Bennett Bauer
The expression “all that glitters is not gold” is so commonplace that it has become almost entirely disjointed from its source: William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Analyses of the play ignore or inadequately address the significant role the phrase performs, especially in relation to Shakespeare’s observations on law and politics. This paper will show that, in Shakespeare’s historical context, Venice was the model modern society, and it will argue that The Merchant of Venice is a critique of the Venetian social system built on commerce. Portia will be isolated as the character that best symbolizes the society of Venice, and the test of the caskets will be highlighted. Portia’s actions, especially her indifference to the law but awareness of its power, will be carefully analyzed and shown to illustrate the injustice of Venetian society. Lastly, this paper will demonstrate how the prototypical modern city-state of Venice does not conform to a Platonic understanding of a just society and, instead, attains the highest form of injustice. In The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare employs the hermeneutical key of “all that glitters is not gold” to illustrate, through the character Portia, that Venice, the model modern city of freedom, equality, and promise, is unjust.
I. VENICE: THE MODERN SOCIETY
Venice was one of the first modern states and was one of the few successful European republics of the 16th and 17th centuries, allowing its citizens to participate in government. The city tolerated and even welcomed dramatically different peoples and beliefs into the innermost workings of the city, ultimately becoming the model of a new just society.[1] In addition, the Renaissance had sparked a distaste for the guiding hand of religion in society. Venice was thus presented with the task of creating a cohesive society not unified by a single set of religious beliefs or generational ties to the city itself. The answer was found in the universal desire for monetary gain.[2] Venice became a city state entirely dependent, both economically and politically, on commerce. Despite this commercial foundation, or perhaps in part because of it, Venice grew to be known as a society that facilitated justice, equality, and opportunity.
However, Shakespeare depicts Venice quite bleakly in both of his plays set in the city: The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Justice, equality, and opportunity are present, but only for certain privileged individuals. Because of Venice’s reliance on the very aspect that gave its society unity, namely the desire for gain, The Merchant of Venice is not only a story that takes place in the city, but it is also a critique of the modern political and social system built on commerce.[3] Shakespeare shows that money, while it is what all the characters in The Merchant of Venice want, causes countless problems and presents a societal system built around purely commercial interest as a haven for injustice. The system of law, an element of government which should be respected for itself, is obeyed merely because it safeguards the city’s financial prosperity.
Out of the entire cast of The Merchant of Venice, Portia is the character that best symbolizes Venice and Venetian society. In praising the object of his affections to Antonio, Bassanio describes Portia as “a lady richly left; and she is fair, and, fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues.”[4] Venice was a society built on commerce and wealth, radiating beauty and “wondrous” political virtue. Bassanio continues, “Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, for the four winds blow in from every coast renowned suitors.”[5] As a hub of commerce, Venice was seen by the world as a place of opportunity. Countless foreigners came to trade merchandise, acting, in a way, as suitors to the city. At last, Bassanio begs Antonio for the fateful loan around which the entire play revolves, stating, “O my Antonio, had I but the means to hold a rival place with one of [the suitors].”[6] Like Venice, Portia is only approachable by the wealthy, and Bassanio recognizes this fact.
II. THE CHARACTER OF PORTIA
The test of the caskets, from which we receive the oft-quoted phrase “all that glitters is not gold,” seems rather disjointed from the main action of the play: Antonio’s debt to Shylock. However, this test, arranged by Portia’s dead father to find her a husband, is the hermeneutical key to The Merchant of Venice. The Prince of Morocco, clearly the most virtuous of Portia’s suitors, views Portia as a perfect ideal and, for this reason, chooses the golden casket. The Prince of Morocco opens the casket to find, instead of Portia’s portrait which is to signify the correct choice, an inscription which reads “all that glitters is not gold.”[7] Thematically and visually, this is of the utmost significance: a foreigner chooses to open a golden casket that disappoints him because it is not at all what it seems.
Bassanio, the profligate resident of Venice, is the suitor who chooses the leaden casket and wins Portia’s hand. In order to facilitate this, Portia subtly manipulates the system set up by her father and has a song sung while Bassanio makes his choice. The lyrics provide the unworthy suitor with two important clues: the senses are presented as unreliable and the very first rhyme of the song is “bred” with “head.”[8] The answer is the lead casket, the choice least pleasing to one’s eyes. Portia, despite her earlier claim to submit to her father’s wishes, at last shows her true colors. For her, the law is only a means to an end.
