The friendship between Bassanio and Antonio is also similar to a relationship in a soap. Bassanio tells Antonio, “I love thee and it is my love that speaks.” Their friendship is also central to the play as it their relationship that sparks off the whole story. It is almost as if Antonio is in unrequited love with Bassanio. This could be the reason for his melancholy in Act 1. In this context, Antonio's willingness to offer up a pound of his own flesh seems particularly important, signifying a union that repulsively alludes to the rites of marriage, where two partners become “one flesh.” It is peculiar that Antonio is even willing to help Bassanio is this situation, as it seems that Bassanio is a spendthrift who has not paid back money he has borrowed in the past, a fact he willingly acknowledges when he says, “That which I owe is lost.”
Shylock has no such relationships but his daughter, Jessica is in love with Lorenzo, a Christian. She is obviously besotted with him if she is prepared to run away with him and risk her father’s wrath. Running away with someone that they love is a common occurrence in soaps. Many couples are in love despite their barriers like Katy and Martin in Coronation Street. Jessica and
Lorenzo are determined that despite their religions, they will be together.
Despite her desire to be with Lorenzo, Jessica still feels remorse for her disloyalty to her
father. Her reaction to music in the final act shows her anguish for her betrayal of her father. Shylock doesn’t allow music in his house and when Jessica hears the music in Belmont at the close of the play she says, “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” This statement suggests that the music has made her think of her father and reflect upon her own actions.
This theme of love and friendship leads onto another theme that is often mentioned in this play, which is marriage. The virtue of marriage is very important for Shakespeare, who often ends his comedies with multiple marriages to signify a happy solution to many of the problems the characters have faced. Marriage is thus a way of achieving comprehension for Shakespeare, and it is
notable that the characters which remain unmarried are often isolated and removed from the society, specifically Antonio and Shylock within this play.
Marriage also represents a way to overcome difficulties: for Bassanio it will remove his debt, for Portia it will free her from her father's will and for Jessica is will allow her to escape her father. Marriages are very popular in soaps and often they are used in a similar way as the marriages in The Merchant of Venice.
Race and religion are another theme that the play and many soap operas share. Shylock is vilified for his religion, he is held up a representation of everything that audiences must try to avoid being. However, the main reason for hating him is that he is a Jew. He is depicted as a money-obsessed deplorable human being who has no love in his life. He is bitter because of the way he has been treated by the Christian characters in the play. Early on in the play, he says of Antonio, “I hate him for he is a Christian.” This opens the audiences up to his antipathy for the Christians. Shylock is seen as someone embittered and malevolent. However, in one of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues, Shylock states, “ I am a Jew: hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food...if you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?” In this speech Shylock articulately reminds the Venetians that all people, even those who are not part of the majority culture, are human.
When Shylock realises he cannot take his pound of flesh from Antonio, the Duke spares his life to show him what “Christian mercy” is. Shylock is forced to accept the marriage of his daughter to a Christian, turn Christian against his will, and lose half his wealth. This is what they call Christian mercy.
Like a soap opera, The Merchant of Venice has a villain. Shylock is determined at all costs to get hid pound of flesh. He can be likened to several soap characters who persevere to get what they want, regardless of the consequences. Many would go as far as killing someone to achieve their aim. However, Shylock differs from typical soap villains in that he has a more humane side so that the reader can sympathise with him and also understand what provokes his actions. Many soap villains are two-dimensional and much of what they do is unexplained. The reason for Shylock’s behaviour is explained. He has been treated badly by the Christians, reviled by them and therefore, understandably, he wants to get retribution. He says to Antonio, “You that did void your rheum upon my beard, and foot me as you spur a stranger cur over your threshold.” Many people in a similar situation would feel the same but they would probably not attempt to get their revenge in the same way.
