The secondary characters of The Merchant of Venice (Shylock, Portia and Bassanio) are so intriguing and so vocal, that the central figure, the merchant Antonio, is often largely ignored. This neglect is perfectly appropriate to the play’s theme and the protagonist’s struggle, for Antonio is an outsider. The play’s theme is marriage and Antonio is a both stranger to the world of marriage, for he has no desire to partake of it, and he is an enemy to marriage, for it steals his one true love, Bassanio.

            The play’s opening line presents a mystery: the source of Antonio’s gloom: “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad /...And such a want-wit of sadness makes of me, / That I have much ado to know myself” (I.i.1-7). Antonio claims to be ignorant of the source of his woe, and he may so be, but to the audience, this source will eventually come to light. His comrades Salarino and Solanio question if he might be worried about his ships, but they are assured that he is confident in these financial ventures. Their second guess is, “Why, then you are in love,” to which Antonio only responds, “Fie, fie!” (I.i.46) This curt reaction is very revealing. Either the idea of being love is offensive to Antonio, or his love is such that he dares not speak of it, perhaps even to himself (Midgley 126).

            The friends accept that Antonio is just gloomy, without particular cause. He himself suggests that he is simply doomed to melancholy: “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano / A stage, where every man must play a part, / And mine a sad one” (I.i.78-79). However, it does not seem very likely that Antonio is just sad by disposition. He has hitherto participated in the jovial activities of his peers, and the fact that they are looking for a cause of his present sadness suggests that it is a turn of mood rather than the norm. Yet it may be the case that there is something permanently amiss in Antonio’s life which is why he plays the sad part.

            The immediate cause of Antonio’s grief is revealed when he is alone with Bassanio, who appears amidst the attempts of Solario and Salarino to find this cause. It seems that Antonio has been keeping a secret, his knowledge of Bassanio’s intention to court, though he knows not the object of woo: “Well; tell me now, what lady is the same / To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, / That you to-day promised to tell me of?” (I.i.119–121) Antonio has been awaiting news on this venture of Bassanio’s and that is the issue that has him upset. The intensity of the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio is clear from Antonio’s willingness to put any amount at Bassanio’s disposal, but the peculiar nature of it, particularly from Antonio’s side, is only indirectly indicated throughout the play. He wishes Bassanio luck in his suit, but is full of grief at the prospect of losing his friend to the world of marriage:

          SALARINO:     his eye being big with tears,

                                    Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,

                                    And with affection wondrous sensible

                                    He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted

          SOLANIO:        I think he only loves the world for him. (II.vii.46-50)

            The reasons for marriage are variable, but romantic love is not generally cited as one in this play. In the sonnets, marriage is the alternative to the romantic love of the poet for the young subject. In the play, the motivation to marry is money. Bassanio’s “chief care / Is, to come fairly off from the great debts, / Wherein my time, something too prodigal, / Hath left me gaged,” (I.i.127-130) and his solution: “In Belmont is a lady richly left...” (I.i.161). The extravagancies of bachelorhood have eaten up his resources, and now he seeks a maid with a plentiful dowry to deliver him from his debts. Lorenzo seems to have a related interest in Jessica when he praises her for the “gold and jewels she is furnisht with,” (II.iv.30) and Gratiano’s engagement to Portia’s waiting-maid smacks of opportunism.

            Marriage is also a coming of age–a reason to grow up and a graduation into civil society. There is both respectability and pleasure to be gained: “It is very meet / The Lord Bassanio live an upright life; / For having such a blessing in his lady, / He finds the joys of heaven here on earth”(III.v.72-75).  

            Gratiano’s bachelor zeal (“Let me play the fool:/ And let my liver heat with wine / Than my heart cool with mortifying groans” (I.i.79-81)) needs to be tempered when going courting:

          BASSANIO:      Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice,–

                                    Parts that become thee happily enough,

                                    And in such eyes as ours appear not faults;

                                    But where thou art not known, why, there they show

                                    Something too liberal.” (II.ii.181-184)

Gratiano agrees, when in Belmont (the feminine counterpart to the masculine Venice), to: “ Use all the observance of civility, / Like one well studied in sad ostent / To please his grandam” (II.ii.191-193). However, when it is time to party with the boys, Bassanio says, “I would entreat you rather to put on / Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends / That purpose merriment” (II.ii.197-199).

            The begetting of children, though alluded to only once in this play (where Gratiano proposes a wager on who has the first son (III.ii.205)), is one of the primary imperatives for marrying, as repeatedly stressed in first group of sonnets:

            Ah! If thou issueless shalt hap to die,

            The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;

            The world will be thy widow, and still weep

            That thou no form has left behind (Sonnet 9.3-6)

            If it were the case that Antonio will never wed, nor have children, it would make sense that he has a bleak outlook on the future, and why he resents those who marry and their wives, and why, despite material prospects, he is so sad. The eighth sonnet casts some light on this side of Antonio’s depression:

            Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

            Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

            Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,

            Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?