The character of Portia is a thematic illustration of the false flag under which the modern society of Venice flies. She is described as incredibly virtuous, but her involvement in the test of the caskets and her deceitfulness seems to contradict this outward appearance. In addition, she is viewed as a woman of wondrous beauty, but through her successful disguise as a male, Shakespeare implies that perhaps this is not the case. While the appropriateness of “all that glitters is not gold” is hinted at in relation to Portia’s character, her actions are even more revealing. Portia travels to Venice on the pretext of going to a nunnery. She dresses as a man and, creating a false persona as a clerk, takes on the name of Balthazar, Daniel’s name in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Portia presents herself as a perfectly open person, something that, like Venetian society, she is not.
III. PORTIA, VENICE, AND THE JUST SOCIETY
At the beginning of the climatic trial scene, the situation is decidedly in Shylock’s favor, and it appears that Antonio will be sentenced to have one pound of flesh cut out from his heart. Disguised as Balthazar, Portia appears and completely reverses the tables on Shylock through a combination of wit, eloquence, and manipulation of the law. Several court-sanctioned occurrences quickly transpire which ultimately rob Shylock of his wealth, religion, and any future earnings. Shylock grudgingly assents to these terms, but he is clearly a broken man.
The most striking aspect of the trial scene is that Portia begins by arguing for mercy and then, once she turns the tables on Shylock, deals out a harsh punishment that can only be considered justice by the greatest stretch of the imagination. The Duke of Venice, symbolizing the law, is present throughout the entire trial, but he is either powerless or unwilling to make any sort of judgment. From the moment she enters, Portia is entirely in control.
If one recognizes that Shakespeare has already carefully established Portia as the character that symbolizes Venetian society, the implications of the trial scene are hugely important. Portia, and by extension the modern commercial society that is Venice, is indifferent to the law but well aware of its power. By a wily series of steps, she maintains the appearance of law without any of its substance.[9] Shylock, the foreigner attempting to operate within the system of commerce, is reduced to nothing through his respect for the law. In Venice and today’s modern thought, there is a strong tendency to unite men through what is politically beneficial, namely commerce, rather than the essential equality of human nature.[10] Without an appreciation of natural rights or a divine substance to laws, modern society views law merely as a means to an end. Portia’s actions in the trial are presented as facilitating justice, equality, and freedom through a desired outcome that is essentially commercial, but the ultimate judgment is rotten to the core.
The just society, according to Plato, is where everything is properly ordered.[11] The model modern state of Venice fails to accomplish this in several important aspects. First, the system of law, divorced from natural rights and divine law, is subservient both to commerce and society. Shakespeare illustrates this through Portia’s intervention in Antonio’s trial and her manipulation of the legal system to punish Shylock. Second, Portia’s suitors are not given justice in the test of the caskets; the Prince of Morocco, a very virtuous man, is deprived of the freedom to seek a wife, while Bassanio, a young man without any remarkable qualities who is deep in debt, wins the hand of Portia. Plato also makes it clear that the greatest form of injustice is when something that is unjust is presented as just and is accepted as such.[12] The phrase “all that glitters is not gold” sums up Shakespeare’s critique of modern society. Like a golden casket, Venice’s foundation on the desire for gain is incredibly appealing, yet law, the safeguard of natural rights, is manipulated for commercial interests, and injustice operates under the guise of a just society.
IV. CONCLUSION
In Shakespeare’s time, Venice was widely hailed as the model example of a modern society. The Merchant of Venice, through the symbolism of Portia’s character, critiques the Venetian political and social system built on commerce. The test of the caskets, a seemingly insignificant occurrence that Shakespeare perhaps employed to fill out the second and third acts, is actually key to understanding the play in relation to both the law and social justice. Portia is Venice. She is indifferent to the morality of law but is very much aware of its power, manipulating the system to satisfy her desired ends under the pretext of perfect justice. A society such as Venice that holds the desire for gain above an understanding of natural law is clearly not properly ordered, and when it presents itself as just and is accepted as such, the greatest form of injustice occurs. In The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare uses the phrase “all that glitters is not gold” and the character Portia to critique Venice and the modern city founded on commerce, ultimately showing that an exclusion of the idea of natural rights from the system of law forms an unjust society. unjust society.
[1] Alan Bloom, Shakespeare’s Politics (Basic Books, 1964), 15.
[2] Ibid, 16.
[3] Ibid, 17.
[4] William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice,” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Canterbury Classics, 2014), 1.1.168-70. References are to act, scene, and line.
[5] Ibid, 1.1.174-76.
[6] Ibid, 1.1.180-81.
[7] Ibid, 2.7.1055.
[8] Ibid, 3.2.1430-31.
[9] Alan Bloom, Shakespeare’s Politics (Basic Books, 1964), 28.
[10] Ibid, 31.
[11] Plato, “The Republic,” Complete Works (Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 1075.
[12] Ibid, 1001.