The Merchant of Venice: An Interpretive Note
By Joel Friedman
In The Merchant of Venice the meaning and larger significance of Shylock’s remark on the first meeting of Antonio:
How like a fawning publican he lookes.
has continued to remain enigmatic. There is no doubt it is an insulting epithet but precisely of what nature?
Publican has been interpreted as a tax-gatherer or an inn-keeper, and editors have attempted several glosses:
Signet Classics- Publican sometimes glossed as Roman tax-gatherer, as in Mathew 11:17 and 31:30, and sometimes as an Elizabethan inn-keeper. Perhaps Shylock uses it as an inexact but bitter term of reproach.
The Yale Shakespeare- fawning publican: see Luke 18, 10-14.
The Arden Shakespeare- fawning publican an odd combination, for the publicani or farmers of Roman taxes were likely to treat Jews with some insolence rather than servility (so Clarendon)…It was appropriate for Shylock to call Antonio a publican, i.e., a servant of gentile oppressors who robbed the Jews of lawful gain (so F. T. Wood, N and Q., clxxxix (1945)), 252-3.
New Variorum Edition – Allen (MS): Shakespeare must have made Shylock, as a Jew, speak of a ‘publican’ as his fore fathers did in the New Testament; and yet the epithet he used shows that he conceived of him as an English inn-keeper. In various dialects (see Halliwell’s Archaic diet.) ‘public’ is equivalent to an inn…
None of these attempts clarifies Shylock’s observation. A fawning tax-gatherer makes no sense, but a fawning inn-keeper, it will be shown, is nearer the mark.
Consider this passage: “Down to about the time (the 17th and 18th centuries) it had been customary of publicans to lend money on pledges that their customers might have the means of drinking, but the practice was at last stopped by act of parliament.” (James George Joseph Penderel-Bradhurst, editor of the Guardian [London]. Cited in All There Is to Know-Readings from the Illustrious Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, by Alexander A. Coleman and Charles Simmons, New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994-247.)
Now a publican who fawns on his drinking patrons by continually giving credit fits Shylock’s description of Antonio perfectly and incisively. In the immediate lines that follow he enlarges and specifies:
I hate him for he is a Christian:
But more, for that in low simplicitie
He lends out money gratis, and brings downe
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
Here then, is the dominating incentive for Shylock’s determination to destroy Antonio. It overrides the ethnic hatred he has for him, and, later in the scene, Antonio’s hate for Shylock.
This threat to his livelihood holds more importance for Shylock than the defection of Jessica, and the loss of his money and jewels. Indeed, he feels the loss of his property, which Jessica has squandered so carelessly, far more than the loss of his daughter.
Tuball: Your daughter spent in Genowa, as I heard, one night fourscore ducats.
Shylock: Thou stick’st a dagger in me, I shall never see my gold againe, fourscore ducats at a sitting, fourscore ducats.
In fact, on learning she has given his turquoise in exchange for a monkey, he curses her:
Tuball: One of them showed me a ring that hee had of your daughter for a Monkie.
Shylock: Out upon her, thou torturest me Tuball…
But what follows is of the utmost importance to him:
Tuball: But Antonio is certainly undone.
Shylock: Nay, that’s true, that’s very true, goe Tuball, fee me an Officer, bespeake him a fortnight before, I will have the heart of him if he forfeit , for were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandize I will…
At the close of this scene we are left with his cardinal consideration, the protection and maintenance of his business. Moreover, this explained the most puzzling speech in the play, the equivocation of Shylock’s reasoning in persisting in his action against Antonio:
Shylock: You’l aske me why I rather choose to haue
A weight of carrion flesh, than to receiue
Three thousand Ducats? Ile not answer that?
But say it is my humor: Is it answered?
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So can I gieu no reason, nor will I not,
More than a lodg’d hate, and a certaine loathing
I beare Antonio, that I follow thus
A loosing suite against him? Are you answered?
He knows he dare not articulate in open court his true reason for persisting to destroy Antonio: that Antonio “lends out money gratis.” This was no crime but the accepted practice in conducting Christian business. Nor dare he say that in doing so Antonio “brings downe the rate of usance here with us in Venice,” for usury was considered a sin by the church and consequently a crime. His reasoning, then, must be abstruse in the extreme.
Shylock’s characterization of Antonio as a “fawning publican” strikes to the heart of his contention with this enemy to his livlihood. It sets the dominant tone and rings in the suitable condition of his fall at trial’s end.
Duke: That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,
I pardon thee thy life before thou aske it:
For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s
The other half comes to the generall state,
Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.
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Shylock: Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that,
You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustaine my house: you take my life
When you do take the meanes whereby I liue.