Antonio cannot be depicted as the hero of this play as he provokes a lot of Shylock’s actions. He is not shown as being cruel to Shylock, but Shylock refers to it when he says, “You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spet upon my Jewish gaberdine.” However Portia, emerges as the heroine of this play. She is everything Shylock is not, she is young, beautiful, intelligent and well liked. She is a strong female character, who wins the case for Antonio. When Shylock asks Portia what could possibly compel him to be merciful, Portia's long reply, beginning with the words, “The quality of mercy is not strained” explains what is at stake in the argument. She claims
that human beings should be merciful towards each other because God is merciful towards them. Mercy is an attribute of God himself, and therefore it is greater than power or majesty or law. Portia's understanding of mercy is based in the way, Christians in Shakespeare's time understood the difference between the Old and New Testaments. According to the writings of St. Paul in the New
Testament, the Old Testament depicts God as requiring strict adherence to rules and exacting severe
punishments for those who stray. The New Testament, in contrast, emphasises adherence to the
spirit rather than the letter of the law, portraying a God who forgives rather than punishes and offers
salvation to those followers who forgive others.
Soaps are full of strong women, who are resolute and determined. Portia could almost be described as the predecessor for these women. It is also in this character that Shakespeare raises the theme of feminism. Portia is perfectly capable but to be taken seriously she has to go to court dressed as a boy. Shakespeare presents an image of an efficient, adroit woman, who embodies the virtues that are typical of his heroines.
Portia does have some bad traits though, when she is first seen, she is not being very polite
about her suitors, whilst discussing them with her waiting woman, Nerissa. She lists everything that she dislikes about them and can find nothing that she favours about them. However, to their faces she is courteous and gracious towards them. When she says to the prince of Morocco, one of her suitors, “Yourself (renowned prince) then stood as fair as any comer I have look’d on yet for my affection,” she does not mean it in a favourable way as she doesn’t like any of her other suitors. She tells Nerissa, “I had rather be married to a death’s head with a bone in his mouth, than to either of these: God defend me from these two.” In soaps, often women criticise the men in their life, whilst discussing them with other women.
The Merchant of Venice depends heavily upon laws and rules—the laws of the state of Venice and the rules arranged in contracts and wills. It seems that laws and rules can be manipulated for cruel or inconsiderate purposes, but they are also capable of producing good when exercised by the right hands. Portia's virtual imprisonment by the game of caskets seems, at first, like a questionable rule at best, but her likening of the game to a lottery system is belied by the fact that, in the end, it works perfectly. It keeps a throng of suitors at bay, and of the three who try to choose the correct casket and win Portia's hand, only the man who suits Portia best succeeds. By the time Bassanio picks the correct casket, the choice has come to seem like a more efficient indicator of human nature than any person could ever provide. A similar event occurs with Venetian law. Until Portia's arrival, Shylock is the law's strictest follower, and it seems as if the city's adherence to contracts will result in Antonio’s death. However, when Portia arrives and manipulates the law most judiciously of all, it results in the happiest ending of all, at least to an Elizabethan audience: Antonio is rescued and Shylock forced to abandon his religion. The fact that the trial is such a close call does, however, raise the appalling idea of how the law can be misused. Without the proper guidance, the law can be wielded to do dreadful things.
In soaps, the law is often at the centre point of a storyline, whether a character is on the wrong or right side of it. A favourite of scriptwriters is writing storylines, which are built around a miscarriage of justice, possibly where the wrong person has been sent to prison.
Another thing that The Merchant of Venice has in common with soaps is that characters in both treat filial piety lightly. That is to say that they do not treat their parents with respect. Lancelot greets his blind, long lost father by giving the old man perplexing directions and telling him that his son Lancelot is dead. He says, “The young gentleman according to fates and destinies, and such odd sayings, the sisters three, and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, or as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven.”
This moment of impertinence could be excused as essential to the comedy of the play, but it sets the stage for Jessica's far more intricate hatred of her father. Jessica seems to have no specific complaints when she talks of her desire to leave Shylock's house, and in the one scene in which she appears with Shylock, he fusses over her in a way that could be seen as affectionate. Her behaviour after leaving Shylock is questionable. She trades her father’s ring, given to him by her dead mother, for a monkey she has seen. Shylock says of this, “I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. The frivolity of this, in which an heirloom is given away for the silliest of objects, makes for quite a depressing image of the esteem in which The
Merchant of Venice's children hold their parents, and places the reader on Shylock’s side, at least for the time being. The only character who still seems to respect her parents is Portia, who sets the opposite example by obeying her father’s will.
