Assess the imporatance and the contribution to the “Merchant of Venice” of Act 4 Scene 1, the trial scene.
William Shakespeare first wrote the Merchant of Venice in around 1600 in quarto. The potrayal of Shylock, the Jew remained comic until around the beginning of the 18th century when he was portrayed as a true villain. In 1814, Shylock's role was depicted as a character to be pitied, and in 1879, he was first portrayed as a tragic character. Subsequent interpretations have varied greatly over the years, but since World War II, he has most often been conceived of as tragic.
Scene 4, Act 1 important in one way due to the fact that it contributes to developing greatly the characters of Portia and Shylock. It is common belief that through these scenes Shakespeare is trying to tell us that not all women are stupid as they often, as shown in the scene make fools of the men. Shakespeare might also be attempting to tell us how unmerciful the Jews are through Shylock as Shylock refuses to show mercy to Antonio because of the “lodged hating and a certain lothing” that he bears Antonio which in the eyes of the Audience is not a very good excuse of taking a man’s life.
Before the trial scene, Shylock was generally seen as character to be pitied. We felt sorry for him because of the horrible way that the Christians treated him- Antonio have many times humiliated him in public by spitting on him and kicking him and Gratiano “stealing” his beloved daughter away from him. Shylock is a man created by his circumstances but in the trial scene, we see more of him and Shakespeare gets him into a 3-D perspective making us wonder if he is really the hero or Villain of the play. In the book from lines 16 to 34, the Duke presses Shylock to show mercy towards Antonio and pare him but shylock refuses to do so because he has “by our holy sabbath sworn” that he would have the “due and forfeit of my bond” so from the strat of the scene the audience is beginning to see how stubborn Shylock is and how it would take something extraordinary to move him. We also begin to see for ourselves how biased the justice system at time of Venice was as the Duke has immediately joined hands with Antonio, the Christian against Shylock the Jew. Shylock then uses animal imagery to describe Antonio comparing him to a rat. He says that if his “house be troubled by a rat”, he would be “pleased to pay ten thousand ducats” to get rid of it. This means that even if somebody offered him ten thousand ducats he would still be unwilling to show mercy on Antonio and spare him. This clearly shows the lack of mercy that Shylock shows towards his enemies and although the Christians in the play are shown as racist and biased, this puts Shylock in the same league as them as he is showing a major lack of decency. His lack of mercy also begins to alter the audiences’ view of him and now he does not seem the victim. To Shylock, Antonio is a rat, and his dislike of Antonio no more odd than that which some men have toward pigs or cats in the end it all boils the question “Why do you hate Shylock so much?” is basically answered by Shylock: I don’t know why, I just do. The character of Shylock is further degraded in the eyes of the audience when we see Bassanio’s desperation to free him (he’s willing to give up his own life to save him) and when Antonio loses all hope of living and refuses to allow Bassanio to die for him saying that Bassanio is too young to die and he, Antonio is merely a “tainted wether of the flock meetest for death” meaning that he has now become old and he would have died anyway soon so he might as well get his life done and over with now. Gratiano then reinforces the impression that we get of Shylock in the trial scene by calling him a “damned inexecrable dog” that is unmerciful and “wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous”. Here animal imagery is again used by Shakespeare to describe human beings. The animal imagery is used in order to descibe how humans sometimes can act like the wildest animals. By relying on the defence that his actions are justified simply because he feels like them, Shylock appears unpredictable, unjustified and whimsical, and he further fuels our perception of his actions as careless and cruel. The trial scene develops the character of Shylock into a complete shape, before the scene he was presented as a man who was the creation of circumstance, now we are seeing the other side of him: the one that is unmerciful, desperate for revenge, unkind and killing a man just because he feels like it.