            If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

            By unions married, do offend thine ear,

            They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

            In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.           (Sonnet 8.1-8) 

            The women and Antonio are each sceptical about the sincerity of the suitors. Portia asks Bassanio to “confess / What treason there is mingled with your love,” (III.ii.26-27) and Nerissa participates in the testing of the husbands. Jessica accuses Lorenzo of falseness, if only in a playful manner:

            In such a night

            Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,

            Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,

            And ne’er a true one.  (V.i.17-20)

Antonio’s comments on parting with Bassanio are cynical:

            Be merry; and employ your chiefest thoughts

            To courtship, and such fair ostents of love

            As shall conveniently become you there: (II.vii.42-45)

He suggests that the trappings of love in this courtship are not genuine, but manipulative and opportunistic. This may be because of Bassanio’s own explicit connection of his suit to his debts, but it is also because of his belief in the supremacy of their own love, which he tests when he encourages Bassanio to give up his wedding ring to Ballario:

            My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring:

            Let his deservings, and my love withal,

            Be valued ‘gainst your wife’s commandment. (IV.i.449-451)

            Rings are important symbols in the play. When Jessica pawns off the ring which had been given him by his wife, Shylock is hurt beyond anything he has felt so far (III.i.14-17). This symbol of everlasting love means infinitely more to him than to the “Christian husbands” to whom he is contrasted (IV.i.95-97). Portia makes the value of her ring to Bassanio very clear:

            This house, these servants, and this same myself,

            Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring;

            Which when you part from, lose, or give away,

            Let it presage the ruin of your love,

            And be my vantage to exclaim on you. (III.ii.171-174)

Thus, when Antonio urges Bassanio to give up the ring for his sake, he is asking Bassanio to give up his wife, which, for the night, Bassanio does: “Come, you and I will thither presently; / And in the morning early we will both / Fly toward Belmont” (IV.i.455-457). Bassanio neglects marriage for one last evening of bachelorhood. It is implied that he violates another promise he has made: “till I come again, / No bed shall e-er be guilty of my stay” (III.ii.325-326). 

            This fall is a momentary one. Marriage wins out and Antonio must accept that he is no longer central in Bassanio’s life. Facing the prospect of his friend’s death, Bassanio claims, “Life itself, my wife, and all the world, / Are not esteem’d above thy life” (IV.i.284-285). However, their arrival in Belmont finds Bassanio pleading with his wife for forgiveness. He is no longer his own man, and his relationship with Antonio is no longer exclusive. As he reads Antonio’s letter, Bassanio is reminded by Portia, “I am half yourself, / And I must freely have the half of any thing / That this same paper brings you” (III.ii247-249), and on his arrival in Belmont, Antonio is told, “you are welcome not withstanding”(V.i.240). That is to say, he will be tolerated, but as spouse’s old flame would. The symbol of the ring appears once more, as Portia asks Antonio to present her ring to Bassanio. This gives Antonio one last chance to make a romantic gesture towards his comrade, but it also asserts Portia’s authority over her husband’s affairs. It is only through her permission that this act is able to occur.

            The relationship of Antonio and Bassanio is more than that of conversational comrades and drinking buddies. On Antonio’s side it is carnal and passionate. The possessiveness Antonio displays in the ring test betrays this: “if love expresses its spirituality in charity, which defines it as generous, its possessiveness bespeaks not spirituality but carnality” (Rosenheim, 187). It can be seen that many of Antonio’s sacrifices are meant to oblige Bassanio to him: “all debts are clear’d between you and I, if I might but see you at my death” (III.ii.318-320). Having Bassanio present at his death not only gratifies his need to express his love for Bassanio, but also saves him from the lonely death of the childless man depicted in Shakespeare’s seventh sonnet: “So thou thyself outgoing in thy noon, / Unlookt on diest, unless thou get a son” (13-14).

            Antonio is anxious for his death--as a gesture of his love, as a guilt-inducing punishment on Bassanio and Portia, and as an end to his miseries. On a few occasions he encourages the court to hurry its proceedings: “Let me have judgement, and the Jew his will” (IV.i.83), “Most heartily I do beseech the court / To give the judgement” (IV.i.242-243). It is in the court scene that the most explicit revelation of Antonio’s misery, and his sexuality, comes out:

            I am a tainted wether of the flock,

            Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit

            Drops earliest to the ground; and so let me:

            You cannot better be employ’d Bassanio,

            Than to live still, and write mine epitaph. (IV.i.16-20)

He describes himself here as a castrated ram and “the weakest kind of fruit.” Castration could stand for his loss of power through the loss of his ships, but it more clearly refers to the fact that he will never, as it were, mount an ewe* . He is weak fruit in that he will not seed (it is unlikely that modern connotations of “fruit” have any relevance here). The idea of this fruit dropping early to the ground suggests that his life would be incomplete, unripe. As it says in the eighth sonnet, “Thou single wilst prove none” (14).

            As in the ring test scene, Antonio sets himself in opposition to Portia in his death-welcoming farewells. His words are designed to invoke pity and guilt, and to prove to all that he was Bassanio’s true love:

            Commend me to your honourable wife:

            Tell her the process of Antonio’s end;

            And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge

            Whether Bassanio had not once a love. (IV.i.273-277)

            “To have a love” here has an exclusively erotic-romantic connotation. This particular substantive usage of “love” appears in no other of Shakespeare’s works but the sonnets (Pequigney 76).

            While Graham Midgley’s 1960 article, “The Merchant of Venice: A Reconsideration” may have been anachronistic in labelling Antonio an “unconscious homosexual” (Midgley 125) (this was pre-Foucault and the historical contingency of psycho-sexual categories was not appreciated), he was on the right track. Antonio is clearly as passionately in love with Bassanio as any other character is in love in any other play. Unlike Bassanio, whose love can shift to wealth and wedding, Antonio cannot let go of that one male love, and if he could, it seems doubtful that he would find any fulfilment in the society of women. Antonio is sad because his love is to be wed to a woman. His lament echoes the narrator of the sonnets, with a vital exception: the sonneteer sees that marriage would be good for his lover and encourages it. Antonio, a selfish and possessive merchant will not let go, and is doomed to his gloom.

Works Cited

Midgley, Graham. “The Merchant of Venice: A Reconsideration.” Essays In Criticism vol. X no. 2 (1960): 119-133.

Pequigney, Joseph. Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Rosenheim, Judith. “Allegorical Commentary in The Merchant of Venice” Shakespeare Studies vol. XXIV (1996): 156-210

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1996.