Death is yet another theme that soap operas and this play share. Antonio faces the possibilty
of death throughout this play. He knows he is gambling his life when he agrees to the bond with
Shylock but does it anyway, as he is confident that he will not die. However, when his ships are
lost, his death seems horribly close. At one point, he looks death in the face. Shylock is offered to have the three thousand ducats paid back to him several times over but he is so determined to have
Antonio dead that he won’t take anything beside his pound of flesh. The reader feels the tension as Antonio comes perilously close to losing his life. He is resigned to his fate and asks his friends not to beg for his life. However when Portia says to Shylock, “ Then take thy bond, take thou pound of flesh, but in the cutting it, if thou dost shed. One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are by the Laws of Venice confiscate unto the state of Venice,” Shylock makes the decision to let Antonio
go and take his payment. Death is a common occurrence in soaps and is something that hangs over
several soap characters.
Another thing that these soaps and this play have in common is the fact that both have been deemed not to be suitable for children and teenagers. Eastenders is often criticised for the amount of violence, sex and the adult themes it contains, especially as it is shown before the 9pm watershed. Despite this, it is extremely popular. The Merchant of Venice was not criticised in the same way, however, the actor Laurence Olivier said, “ The Merchant of Venice is horrid, cruel and one of the most popular plays in the whole collected volume. What is more, it is thought to be eminently suitable for school children!”
The Merchant of Venice reflects the social context of the time it was written in. Anti- Semitism was so strong at this time as the Elizabethans inherited the fiction, fabricated the by early Church, that the Jews murdered Christ and were therefore in league with the devil and were actively working to subvert the spread of Christianity. The religious grounds of this anti-semitism means that if a Jew converted to Christianity, as Shylock is forced to do in The Merchant of Venice, then all will be forgiven as the repentant Jew is embraced by the arms of the all merciful Christian God of love. In fact, some Christians believed- as do some fundamentalist sects today- that the coming of the Kingdom of God was aided by converting the Jews to Christianity. All this contributed to the feeling of anti- semitism which was strong at the time and therefore audiences would’ve been pleased to see a Jewish character get his comeuppance. Likewise, soaps are written to reflect the society that they are shown in and if you were to watch an episode of Coronation Street from forty years ago, it would give you plenty of information about society at that time.
The play uses the same structure as soaps in that it has a main plot, which is Shylock’s attempt to get his revenge on the Christians by taking Antonio’s life, and a subplot, which is Bassanio’s attempt to win Portia. Episodes of a soap are constructed like this. Often they have the main issue of the week as the main plot with smaller subplots added in, usually to add some tension.
Personally I feel that whilst this play shares some elements with modern soap opera, it can’t be described as the first soap opera as it is a lot better written than many soaps. Sometimes soaps don’t seem to have very strong characterisation and characters can be two-dimensional. The characters in the Merchant of Venice are well written and you can understand what makes them tick.
Shylock is not a stereotypical evil character. At first, he appears to be but if you look deeper, you can see what provokes his actions. Laurence Oliver, who portrayed Shylock on stage, said, “In my time Shylock has been played with varying degrees of highly emotional sentimentality, the actors determined to ring from the trial scene a pulsating sense of nobility. I honestly feel this is pitching it a bit high. I find it impossible to think of Shylock as a really nice chap; he is just better quality stuff than any of the Christians in the play. They are truly vile, heartless, money-grabbing monsters and when Shylock makes his final exit, destroyed by defeat, one should sense that our Christian brothers are at last thoroughly ashamed of themselves.”
He also said of Shylock, “Shylock is a respectable old Jewish gentleman, cynically aware of the deadly Venetian prejudice against his race; it is only when, almost for a joke, his daughter is stolen from him and married to a Christian that fires the rage, this being the very most appalling
disaster that can happen in an Orthodox Jewish family. It has been the same since Christianity started, and I believe will be so for all time to come.
It would be better to compare The Merchant of Venice to a legal drama, rather than a soap, as this play concerns the law and how people can manipulate it to their own ends. It can be viewed
as an example of anti-Semitism in the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare himself breaks away from this view by injecting some sympathy for Shylock into this play.
