s genuine belief in mercy as one of the highest expressions of God’s love. In the context of the play, however, this reading is complicated by the supposed dichotomy between Christian mercy and Jewish wrath. In 16th-century Venice mercy is a privilege; had Shylock engaged in it, it is possible Portia would have continued with her ultimate plan of charging him with attempted murder as an “alien.” In turn, when Antonio is given the chance to give mercy, he does so only if Shylock converts to Christianity. For the oppressed, exhibiting mercy can get a person thrown in jail or worse. Oppressors, on the other hand, only grant mercy conditionally.
Although the play returns to the tone of a romantic comedy in Act V, the levity is tempered by the ugliness of the trial that preceded it. Lorenzo and Jessica—the only characters who are shown enjoying their romantic coupling—discuss how men who cannot appreciate music are “fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils” (5.1.94). The line could refer to virtually every other principal character in the play, at least with respect to their behavior in Venice. As a hotbed of commerce, Venice seems to bring out the worst in men and women; only those who are safely ensconced in the sheltered and privileged luxury of places like Belmont are free of the betrayals of the city.
Audiences may also question whether Portia and Bassanio’s marriage will be happy. During the court proceeding, Bassanio elevates Antonio above his wife in status and affection, betraying once again the transactional nature of his courtship of Portia. Later, as Portia approaches her Belmont estate, she muses to Nerissa about how “a substitute shines brightly as a king / until a king be by” (5.1.103-04), which may suggest that she settled for Bassanio because all her other suitors were so manifestly unworthy. Even the final reveal that none of Antonio’s ships ran aground has a sheen of fantasy to it, as Portia tells him, “You shall not know by what strange accident / I chanced on this [information]” (5.1.297). The mood at Belmont at the end of the play is thus one of forced fantasy, which audiences are right to fear will not last for these characters, as they will inevitably be pulled back into the “treasons, stratagems, and spoils” of Venice.
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By William Shakespeare
