The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

A change in the nature of wealth from landownership to money capital radically alters the social conception of time. The wealth produced by land may vary from year to year— there are good harvests and bad—but, in the long run its average yield may be counted upon. Land, barring disposses­sion by an invader or confiscation by the State, is held by a family in perpetuity. In consequence, the social conception of time in a landowning society is cyclical—the future is expected to be a repetition of the past. But in a mercantile society time is conceived of as unilinear forward movement in which the future is always novel and unpredictable. (The unpredictable event in a landowning society is an Act of God, that is to say, it is not "natural" for an event to be unpredictable.) The mer­chant is constandy taking risks—if he is lucky, he may make a fortune, if he is unlucky he may lose everything. Since, in a mercantile society, social power is derived from money, the distribution of power within it is constandy changing, which has the effect of weakening reverence for the past; who one's distant ancestors were soon ceases to be of much social im­portance. The oath of lifelong loyalty is replaced by the con­tract which binds its signatories to fulfill certain specific promises by a certain specific future date, after which their commitment to each other is over.

The action of The Merchant of Venice

takes place in two locations, Venice and Belmont, which are so different in char­acter that to produce the play in a manner which will not blur this contrast and yet preserve a unity is very difficult. If the spirit of Belmont is made too predominant, then Antonio and Shylock will seem irrelevant, and vice versa. In Henry IV, Shakespeare intrudes Falstaff, who by nature belongs to the world of opera

huffa, into the historical world of political chronicle with which his existence is incompatible, and thereby, consciously or unconsciously, achieves the effect of calling in question the values of military glory and temporal justice as embodied in Henry of Monmouth. In The Merchant of Venice

he gives us a similar contrast—the romantic fairy story world of Belmont is incompatible with the historical reality of money-making Venice—but this time what is called in question is the claim of Belmont to be the Great Good Place, the Earthly Paradise. Watching Henry IV, we become convinced that our aesthetic sympathy with Falstaff is a pro- founder vision than our ethical judgment which must side with Hal. Watching The Merchant of Venice

, on the other hand, we are compelled to acknowledge that the attraction which we naturally feel towards Belmont is highly question­able. On that account, I think The Merchant of Venice must be classed among Shakespeare's "Unpleasant Plays."

Omit Antonio and Shylock, and the play becomes a romantic fairy tale like A Midsummer Night's Dream. The world of the fairy tale is an unambiguous, unproblematic world in which there is no contradiction between outward appearance and inner reality, a world of being, not becoming. A character may be temporarily disguised—the unlovely animal is really the Prince Charming under a spell, the hideous old witch transforms herself into a lovely young girl to tempt the hero— but this is a mask, not a contradiction: the Prince is really handsome, the witch really hideous. A fairy story character may sometimes change, but, if so, the change is like a muta­tion; at one moment he or she is this kind of person, at the next he is transformed into that kind. It is a world in which people are either good or had by nature; occasionally a had character repents, but a good character never becomes bad. It is meaningless therefore to ask why a character in a fairy tale acts as he does because his nature will only allow him to act in one way. It is a world in which, ultimately, good fortune is the sign of moral goodness, ill fortune of moral badness. The good are beautiful, rich and speak with felicity, the bad are ugly, poor and speak crudely.