Текст книги "Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1"

Автор книги: Isaac Asimov

Since mandrakes were desired for the ability to increase fecundity, and for other valuable properties assigned to them, it was necessary to pull them up anyway. What was sometimes done was to tie the top of the herb to a dog. From a distance, stones could be thrown at the dog, and in running away, he would pull out the mandrake, which could then be reclaimed.

 
… the infectious pestilence. ..
 

The first part of Friar Laurence's plan works well. Juliet does take the potion and falls into a cataleptic trance. In the midst of the preparations for the wedding on Thursday morning, the Nurse finds her apparently dead. Juliet is carried to the tomb with heartbreaking lamentation.

But there is another part of the plan. Romeo must be informed of all this and be ready to return to carry off Juliet on Friday. To carry this message to Romeo, Friar Laurence has sent off a friend, Friar John.

Romeo gets a message indeed, but it is from a servant of his who comes spurring hard from Verona with the tale that Juliet is dead and entombed. Romeo, stricken, has no thought but to reach Juliet's corpse and kill himself there. For the purpose he buys poison.

As for Friar John, however, he fails to reach Romeo. Before leaving he had sought the company of another friar, who had been visiting the sick, and both fell in with "searchers," that is, health officers, seeking to prevent spread of infection.

Friar John tells Friar Laurence that:

 
… the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Sealed up the doors, and would not let us forth,
 

—Act V, scene ii, lines 8-11

He could neither leave town nor send the message. Friar Laurence, thunderstruck, now realizes he must hasten to the tomb so that Juliet will not waken alone and so that he can explain matters. Meanwhile, he sends another message.

The care of the "searchers" and their assiduity in applying quarantine is easily understood. In 1347 an "infectious pestilence" reached Europe. This was the infamous Black Death, the most frightening epidemic in world history. It is supposed to have killed some twenty-five million people in Europe in the space of three years, and quarantine was the only counter-measure the frightened continent knew.

 
Saint Francis…
 

On Friday all converge on the tomb. Paris arrives first to grieve over his lost bride. Then comes Romeo, intent on suicide. They fight and Paris is killed. Romeo then lays himself down next to Juliet, takes the poison, and dies. It is less than five days since he first laid eyes on his tragic love.

Only then does Friar Laurence finally come-a few minutes too late to prevent this further development of the catastrophe. He comes in muttering:

 
Saint Francis be my speed [help]!
 

—Act V, scene iii, line 121

St. Francis (Giovanni Francesco Bernardone) was born in Assisi in 1182, and after the usual life of a gay, but not particularly immoral, young man of the upper classes, he experienced a conversion to a saintly life. About 1202 he began to embrace a life of poverty and gathered disciples about him who were dedicated to preaching humbly and making their way through life by reliance on free-will offerings of the pious. This was the beginning of the Franciscan order. Presumably Friar Laurence belonged to it.

 
… kill your joys with love
 

Friar Laurence finds Paris and Romeo both dead, and even as he tries to absorb this, Juliet wakes. The friar tries to persuade her to come with him so that he might bestow her in a nunnery, but with Romeo dead, she does not want to live and will not budge. The friar thinks he hears a noise and has one last chance at a boldness that might save the last pitiful remnant-Juliet's life. He misses that, too, and flees in fear of being discovered.

Left alone, Juliet kills herself with Romeo's dagger.

The watch, drawn by all the disturbance, now gathers, and so does the town: Montague, Capulet, the Prince. Little by little, the whole story comes out and the Prince sorrowfully states the moral:

 
Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague,
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.
 

—Act V, scene iii, lines 291-95

The mutual grief ends the feud; as it might, so easily, have ended days earlier in mutual joy.

18. The Merchant Of Venice

The merchant of venice, written in 1596 or 1597, lays its scene in what is surely one of the most remarkable cities in history. It is a city which at its peak was richer and more powerful than almost any full-sized nation of its time. It was queen of the sea and a barrier against the formidable Turks.

