Shakespeare's Venetian paradigm: Stereotyping and sadism in The Merchant of Venice and Othello

Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 2003 by Hunt, Maurice

Desdemona's Christian forgiveness of the abuser represents the only positive method for breaking the Venetian paradigm involving revenge. Her response to Emilia's grim conclusion, "The ills we do, their ills instruct us so," is the Christian resolve: "Good night, good night. God me such uses send / Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend" (4.3.107-8). Desdemona implies that the behavior she will seek to mend by contemplating the example of others' bad behavior will not only be her own but others' as well, potentially that of her abuser Othello (whom she always forgives). Desdemona's admirable attitude, taken to an extreme, could involve martyrdom. That Desdemona, unlike Brabantio, fully absorbs her pain, refusing to inflict it on another, means that she never stereotypes Othello, or anyone else, for that matter. In this respect she differs from Portia of The Merchant of Venice, who says of the black Prince of Morocco, after he has failed to guess the correct casket, "A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. / Let all of his complexion choose me so" (2.7.78-79). Portia's touch of racism encourages stereotyping, in which she heavily engages when she caricatures the nationalities of failed English and German suitors (1.2.64-74, 82-97). Portia's inclination to stereotype others, troubling in the case of Morocco, may partly account for the absence of "Desdemonan" Christian forgiveness of Shylock in the trial scene. If Portia is legalistic, stipulatory, in her forgiveness of part of what Shylock has done and said, the reason may lie in her perception of him as an alien, like Morocco, the "other" who will never be "Venetian."18 She and the Venetians in the courtroom, for the time being, may have halted the operation of the Venetian paradigm, by which pained inhabitants of the city of Venice heap pain on others. But the price paid is a broken, despairing Shylock, the alien so benumbed that he will never persecute another to relieve his torment.19

1 According to Levith (6), this negative portrayal of Venice memorably began with Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster (1570). For Venetians' reputation as sodomites, see D'Amico 40.

2 Shakespeare's lack of knowledge of the relationship of the Venetian Senate and the Doge and the playwright's more general unfamiliarity with the workings of the Venetian system of republican government are suggested by Levith 14-15.

3 Quotations of The Merchant of Venice and Othello are taken from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington.

4 Jane Adamson comes closest to anticipating my thesis in Othello as Tragedy: Some Problems of Judgment and Feeling. She writes that

[f]rom the very beginning, I believe [Othello] focuses on an issue that is formulated quite explicitly by Emilia in her defiant outburst at Othello in the very last scene: "Thou hast not half the power to do me harm / As I have to be hurt" (V,ii, 161-2). "The human power to hurt" and "the power to be hurt," and the connection between them: from the start and all through the play Shakespeare is exploring the relationship between culpability (the impulse and capacity to inflict suffering), and vulnerability (the capacity to suffer), until he finally confronts us with the extremest forms of both, in Othello's related acts of murder and of suicide . . . . [Iago's] assumption that life consists either in hurting others or getting hurt oneself is reflected in his every speech and action. (34, 74)