The Merchant of Venice as A Comedy of Reversals (Special Issue Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Faculty of Letters)

This is an attempt to read The Merchant of Venice as a comedy of reversals. In each of the three plots-the casket, the trial, and the ring-there are reversals which are interrelated, and their culmination forms the governing pattern of the play. The apparent impediments of paternalistic imposition and the meager appearance of the lead casket with a threatening inscription lead to the successful marriage of the true minds. The most critical and climactic reversal in the play takes place in the trial scene. The heinous murder, attempted by Shylock in revenge, is frustrated by the very means he meticulously adhered to-a demand to follow the letter of the law. The accuser and the accused change their positions. Shylock is now accused of attempted murder but is treated with the spirit of mercy. Antonio also, now liberated, learns the virtue of mercy as eloquently appealed to by Portia. The tormenting difficulties of the dilemma Bassanio faces between the obligation of friendship and marital love results in the happy fulfillment of both friendship and love in a comic resolution, thus allowing the glimpse of the vision of a ring of harmony to "muddy vesture of clay." The stumbling block to this reading seems to be the treatment of Shylock after the tables are turned upon him. Even with a determined "willing suspension of disbelief" on the one hand, and on the other, being aware of the pitfall of "intentional fallacy," I nevertheless feel very uneasy about the shotgun conversion. Now that we have experienced the holocaust and the inviolability of conscience is undeniably established, it becomes more difficult to accept this conversion.8KJ00004272559論文Articledepartmental bulletin pape