This city, Venice, which was like an Italian Athens born after its time, or an Italian Amsterdam born before, had its birth at the time of the invasion of Italy by Attila the Hun in 452. Fleeing Italians hid in the lagoons offshore along the northern Adriatic and about this colony as the nucleus Venice arose.

While the Franks, the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy all struggled for control over Italy, Venice, under skillful leadership, managed to gain for itself a steadily increasing independence and, through trade, a steadily increasing prosperity.

Venetian prosperity and power climbed steeply during the period of the Crusades, since it, along with several other Italian cities, had the ships to carry the Crusaders and their supplies-and charged healthily for it. By 1203 Venice could blackmail a group of Crusaders into attacking the Byzantine Empire first. In 1204 the Crusaders took Constantinople itself and the Byzantine Empire was divided as loot, with a considerable share going to Venice, which thus became a major Mediterranean power.

Venice embarked on a long struggle with Genoa, a port on the other side of the Italian boot, and by 1380 had won completely. The war made her aware of her need for continental territories to assure herself of food supr plies despite the ups and downs of naval warfare. She spread out into nearby Italy and by 1420 northeastern Italy was hers from the Adriatic nearly to Lake Como.

The fifteenth century, however, saw her pass her peak. The Turk captured Constantinople in 1453 and it became less easy to trade with the East The Portuguese explorers circled Africa by 1497 and, as it grew possible to bypass the Mediterranean, the Venetian stranglehold on trade with the East further diminished.

Then, ha the sixteenth century, France, Spain, and the Empire began to use Italy as a battleground and the entire peninsula, including Venice, was reduced to misery.

But even in Shakespeare's time, although Venice was no longer what she had been, she remained a romantic land, with the trappings of empire still about herself-an efficient, stable, and long-established government over wealthy merchants and skillful seamen with territory and bases here and there in the Mediterranean. What's more, Shakespeare's century saw Venice reach its artistic heights. Titian and Tintoretto were sixteenth-century Venetians, for instance.

Then too, even in decline, Venice remained Europe's shield against the Turks throughout Shakespeare's lifetime and for several decades after his death.

 
… why I am so sad
 

The play opens with Antonio on stage. He is the "merchant" of the title and he is in conversation with two friends, Salerio and Solanio. Antonio says:

 
In sooth I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

The sadness is never explicitly explained in the play and it may be accepted as simply setting a mood. Antonio, after all, is to spend much of the play in a position of great danger.

However, it is possible to speculate that there is a more specific cause of sadness, one which Shakespeare does not care to elaborate upon. As will appear soon enough, Antonio has a male friend to whom he is devoted with a self-sacrificial intensity that is almost unbelievable. This friend, we are soon to find out, is about to woo a young lady in the hope of marrying her.

Antonio may very easily be meant by Shakespeare to represent the nobility of homosexual love, something he hints at in several plays (as, for instance, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, see page I-473) without quite daring to be specific about it.

Well then, if Antonio's friend has, in the eagerness of his new plans involving a lady, grown more distant, is not this reason enough for the poor man to be sad-and yet be unable to explain it, without disgrace, to his friends?

 
… your argosies…
 

His friends, however, have a more prosaic explanation. Salerio suggests that he is nervous over the state of his business affairs, saying:

 
Your mind is tossing on the ocean,
There where your argosies with portly sail-
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 8-9

The word "argosies" harks back to a city founded on the eastern shore of the Adriatic in the seventh century by refugees, as Venice had similarly been founded two centuries earlier. In this case, the founders were Greeks who were being pushed out of the interior by invading Slavs. The new city was named Ragusium, better known to us in the Italian version of the name, Ragusa.

Ragusa was, for a time, a flourishing trading city, much like Venice itself, or like Genoa and Pisa. Ragusa was particularly known for its large merchant ships, which were called ragusea. In English the first two letters were transposed and the word became "argosy."

It is clear from these opening exchanges, then, that Antonio is an extremely wealthy merchant, but one whose business involves extreme risk. Antonio, however, pooh-poohs the chances of these risks coming to pass.

 
… two-headed Janus
 

But if Antonio is not worried about business and is merely irrationally sad, then, says Solanio with a touch of impatience, he might just as well be irrationally merry. Solanio says:

 
… Now by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 50-56

In other words, some people are, by simple temperament, happy; others sad.

