“Ill Luck, Ill Luck?”: Risk and Hazard in The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

The Merchant of Venice has always been somewhat disappointing for critics interested in economics. On the one hand, nowhere else does Shakespeare more clearly confront global trade. And it is widely recognized that the play depicts not only the economic changes implicit in the development of mercantilism but also, more importantly, its social and moral consequences. On the other hand, the plot appears to retreat from the issues and concerns most relevant to the mercantile world of sixteenth-century London into a nostalgic and idealized social harmony. At best, the play’s combination of progressive and regressive elements indicates uncertainty. Phyllis Rackin, for example, calls the play’s reaction to global trade an “ambivalent dialogue of desire and fear” (73). The result, she says, is to “insulate” the Christians from “the contaminating effects of their involvement in the global market” (86). Theodore Leinwand offers what he calls “complementary” readings in which Antonio, the merchant of the play’s title, is either (a) “historically recursive”: “beating a retreat from this role to his sad ‘part’ he at once fades backward in history” or (b) a perfect reflection of contemporary London merchants, with similar trading destinations and a similar “privateering” attitude (16, 114). The play’s famous debate over usury is a good example of this ambiguity.