Slide 1

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 2

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 3

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 4

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 5

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 6

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 7

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 8

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 9

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 10

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 11

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 12

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 13

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 14

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 15

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 16

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 17

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END


Slide 18

The Merchant of Venice
Day Three Slide Show
ENGL 305
Dr. Fike

Announcements
• Your analysis papers are due on Monday,
February 16th.
• We will meet in the library’s electronic classroom
on that day.
• Do not come to our regular classroom.
• Be sure to follow the format for papers,
especially Courier New 12-point.
• See next slide for a description of the analysis
paper assignment.

Analysis Paper
•

Stage two is a development of your proposal—5-page (minimum) nonresearched
analysis paper. Of course, some topics cannot be done without a little bit of
research, but try to limit yourself to reference works and primary sources (e.g., the
OED, a dictionary of mythology, historical material, and other primary sources such
as Freud or Jung). Leave the secondary research until later: do not let critics take
over your project. You may want to think of this stage as a New Critical paper (i.e., a
paper written straight from the primary text and your head). The main goal of the
assignment is to continue to engage with the text and to refine your thesis.
Nonetheless, it may be appropriate at this stage to read a copy of “The Correct Use
of Borrowed Information” and review the MLA format. As with the paper proposal,
you must have a list of works cited at the end of your analysis paper. Note: This is
an ANALYSIS paper; therefore, you will need something to analyze (not summarize
or narrate). In this respect, a single passage can often serve as your focused topic.
If you do not have such a passage, be sure that you have some kind of aggregate of
quotations so that you can analyze as a focused topic. Also keep in mind the
difference between explication and analysis. Explication offers a detailed explanation
of what something says. It is the foundation for analysis, which involves using what
something says to support a controversial thesis statement.

Review of Day Two Activity
• Venturing involves risking something for the sake of gain.
• Usury is a type of venture. Biblical precedent—brothers and others.
Shylock gets in trouble when he loans money on Christian terms.
Borrowing money from him marks him as an Other, a foreigner.
• Venturing in two main things: Shylock’s biblical allusion and
the casket test.
• Allusion to Jacob and Laban: Shylock makes a false analogy
(gold and silver are not ewes and rams) and neglects the element of
divine inspiration (Jacob’s dream). Cf. Lancelot Gobbo: “you have
the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough” (2.2.142-43). Analogy to
paper grading.

More Review
• Caskets: The test’s purpose is to curb Portia’s desires and
presumably to weed out inappropriate suitors.
– Morocco and Argon are inappropriate (paganism, classicism,
false values like honor and pride).
– Bassanio and Portia are well suited to each other (Christianity
and compatible personal profiles). See 1.1.161-63 and 1.2.110.
– Portia does manipulate the test, but doing so is at least in the
spirit of the test that her father set out—she recognizes Bassanio
as an appropriate partner.

• Cut back to slide 25 in day two PP.

Another Motif: Music
• Contrast between Shylock’s house in Venice and
Portia’s in Belmont: 2.3.2 and 2.5.29ff.; cf. 5.1.58ff., esp.
83.
• Tillyard 423 in McDonald’s anthology: Lorenzo’s
statement (lines 58-65) garbles Plato’s Republic by
substituting “cherubins” for sirens. Cf. the Timaeus: “In
that dialogue it is said that the planetary motions of the
heavens have their counterpart in the immortal soul of
man and that our souls would sound in accord with the
grander music of the cosmos were it not for the earth
and perishable nature of the body. Shakespeare
reproduces the gist of this doctrine.”

Shylock’s Attitude toward the Bond
• See 4.1.35-62 and lines 89-103.
• (See next slide for suggested answers.)

Shylock’s Attitude Toward the Bond
•

Re. 4.1.52ff.
– Hatred: Shylock claims that he can give no reason why he hates
Antonio, but he just has a visceral hate, arising possibly from emotion.
In embracing hatred, though, Shylock has become the thing that he
hates. Thus he is to a Christian as an anti-Semite is to a Jew.
Projection of unconscious content onto another person. Cf. Gratiano’s
statement at 4.1.134 about Shylock’s soul. Analogy to CRTW, paper 1:
Shylock has impediments to his thinking—personal experience makes
his hatred deep-seated. We know why he hates Antonio (Antonio has
treated him badly and undermined his business); however, Shylock
makes his motivation sound unconscious.
– Shylock believes that a pound of flesh is enslaved to him. Why is
this ironic? Shylock justifies enforcing the bond as if Antonio were
enslaved to him even though the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt.
(To grasp the full weight of this point, substitute the words “gassed” and
“Germany.”)

C. G. Jung on Projection
• CW 10, 131/65: “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we
discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. . . . What
we combat in him is usually our own inferior side.”
• 139/69: “A certain person is a devil[;] we have not projected our own
evaluation on him and in this way made a devil out of him.”
• CW 9ii, par. 126: “The psychological rule says that when an inner
situation is not made conscious, it appears outside, as fate.”
• MDR 247: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.”
• Richard Nixon: “Always remember[:] others may hate you but those
who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy
yourself.”

Contrast to MSND
• Re. death, Egeus:Hermia::Shylock:Antonio.
• But Egeus primarily wants to pick his son-in-law; Shylock
genuinely wants to kill Antonio.
• Consider:
– MSND 4.1: Problems are being resolved just prior to
the return to the court.
– MV 4.1: Shylock insists on strict justice. In terms of
justice, we are at this point where we were in MSND
1.1.
• POINT: The different placement of parallel elements
reflects the greater darkness of MV. The present play is
definitely closer to problem comedy.

Group Activity
• Consider Portia’s mercy speech at 4.1.182-203. Let’s read it
together. In groups:
• Paraphrase her speech.
• Consider the Bible passages on the handout: what interpretations of
Portia’s speech do they suggest?
• Is Portia being straightforward or manipulative? In other words,
does she really want Shylock to show mercy, or is she setting him
up to take a hard line? Why do you think so? Is she sincere,
manipulative, or a little of both?
•

•

Each group should consider all three questions at the top of the handout. However,
those on your right should begin at the top of the list of quotations and work down.
Those on your left should begin at the bottom and work up. Work for 10 minutes in
groups of 3-5 people.
You will share your discoveries with the class.

Transition
• We’re now going to begin talking about the
final act.
• What sort of ending does Portia’s victory in
the court of law enable? (See next slide
for possible answers.)

Act 5
• There is no restorative return to Venice. The
third part of the MSND chart is lopped off.
• Here is the pattern: exile and new life.
• We also know that neither Antonio nor Shylock
gets married. In one production that I heard
about, Antonio stands alone on stage at the very
end. Of course, Shylock is ruined financially and
psychologically.
• Three of his ships have returned, but evidently
others have genuinely been lost.

The Point
So we do not have the kind of harmonious
ending that we find in MSND.
The ending of MV is closer to problem
comedy—is more of a “mixed mode”—
than in a festive comedy.

Summary of Concepts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Reason, will, desire/passion/appetite
Nigredo
Complementarity
Mixed modes
Problem comedy
Venturing
Projection

And there are problematic
statements in Act 5.
• Allusions: Do they foreshadow some
kind of disappointment in Jessica and
Lorenzo’s marriage? Cf. Hermia’s mention
of Dido and Aeneas in MSND.
• Music of the spheres: 5.2.60ff. Earth is
the realm of disappointment? See
http://www.stampscapes.com/hand1.html.

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
on Credo Reference (Dacus Library database)
•

“The ancient Greeks knew of nine spheres: the Sun and Moon; the planets
we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; the ‘Starry Sphere’
(the fixed stars in the sky); the Crystalline Sphere (the sphere which
controlled the procession of the equinoxes). These were all assumed to
move round the Earth, in a kind of stately and unvarying procession.
Pythagoras' research into sound led him to believe that the spheres, in
common with all other objects which move, must vibrate, and that those
vibrations must produce sound. As each sphere is a different size from the
others, and moves in a different way, the sounds must all be different.
However, as all Nature (to Pythagoreans) was a harmonious mathematical
whole, the sounds emitted by the spheres must also be harmonious: a kind
of glorious universal chord as they made their way through space. The idea
of universal harmony and of the discordant chaos when something happens
to upset it has persisted in myth and poetry ever since.”

My Take on the “Love Duet”
•

The love banter is an example of “inflation,” the “process of identification
with a mythic double or archetypal image” (Walker 102). In other words, the
syzygy pairs in the love duet—some of them happy now but soon not so
happy—personify another syzygy pair, the archetypes of happiness and
disappointment. Although Jessica and Lorenzo are blissfully newly
wedded, their neuroses activate the potential for representation in the
collective unconscious and enable the archetype of disappointment to
manifest in mythical terms without their conscious awareness. As a
result, they express truth about marriage in general and about their own
marriage in particular—myth conveys what they do not know that they know.
There is no doubt that Jessica and Lorenzo will suffer disappointment
when romance yields to disillusion and an attempt to change each
other in order to recapture the magic of the moonlit night in Belmont.
The question is whether they will surmount the inevitable
disappointment or—like Jason and Medea—devolve into abandonment
and domestic abuse.
--Dr. Fike

END