As for Janus, he is the most familiar of the purely Roman (that is, non-Greek) gods. He was the god of doorways and therefore the god of going in and going out. (The word "janitor" is derived from his name.) It is an easy extension from that to seeing in him the god of beginnings and endings, of comings and goings (and January, the beginning of the year, is named in his honor.)

In the Roman forum Janus was honored with a temple whose gates were open in time of war and closed in time of peace. Rome's military history was such that for seven centuries they were hardly ever closed.

Though on Roman representations he is shown with two identical faces in opposite directions, it is possible to improve on that. Since he is the god of beginnings and endings, he might be imagined to have one face turned toward the past and the other toward the future.

It could easily be imagined that the past-viewing face was cheerful, since the pains of the past were over, while the forward-viewing face was sad, since there was uncertainty as to what the pains of the future might be-hence the figure of speech in Solanio's statement.

 
… let my liver rather heat.. .
 

Three other friends of Antonio enter: Bassanio, Gratiano, and Lorenzo, while Salerio and Solanio leave.

Gratiano also notes Antonio's sadness and he too advocates merriment for its own sake. He says to Antonio:

 
Let me play the fool!
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 79-82

The link between liver and wine might seem at first blush to indicate that Shakespeare had a prescient knowledge of the connection physicians would eventually draw between cirrhosis of the liver and alcoholism.

Nothing of the sort. The liver is the largest gland in the body, weighing three or four pounds in man and being correspondingly large in other mammals. It is easy to equate size and importance and to argue that the liver is so large because it has a peculiarly important function and must therefore serve as the seat of life and of the emotions. (The similarity between "liver" and "live" is not accidental.)

Contributing to this also is the fact that ancient priests, looking for prognostications of things to come, would often study the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods. This is natural, since the liver is so large and varies so in detail from animal to animal that it is particularly easy to study. Yet it is not the ease that can be advanced as a reason, so special importance must be insisted upon instead.

 
In Belmont …
 

It is Bassanio with whom Antonio is in love and the strength of the lat-ter's affection is quickly shown. Bassanio has been living beyond his means and is deeply in debt. He has been forced to borrow and says, frankly:

 
… To you, Antonio,
I owe the most in money and in love,
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 130-31

But Antonio is willing to continue the support. He says earnestly to Bassanio:

 
… be assured
My purse, my person, my extremest means
Lie all unlocked to your occasions [needs].
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 137-39

Surely the attachment on Antonio's side can only be love in its fullest sense. Yet it may be one-sided. Bassanio's affection may be nothing more than friendship, for he seems to have no hesitation in attempting to draw on Antonio's support for a competing love.

Bassanio explains that he may be in a position to repay all he has borrowed if only Antonio will be willing to invest a bit more. He says:

 
In Belmont is a lady richly left;
 

—Act I, scene i, line 161

In short, Bassanio knows of a rich heiress and if he can marry her, he can pay off all his debts. All he needs is enough money to appear a respectable suitor; he cannot go as a beggar.

(The beginning of Bassanio's speech makes him sound like a fortune hunter, but the play will amply show that he wants the woman for herself and that the money is secondary. He stresses the money now because he wants to explain that he will be able to pay off his debt to Antonio, and not that he is greedy for wealth for himself.)

As for Belmont, that may well be a fictitious name for the estate left to the heiress. In the Italian tale from which this portion of the plot is derived, the place is Belmonte, and there is a Belmonte in Italy, on the western shore of the Italian toe, a little over five hundred miles south of Venice. Probably there is no connection, and as far as the play is concerned, it doesn't matter where Belmont is, but it is interesting that a Belmonte exists.

 
Her name is Portia.. .
 

Bassanio has seen the lady and knows her to be beautiful and virtuous. He says:

 
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia;
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 165-66

Brutus' Portia-that is, his wife-appears as a pattern of Roman virtue in Julius Caesar (see page I-281), a play Shakespeare wrote some two years after The Merchant of Venice.

 
… Calchos' strand
 

Bassanio goes on in his lyrical praise of Portia to say:

 
… her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strond,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 169-72

The tale of the Golden Fleece is one of the most famous in Greek mythology. Two children, the son and daughter of a king of Thebes, had a wicked stepmother. With the help of the gods they were whisked away from Thebes on the back of a winged ram with a golden fleece (see page I-541). The ram flew them to what must have seemed the end of the world to the very early Greeks-the easternmost shore of the Black Sea.

On the way, the girl, Helle, fell off and drowned in one of the narrow waterways between the Aegean and the Black seas, a waterway known as the "Hellespont" in consequence. The boy, however, was carried safely to the kingdom of Colchis (called Colchos in this Shakespearean passage). The King of Colchis, Aeetes, sacrificed the ram and suspended the Golden Fleece from a tree, leaving it under the guard of a never sleeping dragon.

To attain that Golden Fleece and bring it back to Greece was a worthy aim for an adventurer, and Jason, an exiled Thessalian prince, undertook the quest. With a fifty-oared ship, the Argo, and a crew of heroes, he penetrated the Black Sea and won the Fleece.

 
… the County Palatine
 

When Bassanio is done explaining, Antonio promptly offers to finance the project in a characteristic burst of selflessness. With that done the scene shifts at once to Belmont, where we meet Portia and her companion, Nerissa.

It seems that Portia's father, in dying, has left three caskets behind, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead. Each suitor must choose one of the caskets, and only he who picks the correct casket, the one with Portia's portrait inside, can marry her. If the suitor loses, he must swear to leave at once and never to reveal which casket he had chosen.

There are many suitors come to take their chances and Portia has an opportunity to display her mocking wit at their expense (and Shakespeare has a chance to air his prejudices).

Nerissa mentions a prince of Naples first and he is dismissed by Portia at once as interested only in horses and horsemanship. Nerissa then says:

 
Then is there the County Palatine.
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 44

In the early Middle Ages a "count palatine" was a high official who served in the King's household; that is, in the palace. Eventually, the title came to be inherited only as a tide and without any special house-holdly duties.

In only one case did the title remain prominent, and that was hi connection with a tract of land along the middle Rhine River whose ruler remained the Count Palatine. The territory was therefore known as the "Palatinate." Its capital was at Heidelberg.

In Shakespeare's time the Palatinate was a center of German Calvinism, a form of religion which was similar to English Puritanism. In 1592, just a few years before The Merchant of Venice was written, Frederick IV succeeded to the title. He was a sincere Calvinist (he was called "Frederick the Upright"), which meant he was grave and solemn to a degree.

It was perhaps with that in mind that Shakespeare has Portia say with respect to him:

 
He hears merry tales and smiles not;
I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher
when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly
sadness in his youth.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 46-49

There was a "weeping philosopher"; he was Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived about 500 B.C. and whose gloomy view of life caused him to weep over the follies of mankind. (There was also a "laughing philosopher," Democritus of Abdera, who lived about 400 b.c. and whose cheerful disposition enabled him to laugh over the follies of mankind.)

 
… every man in no man.. .
 

A reference to a French suitor has Portia say:

 
Why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's,
a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine;
he is every man in no man. If a throstle sing,
he jails straight a-cap'ring;
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 57-60

This is, in part, the old stereotype of the Frenchman-a frivolous person without strong convictions who takes on the coloring of his surroundings. In this case, Shakespeare may even have a specific case in mind.

In 1593, just three years before The Merchant of Venice was written, the French Protestant leader Henry of Navarre (pictured so favorably in Love's Labor's Lost, see page I-423) accepted Catholicism to establish himself as King Henry IV. To English Protestants this was a perfect case of French lack of principle.

 
… his behavior everywhere
 

An English suitor does not escape Portia's sharp tongue either. Concerning him, she says:

 
How oddly he is suited [outfitted]!
1 think he bought his doublet in Italy,
his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany,
and his behavior everywhere.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 72-75

This is the old complaint of the conservative nationalistic Englishman (of whom Shakespeare is so often a spokesman) that the younger generation is mad for foreign novelties and has nothing but contempt for the traditions of their own land. (This view is not confined to England or to the sixteenth century.)

 
… borrowed a box of the ear…
 

The mention of a Scotsman brings forth an expression of contempt from Portia, who says:

 
… he hath a neighborly charity in him,
for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman
and swore he would pay him again when he was able.
I think the Frenchman became his surety.. .
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 78-81

Scotland was, like France, one of England's traditional enemies. Since Scotland was much weaker than France it was regularly beaten, so that Shakespeare can indulge in a rather cheap vaunt over an enemy that was often defeated but never accepted defeat.

As a matter of fact, the sixteenth century saw England inflict two disastrous boxes of the ear upon Scotland. In 1513 England defeated Scotland in the Battle of Flodden Field (see page II-746), and then again, in 1542, at the Battle of Solway Moss.

Shakespeare's reference to the Frenchman becoming the Scotsman's surety refers to the traditional friendship between France and Scotland. France was always ready to support Scotland financially in her wars against England, but was never able to support her by direct military force.

Then Nerissa asks about another:

 
How like you the young German,
the Duke of Saxony's nephew?
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 83-84

To which Portia replies:

 
Very vilely in the morning when he is sober,
and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 85-86

This was no more than a matter of making fun of the proverbial German habit of drunkenness, but Shakespeare hit closer than he knew. The Elector of Saxony (a title unique to Germany, which Shakespeare converts into the more familiar "duke") had, at the time The Merchant of Venice was written, a younger brother who was then about twelve years old, and who grew up to be a notorious drunkard.

 
… as old as Sibylla. ..
 

However, none of these suitors will even try the casket test. They are there only to serve as butts for Portia's jokes, and now Nerissa reports they are leaving. Portia is relieved, but she insists she will marry only in accordance with the casket test just the same:

 
// / live to be as old as Sibylla,
I will die as chaste as Diana unless
I be obtained by the manner of my father's will.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 105-7

Sibylla's age was proverbial (see page I-452) and Shakespeare makes use of that in several plays.

 
… the Marquis of Montferrat
 

But now we get down to business. Nerissa asks:

 
Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time,
a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither
in company of the Marquis of Montferrat?
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 111-13

The marquisate of Montferrat was an independent state in Shakespeare's time located just north of Genoa. In 1587 Vicenzo I became marquis. His immediate predecessors had been enlightened rulers who had patronized art and literature and were therefore looked upon with great favor by artists and writers. Vicenzo himself helped deliver the great poet Torquato Tasso from the insane asylum to which he had been sent as a result of his paranoid mania.

Nevertheless, Vicenzo was a most extravagant and wasteful ruler, and at the time The Merchant of Venice was written, these proclivities of his were quite clear. If Bassanio was his friend and had been forced to keep up with him, no wonder he managed to go through so much of Antonio's fortune.

It was undoubtedly on this earlier visit that Bassanio had seen Portia and discovered her beauty and virtue. She had not been unaffected either, for on the mere mention of him she grows excited. But new suitors are coming and the scene reaches its end.

 
Three thousand ducats. ..
 

Back in Venice, there is the problem of financing Bassanio. Antonio's ready cash is tied up in his merchant vessels, so the young man must borrow the actual money elsewhere. Antonio, however, is willing to act as guarantor of the loan. (Otherwise, Bassanio would lack the credit to borrow anything at all.)

The third scene of the play opens, then, with Bassanio in conversation with a prospective source of money. The man of whom the loan is being requested says musingly (for it is a large sum):

 
Three thousand ducats-well.
 

—Act I, scene iii, line 1

In the Middle Ages there were few regions with a sufficiently reliable supply of silver to issue good coins. Venice was one of the exceptions. Her rich trade brought precious metals to her gates and it paid her to use them in producing good coins of full weight and honest value. The reputation of Venice lay behind the coins and merchants from all over Europe and the Mediterranean lands were anxious to accept those coins-which was to the benefit of Venetian trade.

These coins were put out by the Duchy of Venice, a state which in the Italian language was the "Ducato di Venezia," so that the coins were called ducati or, in English, "ducats." Good coins, also called ducats, were put out by the Duchy of Apulia in southern Italy.

In either case, three thousand ducats was a huge sum for the tune. Bassanio was not skimping.

The person to whom Bassanio is talking is not an ordinary Venetian. We can picture him (and he is usually presented on the stage) as a tall man with a beak of a nose, a long black beard, curly sideburns, a skull cap, and a long black coat. He is, in short, a Jew, and his name is Shylock.

Shylock is not a Jewish name; there was never a Jew named Shylock that anyone has heard of; the name is an invention of Shakespeare's which has entered the common language (because of the power of the characterization of the man) to represent any grasping, greedy, hard-hearted creditor. I have heard Jews themselves use the word with exactly this meaning, referring back to Shakespeare's character.

Where did Shakespeare get the name? There is a Hebrew word shalakh, which appears twice in the Bible (Leviticus 11:17 and Deuteronomy 14:17). In both places, birds of prey are being listed as unfit articles of diet for Jews. No one knows exactly what bird is meant by shalakh, but the usual translation into English gives it as "cormorant."

The cormorant is a sea bird which eats fish so voraciously that the word has come to mean personified greed and voraciousness. Shakespeare apparently is using a form of the Hebrew word both as name and characterization of the Jewish moneylender.

 
… upon the Rialto…
 

Shylock hesitates. The loan is a large one but Antonio, who is being offered as surety, has a good reputation for honest business dealing and is known to be wealthy enough to cover the sum. And still Shylock hesitates, for Antonio's ventures are thinly spread and he is at the moment in a period of unusual risk. Shylock says of Antonio:

 
… he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies;
I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico,
a fourth for England-and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad.
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 17-21

Of the places listed by Shylock, the least familiar is Tripolis. This word means "three cities" in Greek and any city built up out of the union of three towns is liable to be given that name. As an example there is one in northern Africa, which is better known to us by the Italian version of the name, Tripoli. It is the capital of the modern kingdom of Libya.

There is also a second Tripolis on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. It is the second largest city of that nation nowadays, and is better known to the west as Tripoli. Its Arabic name is Tarabulus.

Which Tripoli Antonio's argosy was bound for, whether the one on the southern or the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, we have no way of telling.

Shylock heard his news "upon the Rialto," a phrase that needed no explanation for the audience of the play.

In 1590, some seven years before The Merchant of Venice was written, the Venetians built a magnificent marble bridge across the Grand Canal, their chief waterway. The Latin rivus altus means "deep stream," and a bridge crossing the stream would very likely adopt its name. The Italian version of the phrase is "Rialto."

The Rialto bridge was lined with a row of shops on either side and with a broad footpath between. It became a busy commercial center and Venetian merchants and traders would gather there to exchange news and gossip.

 
… your prophet the Nazarite …
 

Despite his misgivings, Shylock thinks Antonio is good surety for the loan. Bassanio, eager to help Shylock come to a favorable decision, invites him to dinner, and Shylock draws back at once:

 
Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation
which your prophet the Nazarite conjured
the devil into!
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 31-33

So far the exchange between Bassanio and Shylock has indicated nothing of the religious difference; it might have been any two men discussing a business deal. But now, with the mention of eating, comes the first clear stamp of Jewishness upon Shylock. He won't eat pork!

The Jewish abhorrence of pork is based on biblical statutes. The eleventh chapter of the Book of Leviticus states that only those beasts that have a cloven hoof and that chew the cud are ritually clean and may be eaten and sacrificed. As one example of a beast that is not ritually clean, the seventh and eighth verses say: "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch."

Many other creatures are listed as unclean in the chapter; such as the camel, the hare, the owl, the cormorant, the shellfish, and so on.

It is the pig, though, that stands out. Most of the other creatures forbidden to Jews were not a customary part of the diet of Gentiles either. Pork, on the other hand, was a favored dish of Gentiles, and for Jews to have so extreme an abhorrence of it seemed most peculiar.