Shakespeare’s comedies are very often complicated, and the plots become so twisted that the reader can easily become lost in them. That is because most of the comedies deal with the extremely complicated way in which people “fall in love” and relate to each other. Although they are so complicated, they do tend to end “happily”, as the couples who have been trying to (or trying desperately not to) link up finally fall into place. The term “happy” here seems almost ambiguous, as they are contingent upon the sacrifice of someone’s happiness, free will, money, or some combination of the three. They raise many questions about the nature of human relationships, and what love really is.
At the end of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, for instance, Helena chases her love, Demetrius, through the entire play, but he loves Hermia, who is with Lysander. Once Puck and Oberon become involved in the complicated situation with the young lovers, everything gets confused, as both of the young men are tricked into passionate love with Helena. To “fix” things, Puck uses a magic potion to get Demetrius to love Helena and Lysander to love Hermia. Is this real love? Is it worth it to be in a relationship with a person whose free will has been stripped from them entirely?
I found the ending of “The Merchant of Venice” to raise many of these same questions for me and then some. The will of Portia’s father had nothing to do with Portia’s happiness; the man who chose correctly could have just been extremely lucky, as Bassanio was. Then the fact that Portia and Bassanio have known each other for roughly 20 minutes before he tells her that he’s thousands of ducats in debt doesn’t sound like a great start to the relationship. It becomes even more twisted when he leaves to go save Antonio. Portia dresses as a man and Bassanio has virtually no idea that it’s her. Does she have such a convincing male voice? What about her Adam’s apple? I don’t think I would be very comfortable sleeping in the same bed as a man who claimed to love me but couldn’t recognize me with a hat on. Even worse than that, Bassanio gives away the one thing Portia asked him not to take off- the ring she gave him. Granted, it was Portia who tricked him, but he didn’t know that. And Portia knows now that her relationship with her romantic partner will always be second to his relationship with his friend Antonio. At the end, it gets played off with a laugh, and Portia gives the ring back to him, but how confident and comfortable should the reader/audience member be in this relationship?
The ending for Shylock is also a problem-nothing gets fixed with him. In court, his deal with Antonio gets thrown out entirely, and it ends up being that he owes Antonio money. He ends up losing everything- his family, his deal with Antonio, his pride, his reputation. What are we as an audience supposed to take away from this? Is this supposed to teach us something about living a life in pursuit of revenge? Or is this blatant anti-Semitism?
Perhaps Jessica and Lorenzo escaped happily and were able to buy monkeys and live frivolously, and Antonio isn't totally broke, but I don't think this play does a good job in leaving the audience with a feeling of confidence in the relationships between the main characters of this play.
3 comments:
I really enjoyed your post. I guess you could say that it made me think about the bigger picture of the play. During classes we tend to harp on details and digress (a lot). Tangents lead us down strange paths in search for answers, however, looking at the play as whole sometimes is overlooked (sadly enough). I like how you though so much about the ending of the play, and the state of all the characters in the end. In class we look to deep into the characters and what they do through out the acts, but rarely do we contemplate and reflect on what is the final out come for these characters.
I liked your post because after finishing the play, I felt sort of discontented with the end results of all that had gone on in the play. I also am a little put off to the "happen ending" of the play because it doesn't really seem like Antonio and Shylock got the "happy ending" that everyone else seemed to acquire.
It took me quite some time to figure out what actually made this play a comedy. The only comedic aspect I saw throughout much of the play came in the form of Launcelot. Today's class finally shed some clarity on the issue for me by explaining that a Shakespearian comedy is not necessarily a comedy by contemporary standards but rather the overcoming of obstacles through the sacrifice of characters. Hearing this allowed me to rest much more easily with the ending of the play which initially left me waiting for something more.
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