Antonio makes a last touching speech that so moves Bassanio that he says (and, one can only believe, sincerely) that he would gladly deliver his new wife to Shylock's ruthless clutches if only that would save Antonio (and here Shakespeare's feeling of the utter nobility of male affection and its greater strength than that between man and woman shines through). Gratiano chimes in with a similar wish, and both Portia and Nerissa, in their male disguises, cannot hide the fact that such gestures sit rather poorly with them.
As for Shylock, the strong family man, he finds these remarks revolting and says:
—Act IV, scene i, lines 294-96
There is scarcely a name that rings so unpleasantly in Christian ears as "Barabbas." In the New Testament, it is the name of a prisoner who was slated for execution when Jesus was. Because it was the time of Passover, Pontius Pilate offered to free a prisoner and put it up to the populace: "… Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus…" (Matthew 27:17). Since the populace demanded the release of Barabbas, Jesus was led out to crucifixion.
Matthew merely describes Barabbas as "a notable prisoner" (Matthew 27:16), but Mark says that Barabbas 'lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mark 15:7). Barabbas, in other words, had been taken after having participated in a rebellion against Rome. In the nationalistic spirit of the times one can see that to the Jewish masses Barabbas may have been a hero, but to the Christians of later times, he was a murderer whose life was unjustly traded for that of Jesus.
Marlowe in his The Jew of Malta called his Jew Barabbas, so that his villainy would be expressed in his very name. Shylock's remark can thus be interpreted as being a wish that Jessica had married even the worst kind of Jew (or, from the Christian standpoint, any Jew) rather than any Christian. (It is an odd point in favor of Shylock, and one rarely remarked upon, that despite what his daughter has done to him, he regrets her marriage because of his belief that a Christian would make an unkind husband. It would seem he still loves his daughter.)
Again, since Barabbas is a name that does not occur in the Old Testament, Shylock, in reality, would not have made the reference.
Shylock is ready to take his pound of flesh when suddenly Portia stops him. She turns his insistence of the letter of the law against him. There is no mention of blood in the bond and therefore Shylock must take his pound of flesh without spilling one drop of Christian blood. What's more, he must take exactly a pound, neither the tiniest fraction more or less.
It is a legal quibble, but under the circumstances, it has its logic.
Shylock finds himself caught and offers to take the three-times payment Bassanio has offered. Bassanio is willing, but Portia grimly insists on the letter of the law. Shylock asks for his bare principal, but Portia insists on the letter. Shylock offers to abandon the money altogether and even that cannot be done, for in planning to take the pound of flesh he was a foreigner seeking the life of a Venetian, and as such, half of all his goods is forfeit to Antonio and half to the state.
(Actually, if we were arguing law, then, in the existence of a statute against a foreigner seeking the life of a Venetian, the agreement to accept a pound of flesh as forfeit for non-payment of a loan to a foreigner was illegal to begin with.)
Antonio now displays his magnanimity most impressively. That half of Shylock's fortune that is to go to the state he urges be returned to Shylock on the payment of a mere fine (a suggestion first made by the Duke). That half that is to go to Antonio himself, he would turn over to Shylock's daughter, Jessica, and her Christian husband, on Shylock's death.
But then one thing more is added, which sits less well with a modern audience than with an Elizabethan one. In return for all this, Antonio sets a condition:
—Act IV, scene i, lines 385-86
The notion of forced conversion to Christianity was often justified by a verse in Luke. In a parable told in that Gospel, a man giving a feast found that his guests refused his invitation. He therefore sent his servants out to find strangers to attend the feast, and, if necessary, to make them attend by force. "And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled" (Luke 14:23).
And indeed, Christians have converted Jews and pagans at the point of a sword. (So have Moslems and, to be truthful, on at least one occasion, Jews. In the second century b.c. the Maccabean King of Judea, John Hyrcanus I, conquered the Idumeans, a non-Jewish people who lived to the south of Judea, and forced them to accept Judaism.)
The present Western liberal tradition considers such forced conversions in any direction to be abhorrent, but the Elizabethans would not find it so. To force a Jew to turn Christian was, in their view, a crowning mercy, since it rescued him from the certainty of hell and placed him on the route to salvation. Many in the Elizabethan audience may well have thought Antonio was being entirely too softhearted, and it is not impossible to suppose that Shakespeare himself wanted to do Shylock this favor out of a sneaking affection for this full-rounded villain he had managed to create. After all, Marlowe had given his Jew in The Jew of Malta an unrepentant and horrible death.
After the tension of the trial, there is a final act of idyllic happiness back in Belmont, where Lorenzo and Jessica are continuing their blissful honeymoon. The night is glorious and they hymn it alternately in classical allusion to sad and tragic loves, as a delicious contrast to their own happy one.
Lorenzo says:
—Act V, scene i, lines 3-6
The tale of Troilus and Cressida was handled by Shakespeare five years after the writing of The Merchant of Venice (see page I-71 ff). Jessica responds:
—Act V, scene i, lines 6-9
Shakespeare had treated the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, in burlesque form, a year or two earlier in A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-48).
Lorenzo says: