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Volume 33 Issue 1

A JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

3

19

45

93

105

Fall/Winter 2005

David Azerrad The Two Ways: Egypt and Israel in the Torah

Avery Plaw Prince Harry: Shakespeare’s Critique ofMachiavelli

Dennis Teti The Unbloody Sacrifice: The Catholic Theology of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

David Janssens A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

Book Review:David Lewis Schaefer Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography

edited by John A. Murley


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Volume 33 Issue 1


3

19

45

93

105

Fall/Winter 2005

David Azerrad The Two Ways: Egypt and Israel in the Torah

Avery Plaw Prince Harry: Shakespeare’s Critique ofMachiavelli

Dennis Teti The Unbloody Sacrifice: The Catholic Theology of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

David Janssens A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

Book Review:David Lewis Schaefer Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography

edited by John A. Murley

©2006 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of the contents may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.

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The Two Ways: Egypt and Israel in the Torah

D A V I D A Z E R R A D

UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS

[email protected]

“For you shall know that God will have differentiated betweenEgypt and Israel.” (Ex. 11: 7)

In the late nineteenth century, German and French scholars,emboldened by important discoveries in the emerging field of Egyptology,returned to the Bible to reconsider its depiction of Egypt. Their conclusions,not surprisingly perhaps, were quite critical of the biblical portrayal. A fewdecades later, by the time Flinders Petrie’s Egypt and Israel (1911) and T. EricPeet’s Egypt and the Old Testament (1924) reached the English-speaking public,a growing number of scholars viewed the biblical account as historically inaccurate. Such criticism, whether true or not, ultimately rests on a flawedunderstanding of the aims of the Hebrew Bible in general, and of thePentateuch in particular. All too often, biblical scholars misconstrue thePentateuch as a history of the formation of the Jewish people. Thus, accordingto F. V. Greifenhagen, “what we have in the Pentateuch is an account ofethnogenesis: the emergence of biblical Israel as a self-conscious people or ethnic group” (2003, 9).

Ultimately of course, the Pentateuch is much more than anethnogenesis. While the five books of Moses do indeed retrace the history ofwhat would become the Jewish people, they constitute first and foremost theguide of how these people are to live. The Pentateuch is a Torah—a teaching.The word Torah itself traces its etymology to the verb “to teach” (le-horot; Lev.10:11). From the perspective of the biblical author, it is in fact the teaching. TheTorah sets forth a comprehensive teaching which Robert Sacks most aptly callsthe New Way (1990). If the Children of Israel are to follow this New Way, and

3The Two Ways: Egypt and Israel in the Torah

©2006 Interpretation, Inc.

more importantly, understand it, the biblical author must not only clearly present it, but also vividly contrast it to another way antithetical to its ownprinciples. In the Torah, Egypt comes to symbolize the fundamental alternativeto the New Way. Egypt is not simply, as Thomas Pangle argues, the “worstregime” (1995, 71) but rather the regime compared to which the apolitical NewWay subordinated to God reveals its fundamentally different nature. Egypt isthe Other Way.

If as Eric Voegelin suggests, the “truth of the symbol is notinformative; it is evocative” (1990, 344), Egypt will ultimately encompass muchmore than a land, a people or even a nation. Thus, while rooted in the land ofthe Nile, it must nevertheless remain a vague, undefined place. The Pharaohsare never named and no Egyptian cities, with the exception of Pithom andRamses, are ever identified. As for Goshen, the area where the Israelites dwelledwhile in Egypt, it “eludes specification” (Greifenhagen 2003, 44) and may havebeen fabricated by the biblical author. In the Torah, Egypt is somewhere—perhaps everywhere—beyond Canaan. It symbolizes any attempt by man tolive according to his own laws. Egypt ultimately represents the innate humanlonging to recreate, through man’s efforts alone, an Eden sheltered from necessity. Egyptian anthropocentrism therefore cannot accommodate anygods, much less YHWH, the God of Israel. Egypt can worship no God but theGod-king Pharaoh. Thus one always goes down (la-redet) into Egypt andascends out of it (la-‘alot). By exalting man, Egypt is imbued with a magneticquality to which the Israelites, like all other humans, are always drawn. Egyptand its ways are always looming. Since the New Way of the Torah cannot eradicate the other, older Egyptian way, it must attempt to create a realm insu-lated from the ways of the Egyptian, knowing that Egypt lurks within everyman. Egypt and Israel must somehow coexist in tension with each other. Forevery Moses born in Egypt but raised out of it, there is a Joseph born in theHoly Land but incorporated into Egypt.

In its broadest outlines, the Torah presents the New Way’s triumph over the older Egyptian Other Way. In the beginning, before the NewWay, Egypt is already well established and prosperous. When a famine plaguesthe Land of the New Way, Abram turns to Egypt and emerges wealthy. WhileAbram’s journey to Egypt does not even give God the opportunity to assert hisProvidence, it does prove Egypt’s ability to provide for man. Faced withanother famine, “aside from the first famine that was in the days of Abraham”(Gen. 26:1), Isaac is specifically forbidden by God to go down to Egypt. Godmakes Isaac prosper nonetheless, proving that the New Way too can provide

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for man. The stage is now set for a confrontation between the two ways. Thestories of Abraham and Isaac do not prove the superiority of the way of God to that of the Egyptians. To firmly establish the New Way, the Other Way must first lose its appeal in the eyes of the Israelites. The Children of Israel willtherefore dwell in Egypt for more than two centuries and experience firsthandthe yoke of its tyranny. God will then crush the Egyptians with “a mightyhand” (Deut. 5:15) and return Pharaoh and his legion to the primordial waters.The Children of Israel will thus be ready to receive the New Way. The ways ofEgypt will however far outlast Egypt itself. No sooner have the Israelites left thehouse of bondage, do they already long for the comforts it once brought. TheNew Way will still have to contend with the people’s Egyptian longings. Thus,in this regard, the Torah is as much about the Egyptian Other Way which Godso vehemently rejects, as it is about Israel and the New Way (see Addendum 1).

“THE SONS OF HAM: CUSH, EGYPT, PUT AND CANAAN.”

Egypt first appears in the genealogies of Noah’s sons, wellbefore Abraham, the founder of the New Way, is even born. From the outset,Egypt is set apart from the genealogy of the Chosen people. In fact, Egypt (mitsrayim) is tied to the lineage of the impudent “small son” Ham (Gen. 9:24)whose descendants will be in direct conflict with the Children of Israel and the New Way. While Put sinks into total obscurity—his sons are not even mentioned—Cush will give rise to Nimrod, a mighty hunter, who founds thefirst kingdom and the first great city. Nimrod’s kingdom begins in Babel(bavel), which in Hebrew designates both Babel, whose inhabitants will laterattempt to reach the heavens with their tower, and Babylonia, whose king willone day burn the Temple, destroy the Kingdom of Judah and send the Israelitesinto exile (II Kings 25:8-11). The connection between Egypt and Babel is morethan just familial. In the Torah, bricks (levenim) and mortar (h_omer) are onlyfound in Babel (Gen. 11:3) and Egypt (Ex. 1:14). Common to both the Towerof Babel and the Egyptian Pharaonic state is a hubristic attempt to dethroneGod As for Mitsrayim’s accursed younger brother Canaan, he begets many ofthe people who will later inhabit the Holy Land and whom God will order theIsraelites to exterminate. Mitsrayim himself begets seven sons. Although theywill all disappear into anonymity, their progeny, the Philistines, will be a thornin the side of Israel from the moment they settle in the Holy Land. Israel’ssouthern border with the idol-worshiping Philistines will never be quiet.Egypt, it would seem, is always lurking. Even after the Children of Israel arefinally liberated from Egypt, they will be plagued by the Children of Egypt. Weshould however be careful not to indict Egypt on the basis of the actions of its


siblings or its grandchildren. From the outset, the stories in the Bible make itclear that good and bad brothers can come from the same seed (Cain and Abel,Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau). Furthermore, as Deuteronomy warns:“Fathers will not be put to death because of sons, nor sons for their fathers—each man will die for his own sin” (24:16).

“THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE LAND AND

ABRAM WENT DOWN TO EGYPT.”

The story of Israel proper begins with God’s call to Abram—“Go forth for yourself” (Gen. 12:1). God’s call is immediately followed by apromise to make Abram a great nation and to make his name great (ve-agdalahshmekha). Unlike the men of Babel who sought to make a name for themselvesthrough their own efforts alone (Gen. 11:4), God, under the New Way, willmake a name for Abram and his descendants. The juxtaposition of the storiesof the Tower of Babel and Abram’s call highlights the contrast between theways of men and the New Way. Nowhere else in the Torah is the word “name”(shem) used in such a way.

After Abram leaves behind his land, relatives and father’shouse, he goes to Canaan, to the land God shows him (Gen. 12:1). Once there,however, Canaan is struck by famine, a famine which “weighed heavily on theland” (Gen 12:10). The heavy famine threatens Abram and his family and callsinto question the providence of the mysterious, hitherto-unknown YHWHwho appeared in Haran. Abram, who cannot yet know much of the New Way,takes matters into his own hands and descends to Egypt. Egypt is not even saidto be a land of plenty spared by the famine. In trying times, it seems that thenatural instinct is to turn to Egypt. But why Egypt and not some other land?

Egypt, as the Bible tells us and as was known throughout theancient world, is “well-watered everywhere” (Gen. 13:10; cf. Herodotus,Histories, 2.13-14). In this regard, it is even compared to the garden of Godwhere Adam first dwelt (ibid.). Egypt does not depend on rainfall to grow itscrops and feed its people. The inundations of the Nile, coupled with artificialirrigation, ensure that it has an abundant supply of food year round. As such,Egypt, unlike other lands, is sheltered from necessity. As the text emphasizes inthe structure of the following sentence, Egypt is surrounded by famine: “Andthere was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojournthere for the famine weighed heavily on the land” (Gen. 12:10, emphasisadded). Egypt will only be threatened by famine once, when God, interveningin human affairs, decides to send one.As Joseph explains to Pharaoh concerning


his dreams, “what God is about to do, he has told Pharaoh” (Gen. 41:25) and he is now “hastening to bring it about” (Gen. 41:32). Nature cannot harmEgypt. Only God can attempt to do so. Yet he too must contend withEgyptian hubris which knows no God. Threatened with a divine famine, theEgyptian response is to put into place measures that will insulate the landfrom the effects of the food shortage. Egypt has gained such mastery over its environment that it can even thwart God’s plans. The modern project to conquer nature, still very much alive today, had thus already been adum-brated in the biblical author’s Egypt.

Egypt is indeed like no other land. As God will later announceto the Israelites in the desert: “The land to which you are coming to possess it,it is not like the land of Egypt that you left, where you would sow your seed andwater it by foot like a vegetable garden” (Deut. 11:10; Zech. 14:18). TheEgyptians have mastered an already hospitable environment to such an extentthat they have recreated an Edenic state of abundance. Egypt thus constitutesan affront to God who, after banishing Adam and Eve from Eden, stations the Cherubim and the revolving flaming sword to prevent anyone from everentering it again. Egypt has not only managed to re-enter Eden, but also to tastethe Tree of Life and regain immortality. Underlying the typically Egyptianpractice of embalming, highlighted in the deaths of both Jacob (Gen. 50:2) andJoseph (Gen. 50:26), is a belief that the body lives eternally. Embalming is contrary to God’s way for Adam had already been told that he would return to the earth from which he was taken: “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).

If God expelled man from Eden “lest he stretch his hand and take also from the Tree of Life” (Gen. 3:22) and truly become a divine creature, then the Egyptians are somewhat like God. Being gods themselves,the Egyptians need no gods, much less a demanding God like YHWH.Nowhere in the Pentateuch, not even when the land is smitten by the plagues, are the Egyptians shown invoking their gods or praying. When the Egyptianized Joseph threatens his brothers, he swears twice by the life of Pharaoh (Gen. 42:15-6).

Since Egyptian see themselves as immortal, they lack anawareness of the dimension of reality called time. Egypt is timeless. The baker,the cupbearer and Pharaoh all fail to see the images in their dreams as eventsunfolding in time (Sacks 1990, 348). In the most profound sense, Egypt is time-less not only because, being sheltered from necessity, it does not grasp time, butbecause it is eternal. Egypt exists at all times. Egypt, as we will soon discover, is


not just a contingent historical nation bound to disappear one day, but also aninnate human longing for autonomy and mastery.

“DO NOT DESCEND INTO EGYPT.”

Abram thus descends into Egypt where he acquires greatwealth. Whereas he came to Canaan with “all the possessions he possessed andthe souls they made” (Gen. 12:5), he leaves Egypt “very laden with livestock,silver and gold” (Gen. 13:2; 12:16). Lot and Abram have in fact grown so richthat the land can no longer support them living together. Egypt, upon firstencounter, appears to be a place of refuge in difficult times where one can growimmensely rich. The story does cast a doubt on the Egyptian treatment offoreign women (Gen. 12:14-15), but the reader cannot necessarily concludethat Pharaoh would have taken Sarai had he known she was married. In spiteof this incident, Egypt not only allows Abram to survive the famine but alsomakes him a wealthy man. If the unknown YHWH hopes to supplant theEgyptian Way with his New Way he will have to prove that he too can providefor man.

Many years later, Abraham’s son finds himself in a similar situation. With the land of Canaan in the grips of another famine, Isaac headssouth (toward Egypt) to Gerar in the land of the Philistines. While the text doesnot say that Isaac’s ultimate destination is Egypt, such an assumption appearswarranted. How else are we to explain God’s specific prohibition—“Do notdescend into Egypt” (Gen. 26:2)? Furthermore, it would not be the first repetition of an Abrahamic episode in the life of Isaac (e.g. Gen. 26:6-11). Likehis father who obeyed the divine commandment to go forth, Isaac complieswith the order to stay put. Under the care of God, Isaac not only survives thefamine, but acquires formidable wealth:

And Isaac sowed in that land and in that year he reaped a hundred-fold, and YHWH blessed him. The man became great and he grewconstantly greater until he had grown very great. He had acquiredflocks and herds and many servants; and the Philistines envied him.(Gen. 26:12-14)

God has replaced Egypt. In fact, the text’s marked emphasis on Isaac’s greatness(godel) implies that God has surpassed Egypt. The similarities of the twofamine episodes (famine, Egypt / God, wealth) invite the reader to compare theNew Way under God to the older Egyptian Way. The New Way proves to beable, not only to provide for the Children of Israel, but also to bring riches andeminence, just as Egypt did.


“AND WE WILL BE SLAVES TO PHARAOH.”

The narrative in Genesis has so far unfolded in Mesopotamiaand Canaan. At the time of Jacob’s return to “the land of his father’s sojourn-ings” (Gen. 37:1), Egypt is still a faraway place, a land of plenty to which oneturns in times of famine. After Jacob’s sons sell their brother Joseph to theMidianite traders, the story moves from Canaan to Egypt where the Israeliteswill dwell for more than two centuries. The change of setting now gives the biblical author an opportunity to disclose in greater depth the nature of Egypt.Egypt reveals herself to be the land of Pharaoh in the strictest sense of the term.While the Egyptian monarch does not necessarily appear in every scene, thewhole of Egypt lives under the shadows cast by his sun.

We first encounter Pharaoh celebrating his birthday. Nowhereelse in the entire Hebrew Bible is a birthday celebrated. By highlighting thisoddity, the author draws our attention to the cult of Pharaoh in Egypt. Forwhat is a birthday but a celebration of the birth of a particular human being, ofhis entry into the world? The text, perhaps out of piety, stops short of exposingthe Egyptian belief in the divinity of the Pharaoh. While the Babelians soughtto build a tower to reach the heavens, the Egyptians have elevated one amongthemselves to heavenly status. The god-king thus appropriates certain powersotherwise reserved for God throughout the Bible. After appointing Joseph torule over the land of Egypt, Pharaoh renames him Tsaphenat-Paneah. Giventhe importance and significance of names in the Torah, name changes, withthis particular exception, are the exclusive prerogative of God.

On his birthday, Pharaoh makes a feast for all his ‘avadim.From Genesis 39 onwards, the text seems to play on the dual meaning of‘avadim which can either mean servants (as in Gen. 43:28, cf. 32:5) or, moreprobably, slaves (as in Gen. 47:19, cf. 12:16). The Torah seems to imply that inEgypt all are slaves to Pharaoh. Slaves, both male and female (shfah_ot), werefirst encountered in the Bible during Abraham’s earlier sojourn in Egypt (Gen.12:16). Later, as Egypt feels the worst pangs of the famine, the people offerJoseph to “buy us and our land for bread and we and our land will becomeslaves to Pharaoh” (Gen. 47:19). The preceding sentence however, only concludes that “the land became Pharaoh’s” (Gen. 47:20), thereby implyingthat Pharaoh already owned the people. Egypt, as God will so often later tell hisown people in the desert, is “a house of slavery” (Deut. 5:6; see Addendum 2).

Although Pharaoh’s rule is absolute, he is still free to exercisehis despotic power benevolently or tyrannically. The Pharaoh in power in


Genesis is good to both Joseph and his large family. Yet even when a goodPharaoh sits on the throne, his Egyptian nature shines through. When Pharaohhears the news that Joseph has been reunited with his brothers, he immediatelyinvites the rest of the family to come stay in Egypt: “I will give you the best ofthe land and you will eat of the fat of the land” (Gen. 45:18). Tied to the gener-ous invitation is a command (Gen. 45:19). Jacob and his family must leavebehind their belongings as Pharaoh will provide for them. While we alreadyknew from Abraham’s first sojourn that one may leave Egypt wealthy,Pharaoh’s words now reveal that one may not enter it with wealth. In Egypt, allflows from Pharaoh. The land of Egypt, which belongs to Pharaoh who maythus apportion it as he pleases, will feed the Children of Israel. Jacob, the torch-bearer of the New Way, understands the implications of Pharaoh’s command.Disregarding the Pharaonic order, he sets out “with all that he has” (Gen. 46:1).More importantly, before setting out, he “offers sacrifices to the God of hisfather Isaac” (Gen. 46:1). Jacob must know that YHWH forbids going downinto Egypt. He thus presents offerings and obtains divine approval beforeheading out.

“TELL MY FATHER OF ALL MY GLORY IN EGYPT.”

Any examination of the role of Egypt in the Torah must ultimately confront the troubling Egyptianization of Joseph. From themoment he leaves the prison, Joseph, who had been raised by the great patriarch Jacob, gradually takes on the ways of the Egyptians. He learns the language (Gen. 42:23), wears Egyptian clothes, takes on an Egyptian name and even shaves (Gen. 41:14)—a most un-Israelite practice, as no otherIsraelite in the entire Hebrew Bible ever shaves. When his father dies, he hashim embalmed by Egyptian physicians. Joseph even becomes Pharaoh’sViceroy and marries an Egyptian woman, the daughter of a high priest. Hisreforms allow Egypt to avert the famine and Pharaoh to consolidate his irongrip over the land, thereby creating the conditions that will allow the nextPharaoh to enslave the Children of Israel. Jewish commentators, who have traditionally been quite sympathetic to Joseph, skirt the issue, focusing insteadon his righteousness among the decadent Egyptians. Even such a thoughtfulcommentator as Sacks who draws attention to Joseph’s gradual Egyptianiza-tion, does not make much of it.

Joseph’s Egyptianization culminates in the Pharaohnesquespeech where he reveals his true identity to his brothers. Whereas Joseph begins his monologue in a humble way, stressing the role of God in his rags toriches story, God gradually gives way to Joseph. Pharaoh’s Viceroy ends by

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announcing to his brother “I will nourish you” (Gen. 45:11, cf. Gen 47:12) and orders them to “Tell my father of all my glory in Egypt” (Gen. 45:13). Byportraying himself as a provider, Joseph anticipates Pharaoh’s speech,discussed above. Most disturbing are Joseph’s last words. Nowhere else in theentire Torah is the word glory (kavod) applied to a human in such a way. In thevast majority of cases, glory is in fact reserved for God (e.g. Ex. 14:4). Joseph’sfinal words capture the essence of Egypt. In Egypt, God disappears and givesway to man in all his glory. Thus, Joseph never speaks of YHWH, only ofElohim, which can either designate YHWH or be a generic name for any god. Joseph, in a sense, becomes a Pharaoh. Judas’s words to his brother shouldperhaps then be taken literally: “you are like Pharaoh” (Gen. 44:18).

The story of Joseph thus not only allows the biblical author toexpose the true nature of the land of Egypt, but also, through Joseph’s gradualEgyptianization, to further differentiate the symbol of Egypt. Joseph’s turn toEgypt reveals that behind Egypt lies a human longing, present also within theChildren of Israel, to bring reality under man’s control and, in doing so, todivinize man. Egypt, it turns out, is not just a faraway land which does notknow God, but the desire, already evident in the story of Babel, to replace God.The biblical author uses the story of Joseph to warn his readers that if Jacob’sfavorite son succumbed to the ways of Egypt, so could any Israelite.

In the end, Joseph does seem to break with the ways of Egypt.Before dying he asks his brothers to carry his remnants out with them the dayIsrael leaves Egypt. Yet unlike his father Jacob who insisted that he not beburied in Egypt and be transported to the tomb of his fathers upon his death,Joseph does not seem ready to part with Egypt immediately. His bones willremain in Egypt many more years.

“AND EGYPT WILL KNOW THAT I AM YHWH.”

The death of Joseph brings the scroll of Genesis to a close. TheChildren of Israel, like their forefather Abraham before them, have come toEgypt fleeing famine in the land of Canaan. Unlike Abraham however, they staywell past the end of the famine. Although the text of Genesis contains manyhints that the Egyptian Way is an affront to God, it still retains all its appeal forthe Children of Israel. Egypt remains the land of opulence sheltered fromnecessity. To prepare the Israelites for the Exodus, God must now expose thetrue Egypt, the House of Bondage. The scroll of Exodus opens with the rise tothe throne of a new Pharaoh, “who did not know Joseph” (Ex. 1:8). Unlike hispredecessor who treated Israel’s family generously, the new tyrannical Pharaoh

1 1The Two Ways: Egypt and Israel in the Torah

enslaves the Hebrews. Fearing for the demographic stability of the kingdom,Pharaoh does not hesitate to demand the murder of all Hebrew male newborns and, when this measure fails, of all male newborns. With a word,Pharaoh can “command his entire people” (Ex. 1:22), even to sacrifice theirown children, since everything in Egypt ultimately comes from Pharaoh. Theland of plenty has become the land of oppression and death. Similarly, whenPharaoh hears that Moses has killed a man, he orders that he be put to death,without even verifying the charges (Ex. 2:15).

To lead the people out of Egypt, God chooses Moses, anIsraelite born in Egypt, raised in the house of Pharaoh and even given anEgyptian name (Moshe means son in the Egyptian language; it is also found in the names of certain Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, including Ka-moshe,Ach-moshe and Toth-moshe). Although Moses surely knows of his origins andidentifies with his people—he goes out to “his brethren” (Ex. 2:11)—he iscalled “an Egyptian man” by the daughters of the Midianite priest (Ex. 2:19).If the story of Joseph revealed how an Israelite raised by one of the patriarchscould succumb to the ways of Egypt, the rise of Moses will show how anIsraelite raised in the opulence of Egypt can resist its lures and follow God.While the text remains silent on Moses’ upbringing and childhood, the readercan easily speculate about what it must have been like to grow up in the Houseof Pharaoh, under the care of his daughter

When God first appears in the burning bush, Moses, who hasnot only never seen this God before but never even heard his name (Ex. 3:13),still answers his call by saying “Here I am” (Ex. 3:4, cf. Gen. 22:1, 31:11). WhenPharaoh, on the other hand, first hears of YHWH, he offers the paradigmaticEgyptian reply:“Who is YHWH that I should hearken to his voice and send outIsrael? I do not know YHWH” (Ex. 5:2, emphasis added). Confronted with thehitherto unknown God YHWH, Moses piously steps forth, like Abrahambefore him, while Pharaoh, with characteristic Egyptian hubris, denies anyknowledge of God.

The stage is now set for a confrontation between the dormantNew Way and the Egyptian Other Way. The Israelites cannot simply leaveEgypt. The land of Pharaoh must be humiliated—“you will tell your son how Iridiculed Egypt” (Ex. 10:2)—and brought to its knees for the New Way toprove its superiority over the Other Way. Not only will the New Way emergevictorious, but Egypt itself “will know that I am YHWH” (Ex. 7:5, cf. 9:15, 9:16,11:7). Israel too must rediscover YHWH after so many years in Egypt.Maimonides, citing Exodus Rabbah, even remarks that the Israelites had


abandoned the distinctive mark of the covenant and stopped circumcisingtheir sons while in Egypt “with a view to assimilating themselves to theEgyptians” (1963, III:46, 585). Lastly, the spectacular exit from Egypt will alsoreveal the glory of God. As God instructs Moses to tell the Children of Israel,“you will know that I am YHWH your God” (Ex. 6:8).

“AS YOU HAVE SEEN EGYPT TODAY YOU WILL

NEVER AGAIN SEE THEM FOR ETERNITY.”

God thus brings ten plagues against Egypt, hardeningPharaoh’s heart each time, until he finally surrenders. Much has been writtenabout the significance of the plagues (Currid 1997, 105-20), but it should benoted that the final plague is strangely reminiscent of Pharaoh’s earlier decree.Whereas Pharaoh had ordered all Israelites male newborns to be put to death,God kills all Egyptian firstborns. The New Way is, in many regards, the mirroropposite of the Other Way. Both ways subordinate everything to the One: Godin Israel, Pharaoh in Egypt. Under both ways, the land cannot be owned by anindividual. In Egypt it belongs to the Pharaoh (Gen. 47:20), while in the HolyLand it belongs to God—“The land you will not sell permanently, for the landis Mine. For you are sojourners and settlers in my midst” (Lev. 25:23). Evenwhen the Other Way and the New Way appear to agree, important differencesremain. Both ways, on the surface, seem to be open for all to follow. In Egypt,a lowly Hebrew slave can become Viceroy. Under the New Way, as God insists throughout Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, “you must love theproselyte [ger] like yourself” (Lev. 19:34). In Egypt, not much is asked of thenewcomer—a shave, a change of clothes and a new name—but he mustremain forever separate, no matter how high his position. Even TsaphenathPaneah, married to the daughter of the Priest of On, must eat alone “for theEgyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews, for it was an abomination tothe Egyptians (Gen. 43:32). Under the New Way, on the other hand, the proselyte becomes an integral part of the community but the commitment tothe law is total.

As the Israelites leave Egypt in great haste, they fulfill God’sword who had earlier instructed them to “empty out [venitsaltem] Egypt”(Ex. 3:22). They leave with silver vessels, gold vessels and garments taken fromthe Egyptians (Ex. 12:36). By pointing out that in taking these vessels and garments, the Israelites emptied out Egypt, the biblical author seems to suggestthat Egypt does not amount to much more than an accumulation of materialpossessions.


On their way out of Egypt, the Israelites come before the Seaof Reeds where Moses announces:“As you have seen Egypt today you will neveragain see them for eternity” (Ex. 14:13). For Moses, God has exposed the trueEgypt and shattered its image as an Edenic state of plenty. For pious men likeMoses, Egypt is no more. Indeed, Pharaoh, the embodiment of Egypt, and hisentire army are swallowed by the water (mayim) while the Israelites safely goon dry land (yabasha). The contrast between water and dry land evokes the actof separations through which God created the world in Genesis 1, where theverb “to separate” (lehavdil) appears five times (Gen. 1:4, 6, 7, 14, 18). Whereasthe New Way seeks to uphold the distinctions created by these separations, as isevident for example in the dietary laws (Kass 1994), Egypt denies them, forexample by blurring the distinction between the human and animal kingdoms(Sacks 1990, 394). By refusing to uphold the divine separations through whichthe world was created, the Egyptians are returned to the primordial waterswhere all boundaries are blurred.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US BY TAKING

US OUT OF EGYPT?”

With great signs and wonders God smites Pharaoh and car-ries the Israelites out of Egypt. Even God however cannot remove Egypt fromthe Israelites. So deeply ingrained in human nature is the longing for Egyptthat it subsides even once Egypt is no more. The longing for Egypt, firstexpressed before the crossing of the Reed Sea, will in fact become a recurrenttheme throughout the rest of the Torah. God, unlike Moses, knows that thepeople will yearn for Egypt, in spite of the oppression they suffered at thehands of Pharaoh. Even before taking the Israelites out of Egypt, God foresawthat the people would balk at the first opportunity and head back towardEgypt. He thus traced a route out of Egypt that avoided the land of the bellicosePhilistines “lest the people, in seeing a war, reconsider and return to Egypt”(Ex. 13:17). It would in fact take much less than a war for the people to question the decision to leave Egypt. In the desert, the Israelites will express a desire to return to Egypt on seven different occasions (Ex. 14:12, 16:3,17:3; Num. 11:20, 14:3-4, 20:5, 21:5). Threatened yet again by famine, the people, like their forefather Abraham, place their trust, not in divine providence, but in Egypt. “For you have brought us out to this desert to kill this entire congregation by famine,” the people clamor to Moses and Aaron,“If only we had died in Egypt” (Ex. 16:3). Unlike Abram however who knewnothing of YHWH, the Israelites had just witnessed a spectacular display ofhis might.


Thirst, like famine, also brings out the Egyptian longing:“Why did you raise us out of Egypt to kill me and my children and my livestockthrough thirst?” (Ex. 17:3). Even when God’s providence is manifest with thedaily gift of manna, the people yearn for the lavishness of Egypt. “Who willfeed us meat?” the people cry out to Moses. “We remember the fish we ate inEgypt for free and the melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now our soul is parched, there is nothing but this manna” (Num. 11:4). Life in Egypt, theyconclude, was better: “Why did we leave Egypt?” (Num. 11:20). Upon hearingthe report of the spies about the dangers lying ahead in the Holy Land, the people decide they have had enough: “Let us appoint a leader and let us returnto Egypt” (Num. 14:3). Although the reader rapidly grows weary of the people’sincessant refrain, their complaints demonstrate how resilient Egypt is. Humannature, as the biblical author forces us to conclude, will instinctively turn toEgypt not only in trying times, but even, it seems, in frugal times. The New Waysimply cannot eradicate the Other Way.

If, however, the New Way is to gain a foothold among thepeople, it must prove able to replace Egypt, as God did earlier with Isaac. Sincethe people long for the Edenic Egypt, God promises them, on 15 different occasions, that the Holy Land will be “a land flowing with milk and honey.”In Canaan the Israelites will find “great and beautiful cities that you did notbuild, houses already filled with every good, wells already dug, orchards andolive trees that you did not plant” (Deut. 6:10). In short, a luxurious land waiting to be occupied. There, as Moses announces, “you will eat and be satiated” (Deut. 6:11). Famine, and the Egyptian longings it gives rise to, willthus give way to satiety and prosperity.

If prosperity will lead the Israelites to forget Egypt, it may verywell lead them to forget God too. The children of the descendants from Egypt,born in the abundance of the Holy Land, might one day ask their parents “whythese testimonies, laws and decrees that YHWH our God commanded you?”(Deut. 6:20, emphasis added). Why, in other words, not go the way of Egyptand only follow man-made laws? The children may still recognize YHWH astheir God, but they will need to be reminded why the laws were commanded toall the Children of Israel for all times, and not just to the generation that leftEgypt. The people are thus instructed to tell their children: “Slaves were we toPharaoh in Egypt and YHWH brought us out with a strong hand” (Deut.11:21). The children will be taught what their parents learned the hard way: theways of man—the ways of Egypt—lead to slavery.


“FOR I AM YHWH WHO BROUGHT YOU OUT OF EGYPT.”

In the last three scrolls of the Torah, the Children of Israelhave left Egypt but its memory remains ever present. God not only insists thateach Israelite “remember the day you left Egypt all the days of your life” (Deut.16:3) but repeatedly presents himself as “YHWH, your God, who brought youforth from the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:36). While most commandments aresimply announced to the people, many are presented while invoking the mem-ory of Egypt. There does not however seem to be a pattern or connectingthread uniting the latter. Perhaps a more discerning reader will figure one out.This much however appears obvious—the most important commandmentsare prefaced by remembering Egypt. In both presentations of the Ten SpokenWords (devarim), God, in the very first pronouncement, presents himselfas “YHWH, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out ofthe house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2 and Deut. 5:6). Israel’s God is the God who “elevates,” “removes,” and “withdraws” his people from Egypt (Lev. 11:45,Num. 15:41, Deut. 4:20). In Leviticus 25, when God lays out the laws pertainingto the Jubilee year—whose centrality to the New Way is perhaps most evidentin Jeremiah 34 where God attributes the collapse of the country to the failure toobey the sabbatical and jubilee laws—Egypt is mentioned three times. Lastly,the only justification given for the many forbidden sexual relationshipsdetailed in Leviticus 18 is that Israel must never “do the doings of the land ofEgypt” (Lev. 18:3), nor those of its brother Canaan. Egypt, after all, was the landwhere Pharaohs married their own sisters. The Torah forbids not only fraternalincest, but the uncovering of the nakedness of any next of kin (Lev. 18:6).

More generally, the very act of lawgiving, of instituting a Lawwhich governs the entire people, stands in stark contrast to the absolute despotism of Pharaonic Egypt. In the Torah, God’s Law has replaced the god-man Pharaoh. Even when, departing from the New Way, the people ask fora king, God anoints Saul only “as a ruler over His heritage”(I Sam. 10:1, empha-sis added). While the books of Samuel and Kings do not say explicitly that theking is bound by the Law, there is no suggestion that he is not bound by it. Inthis regard, our own modern liberal democracies, grounded in the rule of law,echo something of the way of Israel, the way of Law.

In preserving the memory of Egypt alive within the followersof the New Way, God insists that the Israelites distinguish between Egypt,the House of Bondage and symbol of the Other Way, and the Egyptians themselves, who also must endure Pharaonic despotism. Thus, Moses warnsthe people: “You will not abhor an Egyptian for you were a sojourner in his


land” (Deut. 23:8). The Torah even depicts individual Egyptians—whether itbe Hagar caring for her son, Potiphar entrusting Joseph or even the Pharaoh’sdaughter disobeying her father to save a Hebrew baby—as decent people. Sackscites a Midrashic story of God declining to participate in a celebration after thecrossing of the Sea of Reeds as he was mourning the death of his Egyptian chil-dren (1990, 386).

“…THAT MOSES PERFORMED BEFORE THE

EYES OF ALL ISRAEL.”

With the death of Moses, the scroll of Deuteronomy ends,bringing the Torah to a close. Although liberated from the House of Slavery bythe hand of God, the Israelites, through their appalling behavior in the desert,have shown that they remain slaves to the ways of Egypt. They prove unfit toenter the Holy Land and put in place the statutes, laws and ordinances of theNew Way. God thus condemns them to wander aimlessly for 40 years in thedesert and die there so that a new generation, unacquainted with Egypt, maylead the conquest of Canaan. God does spare Joshua and Caleb. Righteous asthey may be, the biblical author may be indicating that in doing so, God allowsEgypt to creep in to the Holy Land, albeit symbolically. The victory of the NewWay is thus tainted. While God has asserted his providence and crushed Egypt,exposing it as land under the despotic control of a god-man, the people, forwhom God displayed his might, have not been convinced. The tension betweenthe ways of men and the ways of God remains. The penultimate verse of theTorah thus speaks of the land of Egypt, Pharaoh, all his slaves and all his land(Deut. 34:11). In a fitting way, the last scroll of the Torah does however endwith the word Israel. The Torah’s closing words seem to express the biblicalauthor’s hope that Israel, under the care of God, will ultimately triumph overEgypt.

A D D E N D A

1. An analysis of word densities in the Torah in fact revealsthat “Egypt”and “Egyptians”appear more often than “Israel”and “Israelites” inboth the books of Genesis and Exodus (Andersen and Forbes 1989). In fact, forevery mention of Israel in Genesis, there are two of Egypt. Furthermore,“Egypt” and “Egyptians” are mentioned more often than all the other biblicalpeoples in the Pentateuch.


2. The modern reader should be careful not to import foreignconcepts, such as freedom, into the Torah. If Egypt is depicted as the House ofSlavery, the land of Canaan will not be a House of Freedom. There is in fact noword for freedom in the Torah. Freedom (h_oufsha or dror) is only mentionedincidentally, as the opposite of slavery (e.g. Lev. 19:20, 25:10). Slavery will exist,even under the New Way, but every seventh year, all Israelites slaves will befreed and, on the Jubilee year, return to their ancestral land (Ex. 21:2 and Lev.25:39-43). Furthermore, the Torah contains many laws dealing with the manu-mission of slaves (e.g. Ex. 21:26 and Deut. 15:12). Thus, while life under theNew Way will not be free in the modern sense, Egyptian slavery, from whichthere is no escape, will cease.

R E F E R E N C E S

Andersen, Francis I., and A. Dean Forbes. 1989. The Vocabulary of the OldTestament. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Currid, John D. 1997. Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament. Grand Rapids,MI: Baker Books.

Greifenhagen, F. V. 2003. Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map:Constructing Biblical Israel’s Identity. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Kass, Leon. 1994. Why the Dietary Laws? Commentary 97: 42-48.

Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by ShlomoPines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Pangle,Thomas. 1995. The Hebrew Bible’s Challenge to Political Philosophy:Some Introductory Reflections. In Political Philosophy and the HumanSoul: Essays in Memory of Allan Bloom, edited by Michael Palmer andThomas Pangle. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

Peet, T. Eric. 1924. Egypt and the Old Testament. Boston: Small, Maynard &Company.

Petrie, Flinders. 1911. Egypt and Israel. New York: E.S. Gorham.

Sacks, Robert D. 1990. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Lewiston, ME:The Edwin Mellen Press.

Voegelin, Eric. 1990. The Gospel and Culture. In Published Essays 1966-1985,vol. 12 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, edited by Ellis Sandoz.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.


Prince Harry: Shakespeare’s Critique of Machiavelli

A V E R Y P L A W

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS – DARTMOUTH

[email protected]

“Among the features specific to the text of Henry V its apparentproperty of giving rise to particularly acrimonious division ofopinion has often been noted. To say that there are two campssharply opposing each other is indeed almost a commonplace ofcritical literature, the one camp firmly applauding what they see as apanegyric upon, indeed a rousing celebration of, ‘the mirror ofall Christian Kings’ and most successful English monarch of all the histories; and the followers of the other camp deriding with noless conviction the exaltation of a Machiavellian conqueror in arapacious, and, after all, senseless war.” (Walch 1988, 63)

In recent years a small but growing literature has emergedurging the serious treatment of Shakespeare as a political thinker (Asquith2005, Alexander 2004, Craig 2001, Spiekerman 2001, Alvis 2000, Joughin 1997,A. Bloom 1996). Despite the quality of much of this work, however, the depthand importance of Shakespeare’s political thought remains far from estab-lished in contemporary Anglo-American political theory. This articlecontributes to the case for Shakespeare as a serious political thinker by drawingon his often-neglected Histories. It does so by revealing a sharp, albeit implicit,critique of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political thought in Shakespeare’s Henriad(Henry IV, parts I and II, and Henry V), and particularly in the story of PrinceHarry’s maturation into Henry V. Here Shakespeare shows, contra Machiavelli,that political virtu can in practice create political legitimacy only at an insup-portable human cost. This realist line of critique was both original and forceful,as this article will show.

The article also contributes to an ongoing debate overwhether Shakespeare had actually read Machiavelli (for overview, see Grady


1 9Prince Harry: Shakespeare’s Critique of Machiavelli


2002, 41-46, esp. fn. 44). Although Shakespeare does make explicit reference toMachiavelli in the plays, and, as Felix Raab has convincingly shown,“Machiavelli was being quite widely read in England” for a decade beforeShakespeare wrote the Henriad, the balance of scholarly opinion today remainsthat Shakespeare had not read Machiavelli first hand (Raab 1964, 52-57). Thisarticle offers new reasons to think that he did.

Finally, there is a longstanding and heated debate amongreaders and audiences over how to read Henry V, and in particular how toassess its title character. Is the play a nationalist paean to “the mirror of allChristian kings” (as presented in Olivier’s 1942 film) or a politically subversivedenunciation of a Machiavellian monster (as more clearly suggested inKenneth Branagh’s 1989 film)? This article suggests that both traditional inter-pretations are inadequate for several reasons—both suffer from a tendency toread Henry V in isolation from the other history plays, both ignore the validinsights of the other, and by consequence both sharply underestimate theambition and complexity of Shakespeare’s political thought. Once Henry V isplaced in its dramatic context and read in relation to Machiavelli’s politicalthought, a central theme that emerges is the extreme difficulty of consolidatingan illegitimate dynasty on the throne, regardless of the virtuosity of the prince.Harry himself is presented as a deliberately ambiguous figure—a supremelygifted and inspiring prince who is prepared to commit terribly moral wrongsto unify his country and legitimate his dynasty; he is the most glorious ofEnglish kings, but also, ultimately, a failure. This re-reading revolves aroundtwo key claims: first, that Shakespeare portrays Harry as an exemplaryMachiavellian prince, and second, that Shakespeare provides the material of atelling critique of Harry’s policy and the Machiavellian thought that informs it.The second section of this article develops the former claim and the third thelatter. The first section locates Henry V within the cycle of English Histories.

I. THE HENRIAD IN SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLISH HISTORIES

Shakespeare’s cycle of eight sequential English Histories presents, in Herschel Baker’s words, a story of “sin and retribution” (Baker1974, 801). The sin is committed in the first play, Richard II, in which HenryBullingbrook, the Duke of Herford, usurps his ineffectual cousin, Richard II.The punishment covers the remainder of the Histories through to the eventualaccession of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, at the end of Richard III. Theoverall structure of the cycle is closest to that of tragedy: fall and gradualdestruction ending in a suggestion of restored order (Shaw 1985, 61-67). Incharacteristic style, Shakespeare suggests multiple explanations for this tragic

2 1

fall. As in Macbeth, which exhibits a similar narrative structure of regicide-dis-order/punishment-restoration, Shakespeare intimates both a traditionalsupernatural explanation for events, and a more realist political-psychologicallogic at work. Shakespeare puts the providential explanation in the narrativebackground—sin disrupts the divine order and needs to be expiated beforeorder can eventually be restored. In the dramatic foreground, however, he presents a more realistic, political-psychological rationale. Rule without legitimacy cultivates mounting disorders, both political and psychological,which collaborate to unravel the social fabric and to drive politics into a viciouscycle of rebellion and tyranny.

In developing the background providential interpretation ofthe historical cycle, Shakespeare suggests a moral critique of Machiavelli’s workthat parallels Machiavelli’s historical critics, from Innocent Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel through Frederick II’s Anti-Machiavel: Machiavellian politics ismorally evil and ultimately incurs divine punishment. In elaborating the foreground political-psychological drama, however, Shakespeare opened a new and fertile front of Machiavelli critique—that Machiavelli failed exactlywhere he himself was proudest, in providing a realistic account of humannature and the way in which it structures political possibilities (Machiavelli1979, 78, 126-27).

The main analytical focus of this essay will be on the political-psychological explanation for the historical cycles’ narrative arc, but this is notintended to deny or discount the traditional rhetoric of divine judgment whichsuffuses the plays. However bad a King Richard II may have been, he remained,as he himself never tires of pointing out, “The deputy elected by the Lord”(III.ii.57). According to traditional divine right doctrine, as Richard himselfexclaims, “Not all the water in the rough rude sea/Can wash the balm off froman anointed king” (III.ii.54-55). Consequently his removal (and murder) are“in a Christian climate so…heinous, black, obscene a deed” that they bring theentire land, but the House of Lancaster in particular, under God’s curse(IV.i.131). Following Richard’s removal, the Bishop of Carlisle foresees the ter-rible doom that has been called down upon England as a consequence of thisunnatural act:

The blood of English shall manure the ground,And future ages groan for this foul act.Peace shall go to sleep with Turks and infidels,And in this seat of peace tumultuous warsShall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny



Shall here inhabit, and this land be call’dThe field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls. (IV.i.137-44)

Of course Carlisle is right. The dramatic scope of this punitive strife is enormous, covering the remaining seven plays of the historical cycle. Misruleand mounting civil wars convulse the kingdom, finally culminating in RichardIII’s brief but bloody tyranny and ultimate defeat at Bosworth Field.

In developing his theme of crime and punishment, however,Shakespeare encounters an enormous historical problem—Henry V. Betweenthe rebellion-filled reign of the usurper Henry (IV) Bullingbrook, and the disastrous reign of his grandson Henry VI that began the terrible civil Wars ofthe Roses, Shakespeare is confronted with the brief but undeniably gloriousreign of Henry V, conqueror of France. Shakespeare has to deal with only onegreat king to confound Carlisle’s prophecy, but that one is historicallyinescapable.

Shakespeare’s problem, then, is how he can fit Harry’s reigninto his story of regicide and retribution. I want to suggest that Shakespearesolves the problem by presenting Harry as an embodiment of Machiavellianpolitical virtu who is able to seize fortuna, and briefly achieve unity at homethrough conquest abroad. Despite his remarkable victory at Agincourt,however, Shakespeare reminds us that Harry’s success proves short-lived.He thus shows that a genuinely gifted and devoted Machiavellian prince can sometimes momentarily reverse the process of political degeneration associated with illegitimacy, but the effect lasts only as long as his tour-de-forceperformance as Warrior-King does. Moreover, the psychological demands ofthe performance prove unsustainable for the leader, and impose some heavycosts on the people. In short, the victory is pyrrhic.

Of course, Harry never explicitly invokes the image ofMachiavelli, and nor does any other character in reference to him. But this isonly a testament to the success of Harry’s political performance: he neverappears publicly as the brutal political realist that we, the audience, are permit-ted to see that he is. In this way, Harry realizes one of Machiavelli’s centralpolitical precepts: one must know how to be bad while always appearing good(Machiavelli 1979, 127-28). It is through what he reveals directly and indirectlyto the audience that we must assess Harry’s character and what Shakespeareillustrates through him. In the following section, I examine Harry’sMachiavellian character and behavior.

II. HARRY AS AN EXEMPLARY MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCE

Machiavelli’s The Prince is a manual on how to rule success-fully dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici. Both because it is addressed to Lorenzo,and because Machiavelli wants to confront the most difficult cases, the book isprimarily concerned with the question of how a new prince, especially onewhose legitimacy is unclear, can consolidate his position. As Machiavelli summarizes, “The things written above, if followed prudently, make a newprince seem well established and render him immediately safer and moreestablished in his state than if he had been in it for some time.…they attractmen much more and bind them to him more strongly than does ancientblood” (Machiavelli 1979, 157). Indeed, some commentators have identifiedMachiavelli’s focus on the practical problem of legitimating governance as theroot of his originality and influence. J. G. A. Pocock, for example, writes that“his great originality is that of a student of delegitimized politics” (Pocock1975, 136). Machiavelli’s work then, and especially The Prince, speaks verydirectly to Harry’s position, and Harry follows its precepts closely.

The central action of Henry V is, of course, the war with France,and so it is probably the best place to begin to explore Harry’s political strategy.As Shakespeare presents it (skipping the first two years of Harry’s reign (1413-15)including the Lollard rebellion), the entirety of Harry’s policy is immediate warwith France: as Harry declares in the second scene, “we have now no thought inus but France” (I.ii.302). By relentlessly pursuing a war of conquest, Harry cynically fulfills his dying father’s Machiavellian advice to him, to “busy giddyminds/With foreign quarrels” (II Henry IV, IV.v.213-14). Where his father,however, was driven by his guilty conscience to talk endlessly about a crusadeto the Holy Land, Harry sets his sights on the more practical target of France.

Shakespeare’s depiction of Harry as exclusively focused onwar coheres precisely with Machiavelli’s general advice to princes: “A prince,therefore, must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must hetake anything as his profession but war, its institutions, and its discipline;because that is the only profession which befits one who commands…”(Machiavelli 1979, 124). Moreover, “Nothing makes a prince more esteemedthan great undertakings and examples of his unusual talents” (150-51).Machiavelli offers Ferdinand of Aragon as a paradigm of the virtuous “newprince” because Ferdinand “from being a weak ruler…became, through fameand glory, the first king of Christendom.” The key to his success, according toMachiavelli, was immediately attacking his neighbor (Granada) in order toconsolidate his position at home. Further, Machiavelli stresses that “he was able



to maintain armies with money from the church.” A new prince, then,especially one whose own position is problematic, should find a pretext andimmediately go to war with a vulnerable neighbor and, if possible, get thechurch to underwrite the venture.

The strategic character of Harry’s policy of war with France is clearly suggested at the beginning of Henry V, where Shakespeare calls thecasus belli into question. Act I, Scene I opens with the Archbishop ofCanterbury and the Bishop of Ely discussing a bill urged in the Commons to confiscate “the better half of [the church’s] possession” (I.i.8). It quicklymaterializes, however, that the Archbishop has made an offer to the new King“As concerning France” in exchange for his opposition to the bill (I.i.79). Tobegin with, he has offered a substantial war chest—“a greater sum/Than ever atone time the clergy yet/Did to his predecessor part withal” (I.i.79-81).Moreover, in the following scene, the Archbishop provides Harry with a highlyobscure and convoluted justification for his claims to “some certainDukedoms” in France (I.ii.247). Finally, when Harry cuts through all the verbiage and asks the big question, “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” Canterbury answers pregnantly “The sin upon my head dread sovereign!” (I.ii.96-97). Without any direct exercise of power, Harry gets thechurch not only to finance his war on his vulnerable neighbor, as Machiavellirecommends, but to take responsibility for it as well. In treating these events,Shakespeare diverges in important details from his historical sources with theapparent intent to suggest that the invasion has been Harry’s plan all along(Holinshed 1974, 64-65; Bullough 1962, 352).

Once Harry’s claim has been confirmed by the country’s highestspiritual authority, he gives admission to the French ambassadors, who deliverthe Dauphin’s contemptuous rebuff. When Harry responds with cold fury,his claim has expanded to “my throne of France” (I.ii.275). After this, Harrymakes no further mention of the casus belli (although the injustice of the warcontinues to haunt the play). By the final act, however, Harry openly confessesto Katherine what his intention has been all along: “I will have it all mine”(V.ii.173-76).

All of this emphasis on Harry’s duplicity, however, only reaffirms something that Shakespeare’s audience, indeed any audience who haswatched the previous plays, knows—Harry’s claims to the French crown areobviously specious. He is not even the legitimate King of England. This factgives a deeply ironic truth to Harry’s proud declaration on his disembarkationfrom Dover,“No king of England, if not king of France!” (II.ii.193).

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Shakespeare went to some trouble, then, to cast doubt on the justness of Harry’s war. Harry needs a war because of his own problem oflegitimacy, and the corresponding threat of the kind of political instability thatplagued his father’s reign, and he senses weakness in France. So he marriesMachiavelli’s advice with an astute political opportunism in a “great enter-prise” designed to showcase the military talents he had already began to exhibitat Shrewsbury. Harry then embarks on precisely the bold but realistic martialpolicy which Machiavelli champions (Machiavelli 1979, 94, 159-62). Indeed,once Harry’s strategy becomes clear, one notices how carefully he has stage-managed the opening court scene (I.ii) to cast himself in the role of the injuredparty and to create a credible pretext for war (Sullivan 1996, 135-39;Spiekerman 2001, 129-31). One notes, for example, that Harry has cannily senthis peremptory claim to the Dauphin (who is sure to send a disdainfulresponse) rather than to King Charles who could actually decide its merit. Onealso notices Canterbury’s subtle suggestion that Harry has had a chance tolearn the basic content of the French embassy before formally receiving theambassadors, and one wonders whether the whole scene is not a meticulouslycrafted performance, rather the like the one that he long before practiced withFalstaff to deceive his father (I Henry IV, II.iv).

Indeed, Shakespeare continuously portrays Harry, through-out the Henriad, practicing the art of deception, sometimes in a humorousvein, and sometimes deadly seriously—for example, in 1 Henry IV, II.ii, II.iv,III.ii, III.iii (so frequently in fact that Vickie Sullivan aptly dubs him “the Machiavellian Prince of Appearance”: Sullivan 1996, 125). At the end ofthe very first scene in which he appears, Harry gives a soliloquy revealing anelaborate plan to deceive everyone about his (dissolute) character.

Prince: .... By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes,And like bright metal on a sullen groundMy reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,Shall show more goodly and attract more eyesThan that which hath no foil to set it off

(I Henry IV, I.ii. 197-215).

In the remaining Henriad, he goes on to realize his plan spectacularly. In thisHarry immediately puts to work Machiavelli’s advice that “a prince who wishesto accomplish great things must learn to deceive” (Machiavelli 1979, 315).Moreover, this portrayal of Harry as, in John Blanpied’s words, a “naturalactor,” a “dramatic genius” of manipulation, seems to be entirely Shakespeare’sown invention (Blanpied 1983, 163; compare Holinshed 1974, 53-62).



According to Machiavelli, the first necessity in consolidatingpower and preparing the nation for war is to neutralize potential threats toone’s rule. Above all, Machiavelli emphasizes that a new prince of insecure titleneeds to win the support of the people, for his nobles will tend to “think them-selves his equals,” and he will be unable to command them effectively unless hehas “popular favor,” in which case he will find “no one or very few, who are notready to obey him” (Machiavelli 1979, 107-8, 136-38, 158, 376). This too is partof Harry’s plan. He wins the love and trust of the people as the Crown Princeby demonstrating that he is one of them. His youthful slumming mainly takesthe form of scandalously associating with the notorious gang of Eastcheapthieves led by his popular friend, “that villainous, abominable misleader ofyouth,” Sir John Falstaff (II.iv.462-63). Indeed, Harry is introduced to us, andalmost exclusively appears in I Henry IV, in Falstaff ’s tavern world. By soakinghimself, in Frye’s words, “in every social aspect of the kingdom,” Harry “isbecoming the entire nation in individual form, which is exactly what a king is”(Frye 1986, 78). In other words, he deliberately creates the bond with his people that a monarch would usually (according to tradition) have by nature.Two quick examples suffice to capture the depth of the love Harry inspires.

At the opening of the Second Act of Henry V we see the remnants of the Eastcheap gang—Bardolph, Nym, Pistol and the Hostess—quarrelling and lamenting over the sudden illness that has struck their leader,Falstaff. The Hostess puts it aptly: “The King has kill’d his heart” (II.i.88).They have good reason to be angry and bitter with Harry, who has cruellyabandoned Falstaff and themselves. Yet, a few lines later we hear,

Hostess: Ah, poor heart! He [Falstaff] is so shak’d of a burningquotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold.Sweet men, come to him.

Nym: The King hath run bad humors on the knight, that’s theeven of it.

Pistol: Nym, thou hast spoke the right.His heart is fracted and corroborate.

Nym: The King is a good king, but it must be as it may; hepasses some humors and careers.

Pistol: Let us condole the knight, for, lambkins, we will live.(II.i.118-28)

They care too much for the murderer of Falstaff to blame him.

Again, Harry (in disguise) approaches Ancient Pistol on the night before Agincourt. Harry has seemingly led his army to certain

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destruction, and has also just approved the hanging of their mutual old friend,Bardolph, for a minor offence. When, however, Harry turns the conversation tothe subject of the King, Pistol declares, “The King’s a bawcock, and a heart ofgold,/A lad of life, an imp of fame,/Of parents good, of fist most valiant./I kisshis dirty shoe, and from heart-string/I love the bully boy” (IV.i.44-8). So Harrysuccessfully puts Machiavelli’s advice to work by undertaking an elaborate performance that wins him the hearts of the people, and, by consequence,he controls his nobles: as Westmoreland assures him in the first court scene,“Never King of England/Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects”(I.ii.126-27).

Yet, “since men are a sorry lot,” (“self-serving,” “short-sighted,” gullible, usually “wicked” and treacherous) and love can be fickle,Machiavelli emphasizes that it is even more prudent to be feared than loved(Machiavelli 1979, 86, 95, 123, 131, 134, 181). Fear is especially valuable to aprince because it “will never abandon you” (131). While Machiavelli admitsthat “it is difficult to join [fear and love] together,” he nonetheless insists that aprince “should like to be both one and the other.” Harry works hard to befeared as well as loved. His justice is harsh (consider the slaughter of the Frenchprisoners he orders at Agincourt, or the hanging of Bardolph), regardless of hispersonal feelings for the condemned (IV.vi.37-38; III.vi). He always quicklycarries through on his threats (the rapid invasion of France, for example), andsome of his threats are savage indeed: at Harfleur, for example, he shouts

K. Henry: …. Therefore, you men of HarflewTake pity of your town and of your people… [i.e., andsurrender]If not—why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand[Defile] the locks of your shrill-shriking daughters;Your fathers taken by their silver beards,And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls;Your naked infants spitted on pikes,Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’dDo break the clouds….What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid?Or guilty in defense, be thus destroy’d? (III.iii.27-43)

Fortunately, faced with so vivid a prospect, the town surrenders and Harry is not required to carry through this threat. Nonetheless, it is clear that he cultivates fear, both in his enemies and in his own subjects. Cambridge affirmsthe success of the King in words that directly echo Machiavelli when he insists



“Never was monarch better fear’d and lov’d/Than is your majesty” (II.ii.25-26).

Machiavelli gives further tough advice to the prince “in dealing with his subjects and friends” (Machiavelli 1979, 126). Given the exigencies of politics, a prince must be ready to break his bonds of obligation,even his promises, “when such an observance of faith would be to his disadvantage and when the reasons that made him promise are removed”(134). The single historical incident Machiavelli praises most frequently wasJunius Brutus condemning his own children to death when he discovered thatthey were plotting to overthrow the state (for example, 219, 221, 353, 356).Brutus’ gesture was a powerful expression of a leader’s devotion to the common good. This is exactly what Harry does in the very moments followinghis coronation. Falstaff has ridden all night to be there for the event, declaring“the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have beenmy friends, and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!” (II Henry IV, V.iii.136-38). Hebursts from the crowd at the parade following the coronation, crying “My king,my Jove! I speak to thee my heart!” The King answers,

King: I know thee not, old man, fall to thy prayers.How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,So surfeit swell’d, so old, and so profane;But being awak’d, I do despise my dream….Reply not to me with a fool-born jest,Presume not that I am the thing I wasFor God doth know, so shall the world perceive,That I have turn’d away my former self;So will I those that kept me company. (V.v.47-59)

Harry proceeds to banish Sir John ten miles from his presence, and the oldknight, publicly rejected, withers and soon dies. The metaphor Harry uses inthe last two lines—turning away his former self, banishing it along with hisfriends—is especially revealing. The image is strikingly echoed in SigmundFreud’s definition of repression: “The essence of repression lies simply in turn-ing something away and keeping it a distance from the conscious” (Freud 1957,147). As he becomes king then, Harry rejects a former part of himself, a choicethat may prove more psychologically damaging than he realizes. On the otherhand, this gesture of public repudiation, more than anything else, persuadesthe leading nobles that Harry’s conversion is genuine, and earns their trust. So,although Harry’s brutality is emotional rather than physical, and is directed ata father figure rather than a child, the political effect is much the same.

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Having then followed Machiavelli’s advice and established hissupreme commitment to the public good, and won the love and fear of thepeople and the loyalty of the nobles, Harry is in a position on his accession to“Assume the port of Mars” and initiate the war that will finally consolidateunity at home and legitimize his dynasty. In undertaking the enterprise, Harryagain follows Machiavellian advice (I.i.6). First, he must “ferret out”and “extin-guish” any weak links among his powerful subjects who may conspire with theenemy against him (Machiavelli 1979, 80-84, 136-39, 357-74). In particular,Machiavelli recommends that he should scrutinize “those for whom he hasdone too many favors” (362). Once identified, these enemies should be “anni-hilated” in one swift sweep, because “injuries … should be inflicted all at thesame time, for the less they are tasted, the less they offend” (106-7). Further,when the prince has to make such harsh decisions, he “must delegate distaste-ful tasks to others; pleasant ones [he] should keep for [him]self” (139). Oneprominent example will be sufficient to illustrate Harry’s masterful applicationof these principles.

Even before he leaves Southampton, Harry’s active intelli-gence uncovers a plot on his life among some of his most favored advisors. It isdiscovered that Lord Scroop, the Earl of Cambridge and Sir Thomas Grey haveaccepted bribes from the French to murder their King. Rather than simplyarrest them, however, Harry characteristically feigns ignorance and plays anelaborate scene with them in which he proposes to pardon a man accused ofspeaking abusively of the King. He elicits predictable protests from Scroop,Cambridge and Grey that he is being too merciful. At this point, he reveals hisknowledge of their plot, and when they predictably submit themselves to hismercy, he responds “The mercy that was quick in us of late,/By your own coun-sel is suppress’d and kill’d./You must not dare (for shame) to talk of mercy,/Foryour own reasons turn into your bosoms,/As dogs upon their masters…”(II.ii.79-83). Harry then condemns them to immediate death. Not only, then,does he uncover and eliminate his enemies among his peers, but he tricks theminto taking responsibility for their own merciless dispatch. In essence, hedeflects responsibility for their condemnation onto the victims themselves.Indeed, this is the same slight of hand that he employs at Harfleur, when heinsists that should the city fail to surrender, they themselves will be “guilty indefense” of the awful reign of “murther, spoil and villainy” he threatens tounleash (III.iii.32; Sullivan 1996, 139-40). Harry then clearly exhibits theMachiavellian wisdom that savage and immediate punishment is necessary,but that responsibility must be deflected elsewhere.



By persistently deflecting responsibility for his harsh deci-sions, Harry protects the purity of his reputation, particularly in the eyes of hisown people. This is no easy task, however, for as Machiavelli teaches, “a prince,and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things by which men areconsidered good, for in order to maintain that state he is often obliged to actagainst his promise, against charity, against humanity, and against religion”(Machiavelli 1979, 135). This is not, however, a license for unrestrained evil.Machiavelli holds that “as long as possible, he should not stray from the good,but he should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.” Still, inthe eyes of his own people,“he should appear, upon seeing and hearing him, tobe all mercy, all faithfulness, all integrity, all kindness, all religion. And there isnothing more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality [i.e., religion].”It is for these reasons that virtu, especially for a new prince, is, in part, an art ofdeception—a skill in which Harry excels. He is perceived, in the Chorus’swords, as “the mirror of all Christian kings” (II.o.16). Indeed, no king inShakespeare defers publicly to God half as often as Harry does.

It will come as no surprise that in the actual prosecution ofthe war, Harry follows Machiavelli’s maxims carefully. In virtually every impor-tant respect, then, Harry’s strategy and conduct faithfully reflect Machiavelli’sadvice. While this consistent coherence does not prove anything (it might, ofcourse, be purely coincidental), its systematicity provides some grounds forthinking first that Shakespeare was familiar with Machiavelli’s writing, or atleast the key points of his actual texts, and second that Shakespeare deliberatelypresents Harry as an embodiment of Machiavellian virtu. Two brief furtherpoints, one textual and one thematic, help to consolidate these suggestions.

The first point concerns two textual elements whose role inthe play has long baffled critics: (1) the continual pedantic arguments amongthe officers, and Captain Fluellen in particular, about “the true disciplines ofwar,” that is, “the Roman wars,” and (2) the fascination with comparing Harrywith the great military leaders of antiquity which continues throughout thecampaign (for example, III.ii.72, 58, 81, 96-97, 129, 140).

Fluellen is persistently frustrated that Harry’s army is not ableto attain “the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans” (III.ii.81-82).Encamped noisily on the eve of Agincourt, for example, he characteristicallyremonstrates,“if you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompeythe Great, you shall find, I warrant you, no tiddle taddle nor pibble babble inPompey’s camp”(IV.i.68-71). During the battle, he pauses, inexplicably, to offeran extended discursive comparison of Harry to Alexander the Great. First, he

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spends about thirty lines establishing that both Harry and Alexander wereborn in towns through which a river ran. He then elaborates a second point ofcomparison:

Fluellen: If you mark Alexander’s life well, Harry of Monmouth’slife is come after it indifferent well, for there is figures inall things. Alexander, God knows, and you know, in hisrages and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers andhis moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations,and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in hisales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Clytus.

Gower: Our King is not like him in that; he never kill’d any of hisfriends.

Fluellen: It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out ofmy mouth, ere it is made and finished. I speak but in fig-ures and comparisons of it: as Alexander kill’d his friendClytus, being in his ales and his cups; so also HarryMonmouth, being in his right wits, turn’d away the fatknight with the great belly doublet. He was full of jests,and gipes and knaveries, and mocks—I have forgot hisname.

Gower: Sir John Falstaff. (IV.vii.31-51)

Fluellen’s untimely meditations are clearly calculated to provide some comicrelief and to remind us again of Harry’s betrayal of Falstaff, but the questionremains, why does the reminder take this odd pedantic form?

The answer, I suggest, is that these passages ridiculeMachiavelli’s distinctive method of learning princely virtue by studying andimitating the great leaders of antiquity. In The Prince Machiavelli tells us that“the prince must read histories and in them study the deeds of great men; hemust see how they conducted themselves in wars; he must examine the reasonsfor their victories and for their defeats in order to avoid the latter and to imitatethe former, and above all else he must do as some distinguished man beforehim has done” (Machiavelli 1979, 126). This is of course Machiavelli’s ownmethod and it is his knowledge and skill in this domain (including allusions to both Pompey and Alexander) that he believes gives special value to his work (78). A deliberate reference to Machiavelli then provides a plausibleexplanation of these many odd passages in the play, and in particular of theintroduction of the new character of Fluellen in Henry V. This reductio ad absurdum of Machiavelli’s method would also support the more general critique outlined in the next section. Such a reference, however, argues notmere familiarity with Machiavelli’s main ideas and method, but also with the



specific texture of his writing.

The second point further reinforces the plays’ concern withMachiavellian politics, not so much at the level of method, but in terms of anastute understanding of Machiavelli’s themes. If, as I have suggested,Shakespeare deliberately presents Harry as an exemplary Machiavellian prince,then a strong case can be made that Shakespeare understands Machiavelli’swork more acutely than other Elizabethan dramatists (or indeed Machiavelli’sprominent critics of the time). Anthony Parel, for example, forcefully shows that Elizabethan dramatists like Marlowe and Jonson, following the dominant scholarship, treat Machiavelli as a coldly amoral teacher ofself-aggrandizement through any means necessary—as exemplified, forinstance, in the “Machiavelli” who is prologue to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta orJonson’s Sir Politic Would-be. These figures, however, reflect meanly truncatedreadings of Machiavelli (Parel 1972, 22).

In fact, as seen above, Machiavelli insists that princes shouldnever divert from “the good” except “when necessity commands.” He does notdeny (amorally) that what necessity may sometimes require is, in fact, evil.Indeed, he roundly condemns those who enter into such evil unnecessarily:“It cannot be called skill to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, bewithout faith, without pity, and without religion; by these methods one mayindeed gain power, but not glory” (Machiavelli 1979, 104).

The critical question for Machiavelli, then, is what kinds of ends or necessities do justify cruel or evil methods. As he puts it, “I believethat this depends on whether cruelty be well or badly used. Well used are thosecruelties that are…converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects” (Machivelli 1979, 106). Thus, for example, Machiavelli forgivesRomulus’ murder of his brother Remus because it was necessary for the foundation and stability of Rome, and its eventual emergence as the greatestRepublic that humanity has ever known. In short, the prince should strive to begood, but when public needs demand, his high office obligates him to commitevil for the good of his people.

Harry is Machiavellian not only in his political strategies, butalso in the deeper sense that the evils he does serve pressing public purposes.After all, his great projects of conquering France, politically unifying England,and securing his own Lancastrian line on the throne are all seemingly in theEnglish public interest. Indeed, the brutal insurrections and repressions thatcharacterized his father’s reign, and the savage civil wars of his son’s, show how

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necessary Harry’s project of legitimation and unification is for England. Inshort, Harry’s Machiavellian policy serves patriotic ends. As Herschel Baker hasacutely observed, “We see Harry at his best, in fact, when he fulfils his patrioticfunction,” for example as General, inspiring the indomitable English againsttheir traditional French enemy: “On, on, you [noblest] English,/Whose bloodis fet from fathers of war-proof!” (III.i.17-18; Baker 1974, 933). He is probablymost memorable facing the “fearful odds” at Agincourt:

For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile…And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here;And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. (IV.iii.56-67)

In so forcefully depicting Harry as a realistic patriot, capable of powerfulmanipulation (and even evil) in pursuit of public ends, Shakespeare repre-sents Machiavelli’s ideal of political virtu more compellingly than anyplaywright (or critic) of the period. This achievement argues not only afamiliarity, but indeed a deep understanding of Machiavelli’s most famoustext. The question I want to turn to now is what Shakespeare shows us aboutthis Machiavellian political virtu.

III. SHAKESPEARE’S CRITIQUE OF MACHIAVELLI:HOW HARRY IS EATEN BY THE CROWN

In this final section I want to draw attention to howShakespeare portrays the human effect of Machiavellian political virtu, partic-ularly on Harry’s character. In Act IV, Scene V of II Henry IV, Harry describeshimself symbolically remonstrating his father’s crown for what it has done tothe old man: “The care of thee depending/Hath fed upon the body of myfather;/Therefore thou best of gold are [worst of] gold./... thou... Hast eat thybearer up” (158-64). Here Harry is not only perceptive about his father’s fate,but anticipates his own. He will be consumed by his crown, and with his deathhis project will collapse.

In essence, the Henriad is dominated by two intertwined stories. The first is the story of Harry’s process of maturation into a great King who unifies a factionalized England in a glorious war of conquest. In this project, Harry is, as the poet W.B. Yeats observed, “as remorseless andundistinguished as some natural force” (Yeats 1907, 63). It is not just the relent-less force of Harry’s performance that attracts attention, but the degree to



which he himself, his personality, is subsumed (and therefore “undistin-guished”) within it.

Yeats adds the following remark which points to the secondand countervailing element of the play: “the finest thing in his play is the wayhis old companions fall out of it brokenhearted or on their way to the gallows.”In contrast with the spectacle of kingly greatness, Shakespeare quietly but persistently points to the terrible cost of Harry’s kind of political virtu—mostobviously for his former friends, but also implicitly for his people, and for hisown inner life. Shakespeare allows us fewer glimpses into Harry’s inner life asthe cycle proceeds, but what we do see (and can infer) reveals a man with aheart that is as “fracted and corroborate” as Falstaff ’s on his deathbed.

The relationship between these two aspects of Harry’s character can be more precisely described in the language of medieval and renaissance political theology which Shakespeare often employs—specifically,the two bodies of the King. As E. H. Kantorowicz memorably observed,the king at the time was held not only to have the same individual or “natural”body as other persons, but also a second “body politic” or sometimes “sacra-mental” or “ceremonial” body, encompassing the entire nation (Kantorowicz1957, 1-24). A king, in short, is both a unique individual person, and at thesame time all of his countrymen rolled into one. What Harry means when hecharges his father’s crown with consuming him is that his ceremonial body as King, symbolized by the crown, has overtaxed his individual, natural body, and left it a spent husk. At the end, as Frye summarizes, Henry IV is “perpetually exhausted and he can’t sleep” (Frye 1986, 80). His body is a frailand wasted wreck.

Harry’s hope for avoiding his father’s fate is two-fold. First,having merely succeeded to an usurper’s crown, his own legitimacy may be easier to maintain than his father’s. Second, he hopes to succeed in the projectthat his father could never quite get off the ground (distracted as he was byrebellions)—a major foreign war that will unify the nation and legitimate hisdynasty. To this task he bends all of his extraordinary political virtu, carefullyfollowing Machiavelli’s dictums. In the end, however, his hopes are forlorn, anddespite all his political virtuosity, and even his remarkable military victory, wewatch the same process of the gradual exhaustion of individual persona set in,although more subtly than in his father’s case. Finally, in the Epilogue ofHenry V we hear that Harry soon collapses and, as Shakespeare’s stage “oft showed,” his kingdom loses France, degenerates into civil war, and bleeds.His son will be the last and most disastrous Lancastrian King.

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How then does Shakespeare subtly show Harry’s consump-tion by the crown? In assessing Harry’s inner life, we must rely on inference, foras we progress through the Henry plays, he becomes increasingly reluctant tospeak directly to the audience. In I Henry IV, Harry immediately makes theaudience co-conspirators by informing them confidentially of his plans, andlater of his various practical jokes on Falstaff. In Henry V, however, Harry givesonly one soliloquy, on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. In fact, as Harry ages,he becomes, in Harold Bloom’s words, increasingly “veiled,” so that by Henry V,“Shakespeare does not let us locate Harry/Henry V’s true self” (H. Bloom 1998,323). Indeed, it may be that Harry’s “true self” is gradually ceasing to be thereat all, progressively subsumed, as Matthew Wikander suggests, by his public,ceremonial function (Wikander 1993, 298-99).

The first and probably the most important blow to Harry’spersonal identity is struck before Henry V opens, although it resonates throughthe play—the rejection of Falstaff, a betrayal of which Shakespeare continuallyreminds the audience. The tavern sub-plot, for example, is concerned throughthe end of the second act with Falstaff ’s off-stage death, culminating in theHostess’s affecting report of his last minutes (II.iii.9-26). The King’s responsibil-ity is continually emphasized. It is also significant that this report is directlypreceded by the scene revealing Harry’s own betrayal by his close confidant,Lord Scroop, and portraying Harry’s towering rage at this infidelity (II.ii). Onecannot help but suspect that Harry’s long, impassioned denunciation of Scroopas a “cruel/ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature” is prompted in part by hisown troubled conscience (94-95). Shakespeare never allows Harry or the audi-ence to entirely forget, even in the flights of patriotic rhetoric, that Harry’s planhas from the beginning been premised on the murderous betrayal of his friends,and indeed of the man he was before he became king. It is from the twin pointof royal accession and betrayal that he becomes, like his father,“inscrutable”andisolated (Frye 1986, 63-64). Although admired by his lords, for example, none isvery close to Harry, and certainly none know his plans or the worries of hisinner mind. As he tells the loyal Erpingham before his soliloquy, “I and mybosom must debate a while/And then I would no other company” (IV.i.31-32).

No doubt, some of Harry’s reticence to share his thoughts ismotivated by the volatile knowledge that is at the center of his plans: the warwith France is an unjust one motivated by his need to promote unity and toestablish the legitimacy of his dynasty. His one policy then, while patriotic, isalso deeply sinful. The responsibility he bears for the unjust war is expressed tohim in rather terrifying terms when he walks in disguise among his troops on


the eve of Agincourt, trying to boost morale. A soldier, Michael Williams,observes,

But if the cause [of war] be not good, the King himself hath a heavyreckoning to make, when all those legs, and arms, and heads,chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all,“We died at such a place”—some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some uponthe debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left…. Now, ifthese men do no die well, it will be a black matter for the King thatled them to it.… (IV.i.134-45)

Harry, of course, disagrees, but he does not for a momentchallenge the premise of the unjustness of the war. He tries, rather feebly, todeny his responsibility for the deaths of his soldiers even if the cause be wrong.He suggests that Williams’ argument is tantamount to charging a father withwickedness if a son he sends on a merchant voyage “sinfully miscarries” at sea(148). However, the argument is obviously flawed since in Harry’s father/soncase the sinful error is imputed to the son, whereas in Williams’ king/soldiercase it is the King who initiated an unjust war and caused the soldier’s death.Indeed, according to Harry’s own logic, if the voyage itself is sinful, thenresponsibility should rest with the father/king (Lane 1994, 61-67). Moreover,Harry seems to recognize the weakness of this argument for he quickly shifts toan alternate line, calling war “[God’s] beadle … his vengeance” wherein “menare punished for before-breech of the King’s laws…” (IV.i.169-71). In short,war is the means by which God executes men at least some of whom are guiltyof former, unprosecuted crimes. Evidently, this is even less convincing than thefirst argument. Whatever rationalizations he gives his soldiers, then, the warand its corpses and cripples remain a black matter for his conscience, and heknows it, but it is a guilt he cannot so much as acknowledge. Under the protec-tion of his disguise, however, he is at least able, when asked if he thinks the Kingis afraid, to articulate something of his delicate position. He tells his soldiers,“I think the King is but a man, as I am…. all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man….Therefore when he sees reason of fear, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of thesame relish as ours are; yet in reason, no man should possess him with anyappearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army”(IV.i.101-12). He can neither be told of the true desperation of their situation,nor can he show the natural fear that should accompany it (nor the heavy guilthe bears). His responsibilities require deceptions, which leave his “true self”wholly isolated, with terrible burdens to carry.


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Where we get the clearest glimpse into the King’s inner life isin his one soliloquy in Henry V, on the eve of Agincourt, the only time we seeHarry alone in the play. Hopelessly outnumbered, his army exhausted and sick,he finally takes a moment to escape from his continual performance of the roleof king. So what then does Harry tell us in this single moment of intimacy? Hespeaks passionately and at length about the draining weight of his ceremonialrole virtuously performed, and he reveals that he is suffering from his father’sfatal illness—he cannot sleep:

Upon the King! let us our lives, our souls,Our debts, our careful wives,Our children, and our sins lay on the King!We must bear all. O hard condition,Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breathOf every fool whose sense no more can feelBut his own wringing! What infinite heart’s easeMust kings neglect, that private men enjoy!And what have kings, that privates have not too,Save ceremony, save general ceremony?And what art thou, thou idle Ceremony?...[he condemns the emptiness of ceremony for some twenty lines]No, thou proud dream,That play’st so subtilly with a king’s repose.I am a king that find thee; and I know…[he dismisses the symbols of his ceremonial office for six lines]No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,Not all these, laid in bed majestical,Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave;[he longingly praises the restorative power of sleep for sixteenlines] (IV.i.230-84)

This glimpse into Harry’s soul confirms what the remainder of the play suggests—that Harry is under enormous physical and emotional strain precipitated bythe relentless demands of his project of self-legitimation. He is exhausted, but hecannot sleep. He feels his life being reduced to empty ceremony. He yearns forthe “heart’s ease” he knew briefly in the common life at Eastcheap. Yet, at bot-tom, he knows that he himself is responsible for (or complicit in) the choicesthat have demolished the quality of his life, as he goes on to indicate.

After a brief interruption by Erpingham, he continues, now inthe form of a prayer.

O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts,Possess them not with fear! ….



Not to-day, O Lord,O, not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown!I Richard’s body have interred new,And on it have bestowed more contrite tears,Than from it issued forced drops of blood.Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold upToward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have builtTwo chauntries, where the sad and solemn priestsSing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do;Though all that I can do is nothing worth,Since that my penitence comes after all,Imploring pardon. (IV.i.289-305)

His prayer ends in despair. Harry’s mind is drawn inevitably back to the unsettled crime which underlies his whole regime, and which has given rise tohis whole long history of deception and personal betrayals—Richard II’susurpation and murder. This is the first and only time that he speaks of thecrime. At first, he appeals weakly to the care he has shown Richard’s remains,but hired mourners can hardly expiate the crime, and he knows it. He is tryingto buy forgiveness without real penitence, which would entail at very least public recognition of the crime, if not renunciation of his ill-gotten position.Otherwise, he is just “imploring pardon,” not repenting. His prayers are,therefore,“nothing worth.”

Of course, were he simply to acknowledge his father’s crime hemight very well set off the same cycle of rebellions that plagued his father’s reignand will make England bleed during his son’s. Insofar as he adopts the duties ofregency, Harry could plausibly argue that he has a patriotic duty not toacknowledge the crime and endanger the kingdom to ease his own conscience.This duty goes with the ceremonial role of king. That is certainly Machiavelli’sline. The Machiavellian rationale of patriotic ends does not, however, relieveHarry’s spirit. It may wash the crime and all that follows it out of the ceremonialbody, but it cannot lift it from the natural man; it cannot give him “heart’s ease.”

Harry admits this dilemma to himself and then continues to prosecute his war, leading his tiny, bedraggled army against the vast Frenchhost. He wins a miraculous victory, but framed by his soliloquy and the Epilogue’s report of the ultimate failure of his project of establishing the Lancastrian line, it rapidly becomes clear that the victory does not freeHarry— quite the opposite.


The final Act of the play illustrates the complete consumptionof Harry’s personal identity by his regal function. The central action of the Actis Harry’s courting of the French Princess Katherine. The action reveals thateven Harry’s “love” and marriage are mere instruments of grand strategy, for-mal ceremonials, without real feeling or intimacy. Of course, Katherine hasalready been won by right of conquest, as Harry reminds everyone in atten-dance:“Yet leave our cousin Katherine here with us:/She is our capital demand,compris’d/Within the fore-rank of our articles” (ii.95-97). As soon as they arealone (except for Katherine’s maid, Alice), Harry peremptorily declares hislove, and asks for hers in return. Language, however, emerges as a barrier, forKatherine speaks no English, and her maid little more. Harry is immediatelydriven to impatience. He reminds her pointedly that he is the conqueror of France, so that in marrying him she would become its queen (andEngland’s)—and at any rate, that she has little choice. Their union is a politicalnecessity. He tries again:

Henry: But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much English?Canst thou love me?

Kath.: I cannot tell.Henry: Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask them.

Come, I know thou lovest me… (192-97)

Finally, the lady relents. If it will “please” her father, it will“also content [her]” (247, 250). There is no love offered here and none given.Harry’s long loneliness of command then is rewarded by a wife who cannotlove, nor even understand him. The one thing which, if genuine, might actuallyrender his tormented isolation bearable is precisely what is denied to him, andtransformed into that which he most hates, “idle ceremony,” and a ratherbrusque one at that.

The play then ends with a final pregnant juxtaposition. Harryceremonially recognizes Kate as his queen and prays that their marriage andrealms “prosp’rous be” (374). He is immediately followed by the Chorus whoreminds us that they will most emphatically not be. Harry lived but “smalltime,” and his infant son, crowned Henry VI, “lost France, and made hisEngland bleed” (Epilogue 5, 12). Shakespeare does not explicitly connect thedots for us, but he lays them out neatly enough, and even more clearly for hishistorical audience, who knew well that Harry collapsed and died on cam-paign, “prematurely aged,” mere months after his victory at Agincourt, stilltrying to pacify France (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005). In short, Harry, like


his Machiavellian father, drove himself to exhaustion and death in pursuit oflegitimacy, consumed by the demands of his crown. It is no coincidence, fromthe perspective of Shakespeare’s critique, that Machiavelli’s own quintessen-tially virtuous prince, Cesare Borgia, is similarly struck down young by anuntimely illness (unfortunately, just at the moment his father, Pope AlexanderIV, also succumbed to exhaustion and illness), and his political project collapsed (Machiavelli 1979, 100-103). In fact, few of Machiavelli’s heroes,including Alexander, live to enjoy their triumphs. For Machiavelli, these are fickle turns of fortune. Shakespeare, however, suggests a more prosaicexplanation, the limits of what human beings can bear.

So, through Harry’s life and performance, Shakespeare provides a critique of Machiavelli’s political thought. He is not satisfied, likemost critics of the day, condemning Machiavelli’s immorality. Instead, he illustrates historically that the demands of sustained political virtu—the ontinuous deception and manipulation, the subordination of friendship andlove to the burdens of state, the inability to recognize and redress the crimes ofthe past, the insatiable demands of a statecraft of war for self-legitimation—arein the end too much even for the ideal Machiavellian prince to sustain. No mancan live without a life of his own. Machiavellian virtu consumes life, andreduces it to idle ceremony. Shakespeare illustrates, in short, that Machiavelli’sprince is a psychological impossibility.

In illustrating the limits of human nature, Shakespeare drawsattention to a major internal tension in Machiavelli’s writing. Machiavelliinsists that human nature is fickle, short-sighted and self-serving, and thenproceeds to make enormous demands of a prince, especially a new prince (andespecially in a corrupt society): he must monopolize power, isolate himself,continuously deceive his subjects, commit sins and betrayals as necessary, andotherwise sacrifice himself to the long-term public good (Machiavelli 1979,127, 134, 200, 223, 277). Yet the prince is no less human than his subjects. Howthen can such virtu be a reasonable expectation? Moreover, even if a prince ofideal virtu somehow appears, how could he follow Machiavelli’s advice withouttwisting his own nature and imposing terrible hardships on his own people(such as wars of conquest)? Shakespeare suggests that such a course is likely tobe self-destructive. Finally, even if a prince were to accomplish all thatMachiavelli demands, would all his success not depend on the wildly unlikelycontingency of an equally fortunate succession? And otherwise, would legiti-macy not soon collapse after the virtuous prince did? For all these reasons,Shakespeare seems to suggest, legitimacy cannot be manufactured by princely

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virtu alone, but must arise, if it is to prove durable, in some way consistent with the traditional moral foundations of a society. Read this way, Henry Vreinforces rather than disrupts the main crime-punishment-expiation themeof the historical cycle.

In the centuries since the composition of Henry V, the firstquestion posed in the last paragraph has become a mainstay of Machiavellicriticism (for example, Anglo 1969, 202-9; Parel 1972, 45-57, 59-67, 84-85).The second question, and especially its psychological aspect on whichShakespeare particularly focuses, has also gained credibility. The modernscience of psychology, for example, today stresses the damage to egointegrity produced by repression and continual performance of adoptedsocial roles (see Murray 1996, 103-45). Individuals need refuge simply to bethemselves among others. They require recognition from, and genuineexchange with, others. These basic human needs stand as an important justification of contemporary liberal-constitutional politics which carve outa protected space for the private individual and his/her relationshipsthrough the provision of guaranteed civil rights and the limitation of gov-ernmental authority. If, however, Shakespeare was setting the foundations ofthis argument over four hundred years ago in the course of showing thatMachiavelli, the famed political realist, was not realistic enough, it becomesdifficult to deny him a rightful place in the history of political thought. Onthe other hand, it becomes very easy to make the case that the political ideasdeveloped in his plays warrant more rigorous and sustained attention.

RE F E R E N C E S

(References to Shakespeare’s plays are drawn from the Riverside Shakespeare.Boston: The Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.)

Alexander, Catherine, ed. 2004. Shakespeare and Politics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Anglo, Sydney. 1969. Machiavelli: A Dissection. London: Victor Gollancz.

Alvis, John, ed. 2000. Shakespeare as a Political Thinker. Washington:Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Asquith, Claire. 2005. Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics ofWilliam Shakespeare. New York: PublicAffairs.



Baker, Herschel. 1974. ‘Henry V.’ In The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: TheHoughton Mifflin Company.

Blanpied, John W. 1983. Time and the Artist in Shakespeare’s English Histories.Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.

Bloom, Allan, ed. 1996. Shakespeare’s Politics. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Bloom, Harold. 1998. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York:Riverhead Books.

Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. 1962. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare,Volume 4. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Craig, Harold. 2001. Of Philosophers and Kings. Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2005.http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon35.html.

Frederick II of Prussia. 1981. Anti-Machiavel. Edited and translated by PaulSonnino. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Freud, Sigmund. 1957. The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 20.Edited by J. Strachey. London: Hogarth.

Frye, Northrop. 1986. The Bolingbroke Plays. In Northrop Frye onShakespeare, edited by Robert Sadler. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whitehead.

Gentillet, Innocent. 1968. Anti-Machiavel (originally Contre-Machiavel).Edited by C. Edward Rathe. Geneva: Librairie Droz.

Grady, Hugh. 2002. Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Montaigne. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Holinshed, Raphael. 1976. Chronicles: England, Scotland and Ireland, Volume3. New York: AMS Press.

Kantorowicz, E.H. 1957. The Two Bodies of the King. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Joughin, John, ed. 1997. Shakespeare and National Culture. Manchester:Manchester University Press.

Lane, Robert. 1994. ‘When Blood is their Argument’: Class, Character andHistorymaking in Shakespeare’s and Branagh’s Henry V. ELH Volume 61,Number 1.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1979. The Prince and Discourses on Livy. In The PortableMachiavelli, edited and translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa.New York: Viking Penguin.

Murray, Peter. 1996. Shakespeare’s Imagined Persons. Lanham, MD: Rowmanand Littlefield.

Parel, Anthony. 1972. The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli’sPhilosophy. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press.

Pocock, J. G. A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thoughtand the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.

Raab, Felix. 1964. The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation1500-1700. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Shaw, Catherine. 1985. The Tragic Sub-Structure of the Henry IV Plays.Shakespeare Survey 38.

Spiekerman, Tim. 2001. Shakespeare’s Political Realism. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.

Sullivan, Vickie. 1996. Princes to Act: Henry V as the Machiavellian Prince ofAppearance. In Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, edited by Joseph Alulisand Vickie Sullivan. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Walch, G. 1988. ‘Henry V’ as Working-House of Ideology. ShakespeareSurvey 40.

Wikander, Matthew H. 1993. The Protean Prince Hal. Comparative Drama,Volume 26, Number 4.

Yeats, William Butler. 1907. Ideas of Good and Evil. London: A.H. Bullen.


4 5The Unbloody Sacrifice: The Catholic Theology of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

The Unbloody Sacrifice: The Catholic Theology ofShakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

D E N N I S T E T I

[email protected]


“The bread that I will give, is my flesh which I will give for the life ofthe world…. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink hisblood, ye have no life in you.” (Jn. 6:51, 53 KJV—The King JamesVersion is used throughout this article unless noted otherwise)

The sharp differences between the theology of Catholicism and the reformed theology of the Anglican Church of Shakespeare’s day provide the only adequatebasis for a proper interpretation of “Merchant of Venice.” Without a thoroughgrounding in the theological conflicts that gave rise to the English religious persecutions of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and without an appreciation of the threat to Shakespeare and his works posed by governmentpersecution, the reader cannot grasp the purpose and meaning of Shakespeare’sesoteric writing in this play. This article’s intention is to provide the beginning fora deeper understanding of “Merchant.” It may offer new light on Shakespeare’sintention throughout his works.

TH E RE L I G I O U S PRO B L E M O F SH A K E S P E A R E

IN T E R P R E TAT I O N

Shakespeare’s dramas notoriously resist simple exposition,although most have occasioned thoughtful interpretations, especially fromcommentators influenced by the interpretive method of Leo Strauss who haveread the texts with care. Strauss was famous above all for his teaching or reviv-ing an “esoteric” approach to the study of works written by the great minds inpolitical philosophy. That method begins with the commonsense propositionthat in order to interpret a work accurately, readers must understand thewriter as he understood himself. Of course what seems to be a commonsenserule of exposition turns out to require painstaking care and rigorous effort toavoid imposing one’s own preconceived categories on the text in question.


Textual interpretation is complicated, Strauss taught, by theproblem of persecution. Since the times and countries where writing is free ofthe threat of criminal or social persecution are rare, thoughtful authors havefound it necessary to disguise their teachings when they violate legal or othernorms: the works of the great minds which often question or reject conven-tions of time and place are written esoterically and must be interpreted thatway. The art of esoteric writing means that the surface reading of a text,though always essential, may hide a deeper or complete teaching which canonly be discovered with attentiveness and effort.

Moreover the interpreter must pay careful attention not justto the words but to the actions, particularly when the work in question is a dialogue or stage play. The meaning of texts written to be performed cannotbe clarified if the interpretation disregards the specific culture with its verbaland nonverbal symbols as they would be understood by the author’s audience.For example, in Merchant of Venice, Antonio’s ships take their meaning from the fact that the Catholic Church was depicted in the art and literature ofShakespeare’s time as a ship—from Peter’s fishing boat—which in turnreminds the audience of the papal office and its claims to primacy. This is certainly not to say that faith and reason are culturally limited. Rather, theforms of thought, especially of staged works, are often expressed through cultural symbols familiar to the hearers and must be so recognized.

Although commentators familiar with the Straussianmethodology of study usually take account of the persecution problem as theyinterpret the texts of political philosophers ancient and modern, I am notaware of any Straussian interpretation of Shakespeare’s work that has seri-ously attempted to do this. This is most remarkable since his plays are sodifficult to penetrate. Straussian as well as non-Straussian interpreters usuallyignore the brutal religious persecution of Catholicism carried out by QueenElizabeth and her establishment, following Edward VI before her, and origi-nating under Henry VIII. Henry’s Catholic daughter, Queen Mary, hadattempted to reverse her father’s Protestant Reformation by instituting herown repressive policy against non-Catholics. England had undergone morethan sixty years of such repression by the time Shakespeare began to write hisplays, and the country was destined to suffer religious violence and civil warfor decades after he died.

Moreover the slightest familiarity with Shakespeare’s writingsshows them steeped in Christian language, symbols, images, rituals, and scrip-tural references. Religious and political institutions are often entangled and in

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conflict, especially in the history plays. Straussian interpreters have chartedthese conflicts, but they assume that Shakespeare must have “transcended” thereligious partisans. This is untrue to Strauss’ analytical method on two counts.

First, for Strauss, serious political philosophers do not writefrom a point of view that stands outside the regime, as if they had no place ascitizens; they write in some sense as partisans in their regime. This of coursedoes not mean that an Elizabethan writer must necessarily have written as aReformer, Catholic, Puritan, etc. rather than as an atheist, agnostic, or believerin some other religious tradition. It does mean, however, that Shakespearecould have adhered to one or another of these religious faiths and incorporatedit in the purpose of his writings, and that this possibility must be examinedseriously within the economy of the plays.

Second, to assume that Shakespeare could not have been afirm adherent to one of the denominations in conflict is simply to disregardthe impact of persecution and to distort his full teaching. For example, in athoughtful reading of King John, Howard B. White promises to show thatShakespeare belonged to the “politiques”—those who “thought the religiousquestion less important than the mere survival of Europe, who understoodand did not cavil at Henry IV’s famous statement, ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’”(1964, 151). The politiques were committed most of all to religious tolerationand civil peace rather than to any Catholic or Protestant theological doctrines.Yet White never considers the possibility that Shakespeare wrote from an esoteric but Catholic or Protestant viewpoint that might be brought to light inthis or other plays. Simply because Shakespeare opposed meddlesome papalpolitics and defended England’s political independence from the pretensionsof Catholic France by no means demonstrates that he could not have preferred and taught Catholic theological truths in this play. The works of Shakespeare must be seen in light of the threat of persecution before concluding that no theological truth could command his highest loyalty.

Shakespeare lived his whole life under the ReformedProtestant establishment while Catholicism was harshly suppressed. Nowexcept for Henry VIII, all of his plays take place before the Reformation, eitherbefore the rise of Christianity or during the time of Catholic Christendom.Tempest is the only play that has no historically identifiable time. While HenryVIII addresses the beginning of the English Reform, it notices only the institu-tional or ecclesiastical conflict. Historically the theological dispute betweenProtestants and Catholics did not begin before the reign of Edward VI as thereformers altered dogmatic teachings and liturgical practices that the Roman

The Unbloody Sacrifice: The Catholic Theology of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

Church considered fundamental. In other words no Shakespearean workoccurs within his lifetime: that is, he avoided explicit treatment of the theo-logical conflicts that had plunged his country into bloody persecution. We are,to say no more, unwarranted in assuming that his silence evidences his non-commitment.

A growing body of scholarship makes a case for Shakespearebeing raised in a Catholic household, educated in Catholic schools, and/orcommitted to “the old faith.” The evidence is impressive though controversial.Scholars who have addressed the question of Shakespeare’s supposedCatholicism have also taken note of terms or isolated symbols scatteredthrough the plays which they suppose is evidence of his religious preference.But they look at his work as an expression of his biography. (For examples, seeDe Groot 1968; Milward 1975.) Shakespeare’s significance for us, however,depends not on his personal history but on the intention of his works. No onehas yet attempted to trace systematically a Catholic theme or distinctiveCatholic teaching through a whole play (but see Addendum).

This article offers an interpretation of Merchant of Venice,viewed in the light of Act III, Scene 2, which concludes that Shakespeare’s pur-pose is to defend the central theological truth of Catholic faith—the Eucharistas the real flesh and blood of Christ—against the Protestant Reformers’entirely different doctrine. This truth of the Eucharistic Sacrament is so sig-nificant for the Catholic Church that, as the current Catechism expresses it:

[T]he Eucharist makes the Church… Through it Christ unitesthem to all the faithful in one body—the Church… Ecclesial com-munities derived from the Reformation and separated from theCatholic Church, “have not preserved the proper reality of theEucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absenceof the sacrament of Holy Orders” (CCC, 352-53)

To defend the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is thereforeto defend the Catholic Church per se. Moreover, Holy Orders, the sacramentby which the Catholic Church ordains its priests, is closely intertwined withthe Eucharist. The Anglican communion also ordains its clergy under a ritecalled “holy orders” but denies that the rite is sacramental (39 Articles ofReligion, 1553, Art. XXV). Consequently the “Lord’s Supper” celebrated byAnglican clergy, though described by them as a sacrament, cannot have thesame sacramental nature as the Catholic Eucharist. If the Eucharist is the cen-tral concern of Merchant of Venice, the status of the priesthood must be atissue as well.


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The interpretation given in this article to the scene ofBassanio’s choice of the “casket” containing Portia’s image depends on twopresupposition: first, the reader must be familiar with the liturgical form ofthe traditional Catholic Mass, and second, the reader must be alive to thegrave threat to Catholicism posed by Elizabeth’s policy of eradication. Withthis understanding of Scene 2 of Act III as the most important in the play, Ihave interpreted the trial and other scenes and developed a “typology” ofcharacters which I believe are reasonable conjectures in light of the drama’sEucharistic center.

If this interpretation of Merchant is fruitful, the whole bodyof his work should be reconsidered. Judged by the intention of The Merchantof Venice, Shakespeare undertook his poetic and literary project at least in partto defend and preserve the truths of Catholicism.

Analysis of this kind presents peculiar difficulties. Apartfrom the obvious problem of understanding Shakespearean terminology as itgrows more distant, interpreters must know the compelling doctrinal andliturgical issues between Catholics and Reformers in the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries. This becomes more problematic because changes inboth faiths in the intervening centuries have softened and obscured the starkdifferences of the Elizabethan age.

There are easily available contemporary sources that shedlight on these issues. The Anglican beliefs of Shakespeare’s day, which suppliedthe basis for persecution of non-Anglicans, were described in the 39 Articles ofReligion, adopted in 1553, and in the Book of Common Prayer of 1559. The lat-ter includes the liturgical form of the “Lord’s Supper,” or Holy Communion,which the Reformers substituted for the Catholic Mass. The Roman Mass wascelebrated in Latin until the 1960s, when the rite was significantly changedand the practice arose of using vernacular languages. Any Catholic missalpublished before the mid-twentieth century can be referred to in order to fol-low the Church’s central liturgical and theological event. (For a careful,accurate, and detailed exposition of the meaning of this liturgy before the1960s reforms, consult Jungmann’s Mass of the Roman Rite. The form used inEngland during the sixteenth century was the Sarum rite, but for purposes of interpreting Merchant, the differences between Sarum andRoman rites are irrelevant.)

Because the Reformation in Europe had raised doubts andmisunderstanding of Catholic theology, the Council of Trent in the 1540s


called for publication of a catechism as a resource for priests in teaching thefaith to their congregations. The result was the Roman Catechism, published in1566 and reprinted for over 400 years. The Catechism was twice translated intoFrench before Shakespeare wrote his plays but not into English until long afterhis death. The original Latin version, however, was always available. TheRoman Catechism contained the most authoritative and elegant expression ofCatholic doctrine until the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church was pub-lished in 1992. It will be necessary to make frequent reference to these sourcesas we examine the play. To analyze the scenes and characters in depth, it willalso be necessary to describe in detail certain elements of Catholic thought oninterpreting the Bible, liturgical practices, and other features of traditionalbelief. These teachings were far better known to faithful Catholic Englishmenof the Elizabethan age than to most of us today. For purposes of this article, Iwill assume that Shakespeare—immersed in the religious and political con-troversies that consumed the politics of his age—was well versed in thedoctrines and practices of both Catholicism and Anglicanism. The profoundsignificance of religious truth for the life and destiny of man, about whichboth denominations agreed, has been obscured to modern man. This is oneconsequence of those persecutions that wracked the politics of Shakespeare’sage. Yet as Martin Yaffe has said in Shylock and the Jewish Question (163-65),Shakespeare never succumbed to the temptation of what later came to becalled “liberalism,” that philosophical movement that began by denying theintelligibility of revealed religion.

The plan of this article is: first to describe in detail the historyof the persecutions; second, to examine the theological issues in conflict so faras they are pertinent to the play. Both the history and the issues must beknown in order to grasp the purpose of this play. The interpretation of Scene2 of Act III follows, and a separate section is devoted to the characters. Therole of Portia’s “Belmont” follows the discussion of characters, and a conclud-ing section completes the article.

EN G L I S H PE R S E C U T I O N O F CAT H O L I C S

King Henry VIII had wrestled control of the church estab-lishment from Rome, broken with the papacy, and substituted the Englishmonarch as head of the church as well as the state. Henry stripped churches oftheir wealth, closed monasteries and convents, and punished clergy and laitywho refused to accept his claim to lead the church, Thomas More being thebest known. The rejection of the primacy of the bishop of Rome implicitlyraises doubts about all of Catholic theological doctrine as summarized in the


Apostles’ Creed (Roman Catechism, 12, 13, 102-4), but Henry strove to avoiddoctrinal changes in the English Church, even punishing Lutherans and otherProtestants for heresy against Anglo-Catholicism.

After Henry’s death, official persecution of Catholics becamemore aggressive. Henry’s 9-year-old son Edward VI began the process ofreforming Catholic dogma and liturgy into Protestantism and persecutingthose who professed traditional church teachings or practiced Catholic wor-ship. The reforming bishop Thomas Cranmer dominated Edward’s religiousestablishment, but the young king died after six years of rule. Henry’s daugh-ter Mary reversed course and restored Roman Catholicism. In her zeal torestore the ancient English faith, “Bloody Mary,” as she was known, institutedsevere persecutions of Reformers. Two hundred seventy-three who would notfollow her religious commands, Cranmer foremost, were burnt at the stakeduring her five-year reign (Hughes 1960, 272).

Mary was followed by her half-sister Elizabeth, who deter-mined to set the Reformation on an irreversible course. Edward’s religiouslaws were revived and furthered, and those who practiced and propagated theold faith were driven into hiding. Jesuit priests who undertook “the mission”from the continent to restore England to Catholicism, were considered trai-tors. In 1581 Edmund Campion became the first Jesuit hanged for rebellionagainst the government. Campion’s case and ordeal were widely publicized.Another Jesuit martyr was the poet Robert Southwell who had beenbefriended by and ministered to Catholics of Shakespeare’s acquaintance andmay have been a distant relation.

The prosecutions forced Southwell to write poetry esoteri-cally. In the preface to “Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears,” he wrote: “In fablesare often figured moral truths, and that covertly uttered to a common good,which without mask would not find so free a passage” (Milward 1975, 54, 56).

In 1595, a year or two before Shakespeare completedMerchant, Father Southwell was hanged, drawn and quartered after three yearsof imprisonment and torture. David Hume has calculated that at least fiftypriests, trained in Europe and secretly returned to England, suffered the samefate between 1584 and 1594, while fifty-five others were banished (1850, 199).

Campion used to travel into England in the guise of a jewelmerchant (Thurston and Attwater 1990, 4:467). Southwell surely read the eye-witness accounts of Campion’s execution. He opened a secret correspondencewith another Jesuit priest, Robert Persons, who had collaborated with


Campion. Writing of Campion’s martyrdom, Southwell cloaked his letter as amerchant’s business communication: “[Campion] has had the start of you inloading his vessel with English wares and has successfully returned to thedesired port. Day by day we are looking forward to something similar of you.”In fact, it was a common and not very secret practice for seminarians andpriests to appear in public as merchants and to correspond in mercantile ter-minology, should spies or government agents intercept their letters. Persons’papers, for example, show that he “was variously addressed in letters fromEngland as ‘Mark Mercante, Florence’, and ‘Mr. Luke, merchant, at Venice’”(Milward 1975, 69, 281).

This covert practice was conceptually derived from the onlymention of the term “merchant” in the Gospels, at Mt. 13:45-46, where Jesustells the parable about a rich merchant who sold everything he had in order tobuy a “pearl of great price.” The pearl symbolizes the kingdom of heaven. Theparable teaches that man should be prepared to give up everything he pos-sesses, including earthly life, in order to gain eternal life. The priest, whosurrenders his whole life to Christ—for Roman Catholics this traditionallyincluded a vow to remain unmarried (CCC, 395)—and who brings Christ toothers, is the paradigmatic “merchant.” The tile of Shakespeare’s play refers tothis common disguise: the play’s central character is a merchant-priest.

In 1549 under Edward VI, Parliament enacted the First Act ofUniformity, allowing throughout the kingdom only the worship service andadministration of sacraments as set out in the Anglican Book of Common Prayerand criminalizing all others. The “Lord’s Supper” was ordered to replace the tra-ditional Catholic Mass. The new statute extended a strong censorship overpublic entertainments, forbidding public criticism of Anglican liturgy:

[I]f any person…shall in any interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or byother open words, declare or speak anything in the derogation,depraving, or despising of the same book or of anything thereincontained or any part thereof…, then every person being thereoflawfully convicted in form abovesaid shall forfeit to the king oursovereign lord, his heirs, and successors, for the first offense £10…(Stephenson and Marcham 1937, 325-26).

This law was strengthened three years later by a Second Actof Uniformity, forcing all English inhabitants to attend services under theapproved Anglican form. The Second Act placed new emphasis on teachingand enforcing the Reformed rite by which Anglican priests were ordained.


In 1559 Elizabeth’s Parliament passed an Act of Supremacyrequiring every person holding either a government office or church ministryto swear an oath in conscience that the Queen was the supreme ruler overboth church and state, and to renounce the authority of any “foreign prince,person, prelate, state or potentate,” meaning particularly the Pope, the bishopof Rome. This act also extended a harsher censorship, prohibiting any “writ-ing, printing, teaching, preaching, express words, deed, or act [that would]affirm, hold, stand with, set forth, maintain, or defend” the authority of thePope or other foreigners. Such criminals, and their “abettors, aiders, procur-ers, and counselors” were to be punished severely, the third offense being“high treason” punishable by death (Stephenson and Marcham 1937, 344-46).

In 1570 the Pope published a bull declaring Elizabeth ausurper and freeing her subjects from allegiance to her. She responded withtwo statutes enacted in 1571.

First, the Treasons Act made it high treason punishable bydeath and forfeiture of estate for anyone, “by writing, printing, preaching,speech, express words, or sayings,” to state that the Queen is a “heretic, schis-matic, tyrant, infidel, or an usurper,” including abettors in the punishment(Stephenson and Marcham 1937, 351-52).

Second, the Act Prohibiting Bulls from Rome similarly crim-inalized as high treason either publishing papal bulls or co-operating withRoman authority in granting “absolution or reconciliation” to anyone onaccount of the papal declaration of 1570. This law also criminalized the simplecustoms of giving, wearing, or using “tokens…crosses, pictures, beads, orsuchlike vain and superstitious things from the bishop or see of Rome”(Stephenson and Marcham 1937, 352-54).

In 1584 Elizabeth’s Parliament enacted a severe law againstJesuits and other Roman Catholic priests compelling them to leave her realmwithin forty days, threatening those who remained or returned with prosecu-tion for treason punishable by death. Those who harbored or succored themwere guilty of felony. As David Hume writes in his History of England: “By thislaw, the exercise of the Catholic religion, which had formerly been prohibitedunder lighter penalties, and which was in many instances connived at, wastotally suppressed” (1850, 199).

The Act against Sectaries of 1593 punished by indefinite jailsentence anyone who refused to attend an approved church or, “by printing,



writing, or express words or speeches,” tried to persuade anyone to “abstainfrom coming to church to hear divine service, or to receive the communionaccording to her majesty’s laws and statutes aforesaid, or to come to or to bepresent at any unlawful assemblies, conventicles, or meetings under color orpretence of any exercise of religion contrary to her majesty’s said laws andstatutes” (Stephenson and Marcham 1937, 354). “Sectaries” were Protestantswho rejected the Anglican communion, but this act could be used as wellagainst Catholics.

Still another law against “Papists” was passed that same year.“Popish recusants” were forbidden to travel beyond five miles of their resi-dence, and they were required to register their names at their local Anglicanparish and with the constable, to be certified with the justice of the peace.They could be expelled from the country if they remained unwilling to attendthe approved church and obey all other religious laws.

Under Elizabeth’s successor, James I, an act was passed mak-ing it a crime for “any person…in any stage play, interlude, show, maygame, orpageant [to] jestingly or profanely speak or use the holy name of God or ofChrist Jesus, or of the Holy Ghost or of the Trinity, which are not to be spokenbut with fear and reverence” (Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, 1606). Thislaw was enacted before Shakespeare’s last plays but eight to ten years afterMerchant of Venice was written.

TH E O LO G I C A L IS S U E S

The core theological issues of Shakespeare’s time and theirpolitical consequences reveal the central meaning of this play. This sectiondescribes doctrines that would have been familiar to sixteenth-centuryCatholics knowledgeable in their faith but are not so well known in our time.

The theological differences between Catholics and Anglicansduring Shakespeare’s lifetime were legion, but the most significant issue con-cerned the nature of the Sacrament called Eucharist (also Sacrifice,Communion, Sacrament of peace and love, Supper, Viaticum) by Catholics(Roman Catechism, 215) and the Lord’s Supper by Anglicans (39 Articles ofReligion, 1553, Art. XXVIII). Catholic teaching holds that the Church isauthorized by Christ to administer seven sacraments the roots of which can all be traced to the Gospels: Baptism, Confirmation, Penance (Confession),Holy Eucharist, Extreme Unction (now called Sacrament of the Sick), HolyOrders, and Matrimony. Sacraments may be described as visible signs ofan invisible grace, instituted for our justification; in other words, they are

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essential means to the believer’s eternal salvation (Roman Catechism, 143). Ofthe seven, Holy Eucharist is so central that it constitutes the heart and peak ofCatholic life. Catholics are required under pain of serious sin to attend Massevery Sunday and other holy days. Eucharist is “consecrated” (confected) atevery Mass, which can be celebrated only by a validly ordained priest. Masscannot take place without the consecration, which occurs at a specifiedmoment in the liturgical order when the presiding priest through determinedand invariable words effects a radical and miraculous change in the substanceof bread and wine. This process, known as “transubstantiation,” causes thesubstance of the consecrated host to become—not symbolically but really,truly, and completely (CCC, 346)—the Real Presence of Christ, although theperceptions of sense, or “accidents,” of the bread and wine remain. As St.Augustine expressed it: “this Sacrament consists of two things,—the visiblespecies of the elements, and the invisible flesh and blood of our Lord JesusChrist Himself. And it is in the same sense that we say that this Sacrament is tobe adored, meaning the body and blood of our Lord” (Roman Catechism,216—my emphasis). The priest and congregation consume the transubstanti-ated host near the conclusion of the liturgy.

The Eucharistic Sacrament is closely linked to another calledPenance or Confession. The communicant may only participate in the sacredbody of Christ provided he is in what is termed a “state of grace,” that is, hemust have no serious unrepented sin on his soul. Before receiving theEucharist, the communicant confesses his serious sins to a priest. According toCatholic teaching, the sacramental form of Confession requires the penitentto express sorrow for sins he has committed. The confessor-priest absolves thepenitent in the Name of God, restoring the sinner to a state of grace permit-ting worthy reception of the Eucharist. Among the great favors of being in astate of grace is greater resistance to the attractions of sin and greater percep-tion or awareness of that which is good or evil. Absolution or forgiveness ofsins through Confession cannot ordinarily be obtained without the mediationof a priest.

Three major theological issues concerning these sacramentswere in dispute between Catholics and Anglicans: First, is the process called“transubstantiation” integral to Christian communion or is it a superstitionthat degrades the sacrament instituted by Christ? Second, must the Sacramentof Communion be effected only by a validly ordained priest? Third, isConfession (or Penance) a sacrament requiring Christians to admit their sinsand obtain Divine forgiveness only through a priest’s intercession?


The significance of these theological matters for the politicalstatus of the English monarch could not be greater. The traditional Catholicteaching about both sacraments flatly contradicts the claim of the head of theEnglish state to command the church. If these sacraments can be adminis-tered only by priests ordained by the successors of the twelve apostles—meaning bishops in union with the See of St. Peter—then the Englishmonarch lacks authority to designate church ministers. In fact, according toCatholic teaching, the Christian king is required like his subjects to confessand to receive the Eucharist from any ordinary Roman priest.

In order to ground the monarch’s claim to the headship ofthe English Church, therefore, the Reformed teaching denied all threeCatholic theological teachings.

First, Article XXVIII of the 39 Articles of Religion, which wereenforced in all churches by law, specified:

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread andWine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ;but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth thenature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many supersti-tions. The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper,only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the meanwhereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper isFaith. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordi-nance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped.

Second: By the 1559 Act of Supremacy (quoted above), allministers of the English Church swore an oath repudiating the spiritualauthority of Catholic bishops and the Pope of Rome and recognizing theecclesiastical powers of the English monarch. Article XXXVI of the 39 Articlesconfirmed that the consecration and ordination of priests must follow the riteset forth in the Book of Common Prayer. Anglican doctrine, in other words,denied that a priest ordained by a Catholic bishop is needed to administer thesacrament of communion.

Third: Article XXV of the 39 Articles denied that Penance andfour other sacraments administered by the Roman Church are sacraments infact:

There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in theGospel, that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord. Thosefive commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation,Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and extreme Unction, are not to be


counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grownpartly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states oflife allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature ofSacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they havenot any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.

The Reformers’ teaching on sacraments suppressed their sig-nificance in two respects: first, it reduced the number from seven to two, andsecond, the definition of a sacrament was subtly changed to delete the refer-ence to “justification,” meaning that sacraments did not provide essentialmeans of salvation. Catholic theology has consistently made the Church theindispensable bridge to eternal salvation, while the Anglican doctrine, inagreement with Protestant Reform generally, removed the ecclesiastical insti-tution and its priesthood from their intermediary role, making personal faithin the Bible sufficient (39 Articles of Religion, Arts. VI, XX, and XXXIV). Thischange in the status of the individual in relation to the church is sometimespraised as crucial to the origin of liberal democracy. We cannot help noticing,however, that this change came about for the purpose of strengthening thepower not of individual Christians but of the monarch who united churchand state in himself.

Moreover, while repentance for sins remained necessary toreceive the Lord’s Supper worthily, the Anglican rite for receivingCommunion as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer called only for personal repentance, abolishing the necessity for private confession to andabsolution from a priest (Book of Common Prayer, 1559, “The order of theministration of the holy Communion”).

The theological-political relationship of the English Churchto the Church of Rome was determined by the manner in which these dis-agreements were resolved. Catholics could find no way in conscience to abidein a Christian faith stripped of sacramental life as they understood it.Anglicans could not on the other hand reconcile their championship of theEnglish monarch as head of the church with the Catholic Church’s teachingson the sacraments, particularly Eucharist and Confession.

Considering that both sides were in agreement that eternitywas at stake in these theological conflicts, the harsh persecutions carried outby Mary for Catholicism, and by Edward, Elizabeth, and James for theReformers stand revealed for their murderous transcendent purpose: not justpunishing those whose conscience could not accept the established faith,but assuming the awful authority to condemn them to eternal hellfire. The



atheistic totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, which supposed that soulshave no eternal existence, hardly aspired to such fiendishness.

This was the awful situation that confronted England’s mostphilosophic poet throughout his life.

AC T III , SC E N E 2 O F TH E ME RC H A N T O F VE N I C E

England in common with most of Europe had a long tradition of liturgical plays stretching back to the Middle Ages. These simpleperformances dramatized religious themes and biblical stories, of whichChrist’s Passion and the Holy Week Triduum were especially popular. Even themost somber, depicting the Crucifixion and Resurrection, came to includecomic moments with no strictly scriptural basis. Some Easter plays, for exam-ple, featured bawdy humor and clownish characters such as spice merchantswho sold ointments bought by the women to embalm Jesus’ entombed body(Hartnoll 1980, 40, 45). The Reformers under Elizabeth suppressed or heavilycensored these dramas.

The Merchant of Venice covertly revived the Easter play,including earthy humor and comic characters. Its actions are marked at sig-nificant points by the Triduum events recounted in the Gospels—HolyThursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter morning—when Christsuffered his passion, death, and resurrection. Triduum events are clearly suggested in Merchant including the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (I.i),the trial of Jesus (IV.i), and the resurrection on Easter morning (V.i). The LastSupper on Holy Thursday forms the referent of the feast Bassanio organizes inhonor of his friend Antonio (II.ii.163-64). For the Catholic Church the LastSupper is a profoundly significant event. Jesus instituted the Sacrament ofHoly Eucharist at the Last Supper when he transformed bread and wine intohis body and blood, instructing the apostles to commemorate him by doinglikewise (Lk. 22:19). Catholics also see this command as the origin of theSacrament of Holy Orders which established the priesthood to administer theEucharist (Roman Catechism, 321). Under the heavy-handed bans on suchplays, Shakespeare utilized his subtlest literary art to escape censorship andpunishment while dramatizing the Gospels’ history.

Merchant’s central subject is the flesh of Jesus Christ. Theword “flesh” appears more times in this play than any other. Catholic doctrineemphasized that Christ is “true man” as well as “true God,” and the Churchhas often combated heresies that denied the one or the other. Among the firsthints of the play’s esoteric meaning are its twenty-scene structure and the fact

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that the number 20 is also mentioned more frequently in Merchant than anyother Shakespearean work. In the literary tradition known to Shakespeare,“20” refers to “man,” not the mere species but his bodily nature—twenty digits (Hopper 2000, ix, 9, 236; see generally White 1964 and 1970).

The scene on which the whole play hinges—as BarbaraTovey and other commentators have recognized—is Scene 2 of Act III inwhich Bassanio correctly chooses the casket, or jewel box, containing Portia’spainted image, thus winning the right to marry her. It is the thesis of this article that this scene covertly represents the central act of the Catholic Mass,the consecration of the Eucharist, preceded by the Sacrament of Confession.

Now although the structure of the Mass includes a series ofsections that might be completed in about twenty minutes, the consecrationand consumption of the Eucharist, strictly speaking, are sufficient for a Massto be validly celebrated. This is important because Catholics are obligated onpain of mortal sin to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days. Under imminentthreat of discovery by government agents or informers, a priest may carry outthe bare consecration and distribution of the Holy Sacrament, which takesonly a few minutes, to completely satisfy the duty.

At the moment of consecration, by the process called “tran-substantiation” the consecrated bread is miraculously changed into the fleshof Christ truly, really, and substantially. To recognize this moment in the play,the interpreter must be familiar with this central act of the liturgy. A Catholiccontemporary of Shakespeare who observed with care might have had littledifficulty in discerning it. Non-Catholics of Shakespeare’s time who wereunfamiliar with the Mass, Catholics who fell away from attending, andCatholics today who know only the modern rite in English rather than the oldRoman rite would be equally unlikely to recognize the covert references.

Let us begin with the one-sentence prayer termed the epicle-sis. Just before the moment of consecration, the priest prays that theconsecration may be efficacious, repeatedly making the sign of the Cross overthe bread and wine on the altar at the highlighted words: “Quam oblationemtu, Deus, in omnibus, quaesumus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, ratio-nabilem, acceptabilem que facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus, et Sanguis fiatdilectissimi Filii tui Domini nostri Jesu Christi” (“Which oblation do thou, OGod, we beseech thee, vouchsafe in all respects to make hallowed, approved[lit. ‘assigned’], ratified, reasonable, and acceptable, that it may become for ourgood, the Body and Blood of thy dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”)



(Hoever 1959, 676-77; Sarum Missal). This prayer, which takes simpler formin the modern rite, was excluded from the Anglican liturgy because theReformers repudiated transubstantiation, which the epiclesis prayer asks of God.

The two moments of the consecration are signaled by a bellrung several times. The priest first speaks the following words: “All of you takeand eat of this: For this is My Body.” He genuflects before the consecratedbread and wine, stands and holds up the host, then genuflects once more.These three motions are repeated, using similar language for the consecratedwine, while he elevates the chalice. With the conclusion of this brief liturgicalaction, the priest consumes the sacred body and precious blood, and then dis-tributes the host only, not the blood, to the congregation. (This restrictiondoes not deprive the laity of full participation since either species containsboth substances—Roman Catechism, 234, 253.)

Here is another major difference between the Catholic andAnglican practices of Shakespeare’s time that will affect the interpretation ofMerchant. While the modern Catholic rite initiated in the 1960s permits theEucharist to be distributed to non-clergy under both kinds, ancient practicewas for the priest to receive the sacrament under both species while the laityreceived only the species of bread. Thus the difference between the Eucharisticpractices of clergy and laity in itself pointed to a distinction between the laitywho can only receive one species and the exalted minister who holds thepower to confect the Divine body and blood. The distinction between clergyand laity also brought to mind that the Eucharist represents the real andbloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, presented again on the altar in anunbloody manner (Roman Catechism, 258-59; CCC, 344). In the Reformedrite of the Lord’s Supper, the presiding clergyman and the congregation bothshare bread and wine (39 Articles of Religion, Art. XXX). Consistent withProtestant reforms generally, offering communion to the faithful in bothkinds narrowed and blurred the distinction between ministers and layChristians. This was another consequence of the Reformers’ denial of thepriestly power to effect the transubstantiated flesh and blood of Christ.

❖ ❖ ❖

The surface plot of Merchant is bizarre and incredible. AChristian merchant named Antonio borrows a large sum of money on behalfof his needy friend Bassanio and almost casually contracts to allow the Jewishusurer, Shylock, with whom his relationship was mutually scornful, to cut outa pound of flesh from his body if he fails to repay the loan on time. Similar

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tales had been told before, but there does not seem to be a single historicalinstance (Shakespeare 1994, xxvii-xxxii). So foolish does this peculiar act ofShakespeare’s merchant appear that interpreters are forced to give explana-tions just as foolish, distorting and sexualizing the nature of the friendship.

Barbara Tovey’s shrewd article comes close to unlocking thesecret of the play, recognizing that the story of the caskets is the key to theentire drama. But because she does not take account of the religious persecu-tions, she misses the real significance of the caskets (1981, 223, 233). FollowingAllan Bloom and others, she asserts that Antonio is in love with Bassanio, he is filled with shame, and other characters are aware of his homosexual affections. In fact this has become the conventional view, as in the 2004 filmversion which takes pains to be as “out of the closet” as possible. Yet Tovey’sargument is unpersuasive. There is not a line spoken by any character that seriously suggests an unnatural dimension to that friendship, howeverintimate it is. Indeed Bassanio’s fiancée, Portia, a woman of great discernment,more than once welcomes Antonio because of his love for her intended husband. There is no mistaking same-sex relationships in Shakespeare’s plays,for example, Achilles’ and Hector’s in Troilus and Cressida, but they neitherexist nor explain Antonio’s behavior in Merchant. Tovey, though, does rightlypoint to Scene 2 of Act III as the most revealing of the play, and to this scenewe now turn.

The scene divides into three sections: first, from Bassanio’sarrival to the point where he enters the room where he will take the test (ii.1-62); second, his choice of the correct casket (63-148); third, a swift seriesof events ending with the discovery that Antonio has lost his fortune and willbe unable to repay the debt (149-325).

The scene opens as Antonio’s friend Bassanio, who has nottold Portia of his love, has arrived at her home in Belmont for the purpose oftaking the test of the caskets which will allow him to claim her as his wife. Wehave heard about many others and witnessed two would-be suitors who triedand failed this test, much to her relief since she is secretly in love with Bassanio.

The test, imposed on Portia by her “holy” and “virtuous”father as he lay dying, offers three caskets, one of gold, one of silver, one oflead. In only one is an image of Portia. She may neither reveal nor hint to thesuitors which casket is the correct one. According to Portia’s servant, presum-ably following her father’s intention, Portia “will no doubt never be chosen byany rightly, but one who you shall rightly love” (I.ii.31-32). Why this must be



the outcome of this “lottery” is not clear. Portia does however tell Bassaniothat she could wish he would not immediately put himself to the test butremain at Belmont awhile, although she grants that she would be tempted to“sin” by showing him how to make his choice. She does say enough for him tosee that she loves him. Whereupon Bassanio bursts out that he wants to takethe test quickly, “for as I am, I live upon the rack” (III.ii.24-39). Portiaresponds: “Upon the rack Bassanio? Then confess what treason there is min-gled with your love.”

The rack was the favored instrument of torture inflicted onCatholics such as Campion and Southwell to compel them to confess theirtreason. Portia’s exchange with Bassanio could not fail to make the audiencethink of the connection between Bassanio’s “love” and “treason.”

Portia’s compulsory requirement that Bassanio “confess,”moreover, points to the Catholic requirement that the Sacrament ofConfession or Penance precede the reception of Eucharist. We are led to see that the “love” Bassanio speaks of here should be understood as his love of Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrament, which is treasonous by the law ofEngland.

Bassanio admits to his “mistrust,” which he calls an “uglytreason,” because it makes him “fear th’enjoying of my love.” He is not capableof “enjoying”—actually possessing or having for his benefit—his “love”because of his “fear.” Now missing Mass (if available) on obligatory daysbecause of intimidation is from a Catholic viewpoint treason to Christ.Catholics who neglected to receive Communion at least once a year (known asEaster duty) were excommunicated (Roman Catechism, 250-51). Portiareplies: “I fear you speak upon the rack where men enforced do speak any thing.” Confessions obtained under torture, as practiced by Elizabeth’sgovernment, cannot be relied upon to reveal the truth. As David Hume drylyremarks on Elizabethan torture, “[Nor is violent persecution], we may safelyaffirm, in spite of the rigid and bigoted maxims of that age…to be the best method of converting them, or of reconciling them to the establishedgovernment and religion” (1850, 199-200).

“Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth,” Bassanio pleads,and Portia responds, “Well then, confess and live.” The Sacrament ofConfession is nothing less than a promise of life—eternal life—since itabsolves the penitent of sins that close to him the gates of heaven. Portia’sresponse “confess and live” summarizes the absolution he seeks, and he replies

with a pun: “‘Confess and love’ had been the very sum of my confession”: henow freely admits his “love,” knowing he is not to be punished but absolved.

Bassanio now adds: “O happy torment, when my torturerdoth teach me answers for deliverance.” In Confession, the same God Whowould punish him for committing serious sins teaches him the way out ofeternal “torment” to eternal “deliverance.” That way leads him to the sacramentof deliverance, the Eucharist. Bassanio immediately concludes: “let me to myfortune and the caskets.”

Some commentators believe that Portia finds means to teachBassanio which casket to choose (Tovey 1981, 217, 219; Shakespeare 1994, 50).Bassanio himself seems to say that he has learned something important, eventhough Portia had clearly pronounced that it would be sinful for her even tothink of doing so. I suggest that their “confession” dialogue accounts for this;he has indeed learned to select the lead casket. His understanding of theEucharist, following the Confession she obliged him to make, is what guideshis choice, as I will explain below.

As Bassanio enters the area where the caskets are displayed,Portia calls for a choir to sing, remarking: “he may win, and what is musicthen? Then music is even as the flourish, when true subjects bow to a new-crowned monarch” (47-50). Choir music of course is usual in the celebrationof Mass. Bassanio by his confession is no longer a false subject but has becomea “true subject” to a “new-crowned monarch,” the King of kings. Portia thensays of herself in Bassanio’s presence, “I stand for sacrifice” (57): the nature ofthe Eucharistic celebration is precisely sacrificial (Roman Catechism, 254-60).

As the second part of this scene begins, a solo voice and choirintone a mysterious dialogue song beginning “Tell me where is Fancy bred.”Tovey and others believe that Portia arranged this song to hint that Bassanioshould choose the lead casket, noting that the first two (or three) lines end inwords rhyming with “lead” (1981, 217). Missing the Eucharistic significanceof the scene, perhaps these interpreters have overlooked the punningShakespeare’s “bred” pointing to the consecration about to follow. As the songends, the solo and choir sing, “Ding, dong, bell. Ding, dong, bell.” Accordingto liturgical norms, twice bells are rung three times in succession to accom-pany the double moment when first the bread and then the wine, transformedinto the sacred body and precious blood, are elevated by the priest (Jungmann1986, 209-10; Hoever 1959, 677, 679). The consecration is the absolute climactic moment of the Roman Mass.


During this second section of the scene, Portia speaks anaside of seven lines, Bassanio having just recited thirty-four lines. FollowingPortia’s interlude, he will speak another thirty-four. His first speech is a medi-tation on the three caskets in which he rejects the “gaudy gold” and then thesilver, “pale and common drudge ‘Tween man and man” (101, 103-4). Thespeech begins: “So may the outward shows be least themselves,—The world isstill deceiv’d with ornament” (73-74). As Tovey has discerned, the problem ofappearance and reality permeates this play, and nowhere more than in thisscene. There can be no more extreme example than the contrast between theappearances or “accidents” of the most common ordinary food, bread, andthe transubstantiated reality contained within it, the Son of God, the Wordwho created all that has come into being. This difference between “accidents”and “substance” in the “mysteries of the Eucharist” is brought out emphati-cally in the Roman Catechism and is worth quoting in extenso:

Pastors…should first of all impress on the minds of the faithful thenecessity of detaching, as much as possible, their mind and under-standing from the dominion of the senses; for if they believe thatthis Sacrament contains only what the senses disclose, they will ofnecessity fall into enormous impiety. Consulting the sight, thetouch, the smell, the taste and finding nothing but the appearancesof bread and wine, they will naturally judge that this Sacramentcontains nothing more than bread and wine. Their minds, there-fore, are as much as possible to be withdrawn from subjection tothe senses and excited to the contemplation of the stupendousmight and power of God.

The Catholic Church firmly believes and professes that in thisSacrament the words of consecration accomplish three wondrousand admirable effects.

The first is that the true body of Christ the Lord, the same that wasborn of the Virgin, and is now seated at the right hand of the Fatherin heaven, is contained in this Sacrament.

The second, however repugnant it may appear to the senses, is thatnone of the substance of the elements remains in the Sacrament.

The third, which may be deduced from the two proceeding,although the words of consecration themselves clearly express it, isthat the accidents which present themselves to the eyes or othersenses exist in a wonderful and ineffable manner without a subject.All the accidents of bread and wine we can see, but they inhere inno substance, and exist independently of any, for the substance ofthe bread and wine is so changed into the body and blood of ourLord that they altogether cease to be the substance of bread andwine. (228-29)


A Catholic instructed by this teaching would be well prepared for the challenge of deciding which casket contains Portia’s livingimage. Bassanio gives three examples of deceptive “ornament”—in law, in religion, and in morality, or virtue and vice. Of the central example, religion,he says;“What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve itwith a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?” (78-80). Whether this ismeant to support or oppose the doctrine of transubstantiation we cannotknow, but he does claim, as the Catechism teaches, that some “errors” are so“gross” as to be “damned.” Bassanio uses two examples in which hair is used todisguise reality: cowards who make themselves appear courageous by wearing“The beards of Hercules, and frowning Mars” (85), and a “supposed fairness”that “works a miracle in nature” by the wearing of golden wigs shorn fromdead skulls, which he calls “The seeming truth which cunning times put on Toentrap the wisest” (100-101).

Bassanio peremptorily rejects the gold and silver caskets andseizes upon the “meagre lead Which rather threaten’st than dost promiseaught, Thy paleness [or “plainness,” according to one commentator:Shakespeare 1994, 82] moves me more than eloquence, And here choose I,—joy be the consequence!” (104-7). It is the lead’s unremarkable appearancethat moves him to that choice. Having confessed his fear of “enjoying” his loveand then abandoned fear, he now prays for that “joy.” At this moment, thepivot of the entire play, the audience witnesses Bassanio holding the casketcontaining Portia’s image and praying for joy, just as the priest at the point ofconsecration elevates the blessed host for the congregation to adore(Jungmann 1986, 206). Let us notice that the elevation of the casket-host is adecisively Catholic liturgical gesture which flagrantly violates the mandatedReformed practice: “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’sordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped” (39 Articles ofReligion, 1553, Art. XXVIII).

Portia’s seven-line aside intervenes at this central point.According to one of the best reference books on the literary use of numerol-ogy, Hopper’s Medieval Number Symbolism, the number 7 indicates theSabbath day of rest, symbolizing the Final Glory of Eternal Rest of the saintsin heaven, or a spiritual and timeless age (2000, 77-78). For example, inDante’s Divine Comedy, Hopper writes: “mortality mingles with immortal-ity…In this very 7 is the image of man, composed, as he is, of the 4 [cardinalvirtues] of the body and the 3 [theological virtues] of the soul. The 4 of theactive, speculative, or temporal life is represented by the 4 cardinal virtues.


The 3 theological virtues preside over the spiritual, or contemplative life”(170-71).

Portia testifies that her “doubtful thoughts,” “rash-embraceddespair,” “shudd’ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy” have now vanished.She expresses supreme love, immoderate joy, a blessing so excessive that she“surfeit[s]” (108-14). This moment which represents the elevation of the fleshof Christ is also an ecstatic moment for faithful worshippers. Accounts ofvisions imparted at the consecration were common: the host shining like thesun or a tiny child appearing in the priests’ hands (Jungmann 1986, 206).

Bassanio opens the box and is astonished to discover Portia’s“counterfeit” within. The theme of his second thirty-four-line speech (114-48)is the lifelike realism and beauty of her portrait. His first comment—“Whatdemi-god Hath come so near creation?”—suggests that the reality of thepainting could not have been humanly produced. He does not know whetherthe portrait’s eyes truly move, or only “seem” in motion. The open lips have“sugar breath,” and the golden hair might “entrap the hearts of men.”Returning to the eyes, he now extols their “power,” wondering that the“painter” having done one did not have his own eyes stolen and unable to por-tray the other.

After all he has said to extol the image’s realism, beauty, andpower, he now adds: “yet look how far The substance of my praise doth wrongthis shadow In underprizing it, so far this shadow Doth limp behind the substance” (126-29, my emphasis). Bassanio’s wonder falls far short of the“substance” of the portrait. The two-fold mention is virtual proof that the realsubject of this scene is change of “substance,” transubstantiation. Bassaniocannot separate Portia’s image from Portia herself, just as the consecratedbread and wine cannot be separated from the Real Presence of Christ whichhas become their substance. The sacred flesh and its confection are called bythe Catholic Church a “mystery,” concealed, hidden, secret, a sacramentaltruth to be worshipped but beyond the ability of words and reason to expressadequately (Roman Catechism, 142), like Bassanio’s words that cannot hope tocatch up to the reality of Portia’s image. Now at the end of his second speech,Bassanio turns to Portia and asks her to verify the truth of his choice. He vir-tually echoes the epiclesis prayer (“benedictam, adscriptam, ratam,rationabilem, acceptabilemque”) and in the identical context: “So…stand I even so, As doubtful whether what I see be true, Until confirmed, sign’d,ratified by you” (146-48).


Consider the detail of the caskets’ concealment. By ancientusage the unconsumed consecrated hosts are reserved in a tabernacle placedin the middle of an altar and locked against the danger of profanation. Canonlaw required a veil or curtain (called a canopeum) to be hung on the taberna-cle which would be removed for access to the blessed host. This veil wasconceptually derived from the curtains that God instructed Moses to hangaround the tabernacle or tent of meeting where He was present among them.The practice of veiling the tabernacle emphasizes the Real Presence of Godwithin. Shakespeare repeatedly notes that the caskets are concealed behind“curtains” that are drawn aside when a suitor takes the test (at II.vii.1, 78 andII.ix.1, 84), consistent with the Catholic practice of veiling the reposedSacrament.

The representation of the Eucharist in the central scene isrecalled dramatically in the play’s final scene. Lorenzo, observing the beauty ofthe heavens at Belmont, remarks to his wife Jessica: “look how the floor ofheaven Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.” The “paten” is a small goldenplate on which the priest places the Eucharistic bread transformed intoChrist’s flesh. Commentators are puzzled by this lone-standing reference,especially since it appears in the context of a series of symbols supposedlyidentified with paganism rather than Christianity. Clearly this is a back-refer-ence to the Eucharist confected in Bassanio’s casket scene: the heavens above“Belmont” are dominated by the Presence of Christ.

The true nature of the lead casket scene is dramatically rein-forced by considering the objection by which Portia undoes Shylock’s demandat the trial for Antonio’s flesh. Believing he has won his case and preparing hisknife for the cut, Shylock is stopped by Portia:

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood,The words expressly are “a pound of flesh”:Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh,But in the cutting it, if thou dost shedOne drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goodsAre (by the laws of Venice) confiscateUnto the state of Venice ….Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh,—Shed thou no blood… (IV.i.302-5, 319-20)

Recall that lay Catholics were forbidden to consume theblood of Christ, the transubstantiated wine contained in the chalice. The


sacrament has traditionally been called the “unbloody sacrifice” because itscelebration does not literally kill the victim. Moreover lay communicantsreceived only the species of the bread-become-flesh, but not the wine-become-blood (although as mentioned, either species is held to contain bothsubstances). This practice was emphasized by the Council of Trent in the1560s in opposition to the Protestant Reformation which denied theEucharistic Real Presence. The Anglicans too, both clergy and lay, received inboth species. Portia’s intervention which prevents Shylock from takingAntonio’s life makes sense only in light of the “unbloody sacrifice” of theCatholic Eucharist. That Shakespeare surreptitiously represents and honorsthe “old Church” doctrine against the Reformed version is convincing evi-dence that his purpose is to defend the theology of the Eucharist.

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Our understanding of the play can be clarified further bycomparing the three casket scenes. The differences are striking, and they indi-cate that Shakespeare rejected Reformed views on the sufficiency of the Biblefor attaining salvation. A large number of suitors come to Belmont to winPortia’s hand by the test of the caskets. We see in turn a Prince of Morocco, aPrince of Arragon, and the Venetian scholar and soldier, Antonio’s friendBassanio (I.ii.108-15). From his first mention by Portia’s servant Nerissa, it isobvious that Portia prefers Bassanio.

The “tawny” Morocco, dressed in white, has a boastful tem-perament. He opens his conversation with Portia by telling her to disregardhis dark “complexion” (II.i.1) and proceeds to brag of his red-bloodednessand brave deeds. Yet he remarks that he would change his “hue” if he couldwin her by doing so (11-12). Portia coolly and ambiguously tells him that hestands no less “fair” to win her than anyone who has tried so far. Beyond thatshe offers him no assistance. Morocco is all show and appearance. He believesthat his success is determined ultimately by “blind fortune” or “chance”(32-38). When the caskets are presented to him, calling on “some god” todirect his judgment, he attempts to interpret the cryptic inscriptions on each.The gold casket bears this sentence: “Who chooseth me, shall gain what manymen desire.” The silver reads: “Who chooseth me, shall get as much as hedeserves.” The lead reads: “Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath.”

Morocco rejects the leaden casket out of hand for two rea-sons: first, men don’t risk all they have for “dross” but for “fair advantages”


(II.vii.18-20). Second, it would be “damnation,” base, and gross to think thatthe “fair” Portia’s “heavenly picture” could be wrapped in a simple waxed clothand entombed in an “obscure grave” of lead (47-51). The image Moroccoinvokes ironically calls to mind the cave-sepulchre in which Jesus’ cloth-wrapped body was reposed after the crucifixion. Similarly, to think she mightbe “immur’d” in silver, which is worth one-tenth of pure gold would also be a“sinful thought” (52-55). Morocco thinks of her as a dead body fit for burial;he does not think of her invisible soul or spirit. Therefore he chooses the goldcasket, only to be greeted with a vision from “hell,” a skull whose empty eyecontains a note that begins, “All that glisters is not gold.” The scroll rebukeshim precisely for his lack of wisdom and judgment, selling his life for externalities (63-71). There are golden tombs that are filled with worms (Jesusdenounces blind Pharisees who resemble beautiful whitewashed tombs filledwith dead men’s bones and filth: Mt. 23:27). As Morocco leaves, Portiaremarks “Let all of his complexion choose me so,” meaning not just his skincolor but his vain temperament (Shakespeare 1994, 61).

The second of the three suitors whose test is depicted is thePrince of Arragon. Unlike Morocco, all we can learn about him is revealedfrom his words as he makes his choice. He too, however, also guides thatchoice by trying to interpret the inscriptions. Whereas Morocco boasted of hiscourage, Arragon is temperate and aristocratic. He rejects the lead casketbecause it is not beautiful enough for him to take the hazard the words mention. But now unlike Morocco, he also rejects the gold casket on the notunreasonable ground that the “many men” its inscription refers to are “thefool multitude that choose by show.” (II.ix.26) They never learn to penetrateto the “interior” but remain on the phenomenal level where “the fond eye dothteach.” Arragon does not “jump with common spirits, And rank me with thebarbarous multitudes.”

This turns him to the middle-ranking silver casket, moreprecious than lead but less than gold. Musing on the inscription that the silverchest earns as much as the chooser deserves, he acknowledges how often thosewho hold “estates, degrees, and offices” have come by them undeservedly, andmany of the lowest social rank deserve places of honor (39-45). Arragon is notfooled by the appearances of the world, but he is ignorant of himself. Saying “Iwill assume desert,” he chooses the silver casket which proves to contain a“blinking idiot.” Arragon is shocked: “How much unlike my hopes and mydeservings! ...Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? Is that my prize? Aremy deserts no better?” he complains (57-60).


He reads the “schedule” within the silver casket, which con-cludes: “Take what wife you will to bed, I will ever be your head” (70-71).Arragon has learned a difficult lesson about himself: “With one fool’s head Icame to woo, But I go away with two” (75-76). Now Arragon and the othersuitors swear an oath before taking the test, one condition of which is never“To woo a maid in way of marriage” if they should fail the test (II.i.41-42 andII.ix.11-12). Commentators wonder why the writing in the silver chest men-tions having a wife. But the statement does not mean he may take a wife indisregard of the oath. It makes a universal statement about the very nature ofmarriage which derives from Catholic teaching on the Sacrament ofMatrimony taken from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 5:23, 32 (DRV): “[T]hehusband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church…This is agreat sacrament [mustêrion]; but I speak in Christ and in the church.” Themarriage relationship resembles that of Christ in his headship of the Church.This means that the husband not only directs his family but is also required tosacrifice himself for his family in the way Christ did, devoting his entire life,including his death if necessary, for the well-being of his wife and children(Roman Catechism, 345-46). Because Arragon did not know himself, herejected the lead casket that represented Christ really present; Arragon chosethe fool’s head rather than Christ to be his own “head.”

There is a monumental difference between Bassanio’s testand the other suitors’. Morocco and Arragon both struggle to interpret theinscriptions on the caskets in order to guide their choice, yet they fail.Bassanio pays virtually no attention to the inscribed words, yet he choosesrightly. The other suitors are led to refer the caskets’ texts directly to them-selves. Bassanio makes no effort to compare himself to the matter of thecaskets or their inscriptions. His rejection of the gold and silver ornamentedchests is based on his having learned that appearances conceal a different real-ity. He acquired this awareness from his confession of love to Portia.Bassanio’s full acknowledgment of his love for the Eucharistic Sacramentemerged from his concealment caused by his “mistrust” and fear of the rack,when “men enforced” are liable to say anything. His first words on approach-ing the caskets—“So may the outward shows be least themselves”—show thathe now sees by the grace or light of truth which he received from the peniten-tial sacrament. This is affirmed by the examples he immediately cites: taintedand corrupt pleas disguised with a gratifying voice in “law,” and damnederrors blessed by a “sober brow” and proved from a scriptural text in “religion.” Unlike the previous suitors, Bassanio quickly and confidently dismisses the chests of gold and silver, finding himself moved by the paleness


or plainness of the "meagre lead.” The contrast is between those who try tounderstand the meaning of “inscriptions” on their own and read it by theirown lights, and those who receive the graces of sacramental life, or betweenMorocco’s and Arragon’s unmediated “reading” and Bassanio’s mediated“hearing” of the Word. This contrast expresses the profound differencebetween the Reformers’ claim to “the sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for salvation” (39 Articles of Religion, Art. VI) and the Catholic doctrine that thesacraments administered by the Church are necessary for salvation (RomanCatechism, 141; CCC, 141). Shakespeare makes the audience aware thatBassanio’s success in finding his “joy” depends not on his reading of the Biblebut on the graces of the sacraments.

CH A R AC T E R S

We turn first to the character of Antonio. The play aboundswith evidence that he is a figure of Jesus Christ—from his unusual “sadness”in the opening scene, like Christ’s in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:36 ff.;Mk. 14:32 ff.; Lk. 22:39 ff.; Jn. 18:1 ff.) to his trial in which he is ready to sur-render his life for his friend (Jn. 14:12-15). In the play’s final conciliatoryscene, Antonio, liberated from the death that threatened at his trial, makes asudden appearance some two hours before sunrise (V.i.295, 303)—about thetime when Jesus arose from death on Easter morning (Jn. 20:1).

Introducing Antonio to Portia, Bassanio says “This is theman,” (V.i.134), repeating Pilate’s words on presenting Jesus: “Ecce homo” (Jn.19:5). The name “Antonio” is said to mean “priceless,” as in the Gospel’s ‘pearlof great price’ to buy which the merchant sold all he owned, further indicatingthe full significance of the “merchant” in the title. The Roman Church honorsChrist with the name of High Priest, from whom all Catholic priests are saidto derive their powers and dignity (Roman Catechism, 321-22, 330).

The Catholic Church long since adopted the requirement ofcelibacy for priests, in imitation of Christ’s celibacy. The Anglican commun-ion by contrast, consistent with its purpose of reducing the differencesbetween laity and ministry, dispensed with the clerical vow of celibacy andpermitted its priests “as for all other Christian men” to marry (39 Articles ofReligion, 1553, Art. XXXII). Thus the Christ figure Antonio reacts sharply(“Fie, fie!” I.i.47) to his friend Solanio’s playful charge that Antonio is in love,since Christ Himself and His priests lived celibate lives. Tovey’s suggestion ofa rivalry between Antonio and Portia for Bassanio’s love is as unconvincing as her conjecture of the two men’s homosexual attraction. Portia remarks


favorably of Antonio from the moment she hears of him and his extraordi-nary sacrifice for Bassanio: she offers to pay Shylock twelve times the principalon which Antonio has defaulted “Before a friend of this description Shall losea hair through Bassanio’s fault” (III.ii.300-301). He is a “true friend” toBassanio (307). Lorenzo speaking of Antonio tells Portia: “[I]f you knew towhom you show this honor, How true a gentleman you send relief, How deara lover of my lord your husband…” (III.iv.5-7). She responds:“in companionsThat do converse and waste the time together, Whose souls do bear an egallyoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of man-ners, and of spirit; Which makes me think that this Antonio Being the bosomlover of my lord, Must needs be like my lord” (11-18).

Later, after the trial, Bassanio introduces Antonio to Portia:“This is Antonio, To whom I am so infinitely bound,” to which she answers:“You should in all sense be much bound to him, For (as I hear) he was muchbound for you,” adding “Sir, you are very welcome to our house: It mustappear in other ways than words, Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy”(V.i.134-37, 139-41). Even after Antonio admits that he is responsible forBassanio’s giving away Portia’s ring, Portia does not resent him; rather shewelcomes Antonio again to her home (273).

Christ’s love (agapê) for mankind is unconditional andunlimited. Antonio’s acts of love for Bassanio from beginning to end do notindicate a perverse attraction (erôs) but represent Jesus’ willing sacrifice of Hislife to redeem mankind from the debt of sin. As Paul expresses this in 2 Cor.5:21: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we mightbe made the righteousness of God in him.” Nor is there any need to supposethat Antonio is buying Bassanio’s love or spoiling him by his lavish generosity.Bassanio stands in the situation of all human beings. From a Catholic view-point, God ceaselessly pours down the gifts of life, grace, and even materialabundance on men, culminating in the supreme gift of Himself for man’sredemption. Of none of these gifts is Bassanio or any other human being wor-thy, above all the gift of eternal happiness, since sin entered the world throughour first parents. Whatever may be said about the differences between classicaland Christian standards of friendship (Tovey 1981, 227), in Antonio’s con-stant gift-giving to Bassanio and his almost eager willingness to sacrifice hisown life for him, Shakespeare provides a favorable presentation of Christ’slove for man which is comprehensive and which imparts meaning and dignityto all human relationships.


We can now understand the conclusion of Portia’s elaboratepretense that Bassanio has given her marriage ring to another. As she finallydiscloses that she herself has the ring Bassanio had given away, she hands itnot to Bassanio but to Antonio. He is to give it in turn to Bassanio, for Antoniois the “surety” or guarantor of conjugal faithfulness. Her first giving of her ringdirectly to Bassanio formed only a “natural contract” of marriage, accordingto Catholic doctrine (Roman Catechism, 342). Though divinely instituted,their original marriage was not perfected. It is not surprising that this imper-fect marriage is soon engulfed in charges and denials of adultery. Marriage isperfected only by being sacramentalized, which takes place when ChristHimself is its guarantor: Antonio thus becomes the intermediary in the givingof the marriage ring (V.i.247-57). Shakespeare could not have expressly saidso much, but the episode of the rings symbolically teaches the audience to rec-ognize marriage as a sacrament. But this teaching indicates Shakespeare’srejection of the Reformed doctrine that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are theonly two sacraments, in favor of the Catholic position on seven sacraments,including Matrimony (Roman Catechism, 338-55; 39 Articles of Religion, 1553,Art. XXV).

In the trial scene (IV.i) Shylock presses for justice under the“law” requiring the fulfillment of his contracted terms with Antonio, thusallowing him to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body, which will certainlykill him. Bloom, Tovey, and other interpreters observe that Antonio makes little effort to defend himself or use all the legal means at his command, andthey accuse him of seeking “martyrdom,” a supremely selfish way of dominat-ing Bassanio’s affections forever (Bloom 1964, 27; Tovey 1981, 227). ButAntonio’s seeming passivity closely resembles Jesus’ in the court of PontiusPilate (Jn. 18 and 19). He barely responded to Pilate’s questioning even know-ing that Pilate, like the Duke in the play, hoped for some reason or excuse torelease him. Jesus described himself as bearing witness (marturêsô) to thetruth (Jn. 18:37). Pilate too wondered why Jesus did not make the effort todefend himself (Jn. 19:10). When Shylock demands that the Duke enforce thelaw, he makes almost the same political threat (“If you deny it, let the dangerlight Upon your charter and your city’s freedom!” IV.i.38-39) that the crowdmake against the vacillating Pilate (“[T]he Jews cried out, saying, If thou letthis man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a kingspeaketh against Caesar”). Just as they preferred that Pilate release the notori-ous criminal Barabbas rather than Jesus (Jn. 18:39-40), Shylock sneers at“Christian husbands,” saying of his daughter, who had eloped with the


Christian Lawrence, “Would any of the stock of Barrabas Had been her hus-band, rather than a Christian” (291-93). The Duke sees no legal way to refuseShylock’s demand for Antonio’s flesh. Like Pilate, he needs a deus ex machina.Pilate desperately but unsuccessfully sent Jesus to Herod who officially out-ranked Pilate. The Duke calls upon “a learned doctor” named Bellario foradvice, which comes with complete success in the person of a disguised Portia.Bellario’s letter describes this masquerading character as “a young doctor ofRome, his name is Balthazar” (152-53). The outcomes of the two trials, ofJesus and Antonio, seem entirely different: Jesus is condemned and crucifiedwhile the Christ-like Antonio is saved from execution by Portia. Why?

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To supply the answer, we turn to the character of Portia.Following a reference in the text (at I.i.165-66), commentators compare her tothe wealthy and intelligent wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato. She isthought by some to be pagan, not Christian. Portia’s name according to stan-dard references means “gift,”“offering,” or possibly “keeper of the gate.” If myanalysis of the casket scene is correct, Portia symbolizes the Catholic Church,which is characterized in the terms translating her name (Roman Catechism,116-17; 256-59; Mt. 16:19). Portia is honored by other characters in termsusually reserved for religion: Bassanio ”swore a secret pilgrimage to her”(I.i.120); Gratiano promises to behave like a monk or priest in her presence atBelmont (II.ii.180-88); to Lorenzo she has “a noble and a true conceit Of god-like amity” (III.iv.2-3); Jessica says that Bassanio has “such a blessing in hislady, He finds the joys of heaven here on earth, And if on earth he do not meritit, In reason he should never come to heaven” (III.v.69-72).

From a Catholic standpoint this makes perfect sense. WhenJesus instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, He utteredthe following words to the gathered apostles: “This is my body which is givenfor you: this do in remembrance of me” (Lk. 22:19). Since his apostles were thefirst priests of the Church, through the Eucharistic acts of the clergy over centuries, the Church has kept alive the flesh of Christ in continual commem-oration of His self-sacrifice at Mass. If Christ saves mankind by the one-timesacrifice of His life (Heb. 10:14), the Church, in obedience to His command tocommemorate Him, has also saved Christ from being forgotten. Without theReal Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a fading memory would be all thatremained. The efficacy of the Roman Church in preserving the living heart of Christianity is pointed by Shakespeare’s making Portia save theChrist-like Antonio at his trial. For similar reasons, the living image of Portia


rather than Antonio is reserved in the lead casket. As Bassanio enters thechamber to make his choice, Portia remarks “I stand for sacrifice” and “Livethou, I live” (III.ii.57, 61): the Catholic Church preserves the life of Christ.Accordingly Antonio honors her this way near the end of the play:“Sweet lady,you have given me life and living” (V.i.286).

Rome was certainly not the place an Englishman ofElizabeth’s establishment would have looked to for succor, especially after theAct Prohibiting Bulls from Rome and other anti-Catholic laws. The AnglicanReformers feared and detested Rome. Yet Antonio’s champion enters the trialscene as a “doctor from Rome” whose “body” is young but whose “head”contains old wisdom. This doctor knows the law well, as the trial will demon-strate. Over the centuries the Catholic Church had created a great body ofcanon law with far reaching consequences for both the Church and the socialand political order. A “doctor” of course is a healer as well as a teacher.

The “doctor,” Portia in disguise, appears as a man named“Balthazar.” According to popular tradition (not from the Bible), a Balthasarwas one of the “wise men” of the East who followed the star to Bethlehem,were the first pagans to recognize and worship the infant Jesus, and gave himthe first Christmas gifts. Balthasar and the others learned that King Herodmeant to harm the child and accordingly, despite his request, did not return toinform him of Jesus’ location (Mt. 2:12). Although the name would have resonated in that way for Shakespeare’s audience, in the play the name certainly if not exclusively refers to the prophet Daniel of the Old Testament(Dan. 5:12). His wisdom was proverbial even among the heathen (Eze. 28:3).Daniel’s fame for good judgment and knowledge of the law were so wide-spread that when “Balthazar” makes Shylock’s case for him, the latter exultsthat the “doctor” is “a Daniel come to judgment: yea a Daniel!” (IV.i.219).Later when “Balthazar” deftly turns the law against Shylock, it is Antonio’sfriend Gratiano who proclaims him as “a second Daniel” (IV.i.329, 336).

Portia in the guise of a Roman doctor brings to mind theChurch in more than her knowledge of law. The repeated references to theBook of Daniel also recall the best-known of the stories of Daniel, his beingcast into the lion’s den. Christian preaching and literature conventionallyreferred to Daniel as the type of the Church in times of persecution. The bib-lical story teaches constancy and witness in the face of cruel persecutionrather than apostasy or desertion (Knight 1971, 437). Catholics struggling toremain within their faith could not be unaware of these implications on see-ing Portia as “Balthazar-Daniel” in the trial scene.


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Let us briefly consider a character who is referred to butnever appears on stage, an Englishman named “Falconbridge,” one of the suit-ors Portia speaks of in Act I, Scene 2. At Portia’s request, her servant Nerissamentions seven suitors in turn, the central being the “young baron”Falconbridge, who happens to be the only Englishman on the list. Now thereis a character of the identical name in Shakespeare’s King John, written con-temporaneously with Merchant of Venice. All but created by Shakespeare, thelatter Falconbridge was the bastard son of England’s heroic King Richard(White 1964, 150). He appears as a courageous patriot who tries to protect theEngland he loves from political subjection to France as well as the RomanPope. Falconbridge speaks these famous last words of the play: “nought shallmake us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.” Falconbridge personifies oldEngland. Merchant’s audience would compare Portia’s suitor with the loyalbastard of King John.

Portia has nothing but scorn for her suitor Falconbridge:

…he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French,nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that I havea poor pennyworth in the English: he is a proper man’s picture, but,alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited!I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, hisbonnet in Germany and his behaviour every where. (I.ii.67-73)

This current version of England “is a proper man’s picture”:he looks physically like old pre-Reformed England, but he cannot speak“Latin,” the church tongue in the time of King John. He is a “dumb-show,”reduced to silence, a motley collection of outward appearances and inconsis-tent habits. His Italian “doublet” suggests the mere shell or imitation ofCatholicism in the external religious forms of contemporary England, hisFrench socks the Calvinism of the Puritans, his German hat—the “head” prin-ciple—suggesting the Lutheranism from which England’s Reformedestablishment was mainly drawn. Portia spurns the England represented bythis characterless “Falconbridge.” He is false to the England of old which hispatriot namesake called to be true to itself.

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Turning to Bassanio, the suitor Portia loves who will win herhand, we see his character as ardent, impulsive, headstrong, at times forgetful,and even fearful. There is no question of his strong attachment to Antonio,


strengthened by Antonio’s abundant generosities to him; yet he shows noreluctance to woo Portia, indeed to risk everything to win her hand.

Bassanio as Shakespeare presents him resembles the chiefapostle of Christ, Peter, with his virtues and weaknesses. Consider severalcomparative examples.

Peter is impulsive to the point of rashness. In the Garden ofGethsemane, he wildly swings a sword to prevent Jesus from being taken bythe guards and crowd that came out against him (Jn. 18:10; Mt. 26:51; Mk.14:47; Lk. 22:50). Peter boasts that he is ready to lay down his life for Jesus,even if all the other apostles fall away (Jn. 14:37; Lk. 22:33. Mt. 26:33-35; Mk.14:29). Similarly the spirited Bassanio encourages Antonio at the beginning ofhis trial, boasting that “The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all, Erethou shalt lose for me one drop of blood” (IV.i.112-13).

Bassanio repeatedly protests his love for Antonio. During thetrial he tells Antonio: “life itself, my wife, and all the world, Are not with meesteem’d above thy life. I would lose all, ay sacrifice them all Here to this devil,to deliver you” (IV.i.280-83). Later in Belmont, Bassanio introduces Antonioto Portia, as “the man…To whom I am so infinitely bound” (V.i.134-35)

The depth of Bassanio’s love for Antonio is perfectly intelligi-ble in the light of Peter’s profound friendship for Jesus, especially as it emergesin the last chapter of the Gospel of John (21:15-17). Walking along the shoreafter having prepared a breakfast meal for the apostles, Jesus asks him:

Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest [agapas] thou me morethan these? He saith unto him, Yes, Lord, thou knowest that I love[philô] thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to himagain the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest [agapas] thoume? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love [philô]thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him thethird time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest [phileis] thou me? Peter wasgrieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest [phileis]thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things;thou knowest that I love [philô] thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed mysheep.

Jesus’ threefold question which so aggrieved Peter was notasked for personal or selfish reasons. About to depart this world, Jesusimpresses on Peter his duty to “feed my sheep.” The Catholic interpretation ofthis command – given to Peter alone – is to make him understand his pontifi-cal mission. As Christ in His earthly life was the Good Shepherd who


ministered to the needs of His sheep who believe in Him, so Peter, the Vicar ofChrist, must continue that ministry (Roman Catechism, 333). At Jn. 10:16Jesus says: “there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” Catholics understandthis verse to mean that Christians must be united in one Church under thevisible “shepherd,” the Pope.

I am unable to find a specific meaning for the name“Bassanio” apart from its apparent root in the Latin basis in the sense of“foundation,”“pedestal.” For Catholics the declaration by Christ of the found-ing of the Church under the primacy of Peter is given in Mt. 16:18: “thou artPeter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall notprevail against it.” Jesus in fact renames Simon “Peter” to refer to “rock”(petra). In Jn. 1:42 Jesus declares: “Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shaltbe called Cephas [Kêphas] , which is by interpretation, A stone.” Translationsother than the King James Version say “Cephas, which is interpreted Peter,”getting the name more precisely but missing the intended pun.

The office entrusted to Peter of feeding the sheep includesmany tasks and gifts, but first among them is certainly the spreading and teaching of the truth about Christ. Two New Testament epistles are tradi-tionally ascribed to Peter in his teaching office.

Antonio rejects Bassanio’s impulsive offer to die as his sub-stitute in satisfaction of Shylock’s demand for flesh. Instead Antonio tellshim: “You cannot better be employ’d Bassanio, Than to live still and writemine epitaph” (IV.i.117-18) Antonio had taken pains to persuade Bassanioto be present at the trial to witness his bloodshed and death for Bassanio’sdebt (III.ii.314-20). Bassanio resists Antonio’s self-sacrifice just as Peterresisted Christ when he explained his coming passion and death: “Peter tookhim, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shallnot be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me,Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Mt. 16:22-23: this scene immediatelyfollows the donation of papal authority to Peter quoted above). In order to understand the significance of Antonio’s death in sacrifice for the “debts”incurred by man and to carry out his saving mission of teaching men aboutthat sacrifice, Bassanio must be a witness, otherwise his “epitaph” could notbe attested.

This interpretation of Bassanio as a representation of Peter,the first of the popes, is strengthened by his relationship to Portia, representing


the Church. Portia repeatedly submits herself to Bassanio’s headship, evenbefore he makes his choice of the caskets (“One half of me is yours, the otherhalf yours,—Mine own I would say: but if mine then ours, And so all yours”—III.ii.16-18). Responding to his choosing the lead casket and winning her as hiswife, she exclaims: “Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself toyours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king” (163-65).

The analogy or “type” of husband to wife and Christ toChurch, in Catholic doctrine, comes from the letter to the Ephesians, at 5:22-32, partly quoted above. Paul writes:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto theLord. For the husband is the head [kephalê] of the wife, even asChrist is the head [kephalê] of the church: and he is the savior ofthe body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let thewives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himselffor it…. This is a great mystery [DRV: sacrament]: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Peter, as Christ’s Vicar on earth, retains headship over theChurch just as Bassanio has become the head of Portia in marriage.

The quarrel over the ring which takes place in the last sceneof the play might then be understood in context. One of the most importantsymbols of the authority of the Pope is the so-called “ring of the fisherman,”used as the official seal on papal documents. The fisherman’s ring, for example,sealed the bulls by which Popes had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, HenryVIII, and other English monarchs. Depicting Peter casting a net from his boat,the ring is brought into the conclave where a new Pope is to be elected and isgiven to him immediately as the sign of office. The name he has chosen is laterembossed in place. Upon his death his ring is broken up and a new one castfor his successor.

Note that the ring is given to the Pope by the Church, repre-sented by the cardinals in conclave. The fisherman’s ring as well as the ringsworn by bishops are often said to represent “spiritual marriage” to the Church.(At his installation ceremony in April 2005, the new Pope Benedict XVI empha-sized his spiritual marriage by breaking with tradition and wearing his ring onthe ring finger used by married men.) For a Pope to surrender his fisherman’sring to another (such as the monarch of England) would truly and symbolicallycorrupt the Church by abandoning her to whoring after false gods.


Portia gives a ring to Bassanio immediately after he discoversher image in the lead casket. Indeed with the ring she declares that “This house, these servants, and this same myself Are yours,—my lord’s!”(III.ii.170-71), and he promises to keep it till death (183-85). After the disguised Portia has saved Antonio, she asks Bassanio to grant her his ring intribute. He refuses in spite of “Balthazar’s” assertion that “if your wife be not amad-woman, And know how well I have deserv’d this ring, She would nothold out enemy for ever For giving it to me: well, peace be with you!”(IV.i.441-44) Bassanio is clearly conflicted but Antonio persuades him, on thegrounds of the advocate’s deserved merit and Antonio’s love as against the“commandement” of his wife, to give up the ring.

This of course leads to Portia’s and Bassanio’s quarrel. Thehumiliated Bassanio thinks of Jesus’ saying that it is better to cut off your handthan to burn in hell for giving offence (Mt. 5:30; Mk. 9:43) (V.i.177). Hearingthat the ring was given to the “doctor” who defended Antonio, Portia threat-ens to “have that doctor for my bedfellow” (233). Antonio admits that he is thereason for the dispute, but in a way that ensures the fidelity of the marriage:whereas he once loaned his body to secure Bassanio’s wealth, he now bindshimself more completely—“My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord Willnever more break faith advisedly” (249-53). Tovey and Bloom interpret this asPortia’s ultimate victory in her competition with Antonio for Bassanio’s love(Tovey 1981, 232; Bloom 1964, 29). But this could be true only if Bassanio hadrenounced his faith in Christ. Bassanio’s and Portia’s marriage, on both the literal and symbolic spiritual levels, is guaranteed by the Christlike Antonio.

❖ ❖ ❖

Let us turn finally to the character of Shylock.

While the antagonism between him and Antonio drives theaction of the play, it is an exaggeration to make their relationship, as “Jew” and“Christian,” the central subject of Merchant. Shylock has a certain dignity thatwe must respect, exemplified in the famous and moving “I am a Jew” speech(at III.i.47-66). His human nature understandably takes offense at the insultsof Antonio’s Christian friends—Gratiano, for instance, the worst babbler inVenice (I.i.114-18), who tells Shylock to hang himself rather than be baptizedand redeemed (IV.i.360-63, 375, 394-96). We cannot help but notice thatJesus’ apostles too were at times inexcusably overzealous: John and Jameswanted heaven to rain fire on a Samaritan village that did not receive Jesus: Lk.9:54-56; John and others ordered those not recognized as His followers to stop


using Jesus’ Name to drive out devils: Lk. 9:49; the disciples rebuked parentswho brought infants to Jesus to be blessed: Lk. 18:15-16; Mk. 10:13-14;Mt. 19:13-15.

The mutual hostility between the Jew Shylock and theChristian Antonio grates on our modern sensibilities. Antonio’s harshnesstoward Shylock may stand in the way of our seeing in him the figure of Christ.More than a few interpreters have insisted that Antonio, or Shakespeare him-self, must have appealed to English anti-Semitic prejudice, forgetting that Jewshad been expelled from England over three hundred years before and werepractically unknown. At no point in the play does Antonio speak against Jewsin general. In the most intelligent and sensitive treatment of the problem ofShylock, Shylock and the Jewish Question, Martin Yaffe takes pains to refute thecharge that Shakespeare or his play is anti-Semitic (1997, 1-23).

A Catholic reading of the Gospel accounts, as I shall elabo-rate below, reflects the relationship between Antonio and Shylock. Thatrelationship mirrors the actual and growing hostility between Jesus and thePharisees and the ultimate treason of Judas. A deliberate examination of theNew Testament reveals that Jesus and his disciples distinguish between Jewswho are faithful to their heritage as God’s chosen people and those who arenot faithful. Jesus and His apostles were Jews who understood the Messiah asthe fulfillment of promises the Lord repeated to His people over many cen-turies. Jesus in the Gospels never asks faithful Jews to “convert” from Judaismto Christianity. He calls Jews to “follow me,” to become His disciples.

Jews who become Catholic even now do not claim to haveabandoned Judaism. In 1945 the chief rabbi of Rome during World War II,Eugenio Zolli, became a Catholic and was asked whether he still consideredhimself a Jew. He responded, “Did Peter, James, John, Matthew, Paul, andhundreds of Hebrews like themselves cease to be Jews when they followed theMessias, and became Christians? Emphatically no” (Klyber 1953).

Jesus tells those who are not true to their own Jewish heritageto repent of sin and to recognize Him as the promised Messiah. Jesus’ messagein the Gospels is philo-Semitic: be true to Judaism! Thus His antagonismtoward certain Jews arose when those who rejected Him as Messiah—whomHe saw as unfaithful Jews—concluded that He was a man who blasphemed by holding himself up as God. Jewish law prescribed the death penalty for blasphemers.


Yaffe’s careful account (written from a Jewish standpoint) ofShakespeare’s Shylock provides the key insight: he does not keep faith with hisheritage. He is presented in the play as a “bad Jew” (16). Whereas Jewish lawinculcates decency and compassion, Shylock lacks compassion. He claims to follow Jewish dietary restrictions, then flouts them. He loves his wealth somuch that he cannot separate the loss of his money from the loss of his onlydaughter. His reading of his Bible is loose, self-serving, hypocritical or ignorant. He thinks that Jews and Christians only share “not the high moraldemands of the Hebrew Bible but the base animal appetites of the humanbody”: Shylock imitates the vices of Christians such as revenge seeking, butnot their virtues (61-65). In the precise sense of the Gospel story of the self-righteous Pharisee and the humble publican (Lk. 10:10-14), Shylock ispharisaical, self-righteously looking down on Antonio as a “fawning publican”(I.iii.36). As both Lewalski (338-42) and Yaffe (74-77) observe, the disguisedPortia’s “quality of mercy” courtroom speech, appealing to the ideals of theLord’s Prayer, is no more Christian than Jewish in its call to forgiveness.Shakespeare’s Shylock could not recognize the Messiah promised to his peoplebecause he is faithless or hypocritical toward his own Judaism.

Shylock’s seeming or supposed conversion must be under-stood by carefully examining the sequence of events as the trial draws to aconclusion. “Balthazar,” the disguised Portia, has just demonstrated that thelaw effectively stops Shylock from his plan to take Antonio’s flesh, forcing himto abandon his lawsuit (IV.i.341-42). The counsel now asserts that Shylock hasplotted against Antonio’s life and according to the law, the offender loses allhis wealth, one half as a fine to the state, the other half to the intended victim,Antonio. Moreover the government may punish him by death (343-59).Before Shylock can respond, the Duke on behalf of the state pardons him his life but reasserts the forfeit of his property. At this point Shylock bursts out that he will surrender his life since the “means” for him to live have beenconfiscated (370-73): Shylock values his wealth more than his life. It is onlyafter Shylock expresses his willingness to die that Antonio, asked “what mercyyou can render him” (374), proposes for the first time that Shylock “presentlybecome a Christian,” and that he also be allowed to keep half of his wealthduring the rest of his life provided he will it to “his son Lorenzo” and his own daughter Jessica, Lorenzo’s wife, upon his death (376-86). The Dukeintervenes here to reiterate the original penalty if Shylock does not acceptAntonio’s proposal (387-88). As we have seen, however, Shylock had alreadyaccepted the death penalty. Only now does Shylock state he is “content” withthis settlement that includes his conversion.


Thus, on careful examination of the penalty sequence, wecannot claim the apparent conversion has been “forced” if this means Shylockhas been compelled to choose between accepting Christianity or acceptingexecution. Shylock had already chosen death before the offer of “conversion”was made. The decisive choice for him was to become Christian while contin-uing to live on half of his wealth. Nor is he barred from continuing to practicehis business of usury.

We may doubt, however, that Shylock, Judas to Antonio’sChrist, has been converted in any sense. In Matthew’s Gospel Judas is said tohave “repented himself” on seeing Jesus condemned, saying “I have sinned inthat I have betrayed the innocent blood” (27:3-6). Judas then flings down thesilver he had been paid and hangs himself: Judas regrets his betrayal of JesusWhom he sees as innocent but commits suicide in despair. Shylock’s claim tobe “content” with the trial settlement is followed immediately by his claim tobe sick. His distracted agreement to sign the documents sent to him impliesnot necessarily that he will become Christian but that he recognizes that hehas wronged Antonio. In the play’s few remaining hours, we learn nothing ofwhat has become of him. Perhaps we are meant to wonder whether Shylockconsented to Gratiano’s insinuation that he should suffer Judas’ awful fate.

BE L M O N T

Belmont, Portia’s home throughout the play, is given toBassanio in marriage and is the site of the play’s final scene of reconciliationand happiness. Bloom points out that unlike Venice, there is no known placein Italy called “Belmont.” He argues that the happy life at Belmont must “haveno laws, no conventions, no religions—just men and women” basking “in the glow of Eros.” Belmont “is pagan, everyone there speaks in the terms ofclassical antiquity” (24). “Could it be Parnassus?” Bloom asks (30, 34).

Bloom could not have been more mistaken. This scene atBelmont is an exuberant Easter event. The tabernacle and casket containingthe Eucharist had reposed in Belmont. The heavens above Belmont provideeternal reminders of the flesh of Christ resting on patens of gold. Holy candlesburn at night in Portia’s house (V.i.89-92, 220). There are “holy crosses” on theway where Portia “kneels and prays For happy wedlock hours” (30-32).

Act V, Scene 1 opens with a sweet dialogue between Lorenzoand Jessica, alone in a grove in quiet moonlight. They begin a duet of eightsentences each starting with the expression “In such a night…” and then orderthat music be played from the house.


Nothing in the entire Catholic liturgical year surpasses thejoy of Easter Sunday, which begins at midnight when the fire of the lightedEaster candle is brought into the dark church to the pronouncement “lumenChristi!” Among the most exalted moments is the hymn called the PaschalProclamation, which begins with the word “Exsultet.” Liturgical music joyfullyreturns at this moment of the Easter vigil after being forbidden during thesilence from the beginning of the Triduum on Holy Thursday until thismoment.

The Paschal Proclamation’s spirit of freedom and celebra-tion, some of its very words, and the constantly repeated expression “this is thenight…” pervade the last scene of Merchant of Venice. The hymn begins:

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God’s throne! Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! Sound the trumpet of salvation!

At V.i.60-63 Lorenzo says to Jessica, “There’s not the smallestorb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring tothe young-ey’d cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls.” Shortly after,at 121-22 the stage directions call for a “tucket” and Lorenzo says to Portia,“Your husband is at hand, I hear his trumpet.” Bassanio then enters accompa-nied by the Christ-figure of Antonio.

The Proclamation continues:

This is our Passover feast,When Christ, the true Lamb, is slain,Whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night when first you saved our fathers:You freed the people of Israel from their slaveryAnd led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when the pillar of fireDestroyed the darkness of sin!

This is the night when Christians everywhere,Washed clean of sin And freed from all defilement,Are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.


This is the night when Jesus ChristBroke the chains of deathAnd rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us,Had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us!How boundless your merciful love!To ransom a slaveYou gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,Which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Most blessed of all nights, chosen by GodTo see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says:“The night will be as clear as day;it will become my light, my joy.”

Portia on first entering the moonlit scene says: “This nightmethinks is but the daylight sick, It looks a little paler,–’tis a day, Such as theday is when the sun is hid” (123-26).

The power of this holy nightDispels all evil, washes guilt away,Restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy;It casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earthAnd man is reconciled with God!

Portia and Bassanio, about to quarrel over their weddingring, will quickly be reconciled and wedded not just naturally but sacramen-tally, secured by the divine figure Antonio.

Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night,Receive our evening sacrifice of praise,Your Church’s solemn offering.

Accept this Easter candle,A flame divided but undimmed,A pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.


Let it mingle with the lights of heavenAnd continue bravely burningTo dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning:Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,And shed his peaceful light on all mankind,Your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever.Amen. (Socias 1993, 366–68)

As the two women enter, Portia observes: “That light we seeis burning in my hall: How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines agood deed in a naughty world.” Nerissa responds, “When the moon shone wedid not see the candle.” Portia’s reply evokes the Proclamation: “So doth thegreater glory dim the less,—A substitute shines brightly as a king Until a kingbe by, and then his state Empties itself…” (89-96). A few moments later,Antonio appears.

“Belmont” means “beautiful mountain.” Psalm 48:2 says:“Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sidesof the north, the city of the great King.” In Catholic ecclesiology, references toMount Zion and to “the great city of Jerusalem” mystically represent theCatholic Church (Roman Catechism, 106-8). As Lewalski says: “Belmont…figures forth the Heavenly City” (343). Medieval Catholic literature such asDante’s was filled with images and symbols having pagan origins, such as theangelic harmony of the spheres (V.i.60-65) and mentions of ancient gods.Belmont’s sexual openness and joking, in service to marital fidelity, may havemade Reformers and Puritans scowl, but they are no less true to a Catholictheology of the body than the Old Testament’s Song of Songs which, accord-ing to one Catholic-sponsored Bible exposition, “presents a love as free ofpuritanical restraint as it is of licentious excess. Over and above this literalmeaning, it is perfectly permissible to apply the Song to the relationshipbetween Christ and his Church…” (Jerusalem Bible, 1029). Even Chaucer’sbawdy Canterbury Tales, a particularly splendid example of medieval Catholicallegory, centers on the Eucharist, as Dolores Cullen’s interpretive work,Chaucer’s Host: Up-So-Doun, has demonstrated. Finally, as Yaffe and Toveypoint out in various ways, Belmont is home to philosophy, the love of wisdom(Yaffe 1997, 85; Tovey 1981, 234-37). The Catholic teaching on heaven notonly does not conflict with philosophy; the fulfillment of that love of wisdomis the deepest reason for seeking eternal life with God.

At the beginning of the play we learned that Antonio had


sent his “merchandise”-laden ships out over the globe, to places such asTripoli, Mexico, England, Lisbon, Barbary, and India. Discussing Antonio’sventures in the first scene, Antonio’s friend Salerio thinks of his ships aschurches, holy edifices of stone. He imagines one named “my wealthyAndrew,” running aground (I.i.22-36). The ship was named after Andrew, anapostle and brother of Peter. Every ship seemingly has foundered (III.ii.267-70), perhaps including one rumored to have sunk in the English Channel(II.viii.27-32). The apparent failure of his ships leads directly to the threat ofShylock executing his contracted penalty against Antonio. Yet in Belmont,after Antonio’s Easter-like appearance, Portia tells him that at least three shipshave suddenly returned safely and profitably. Portia will say only that the letter bearing this “better news” came to her by some “strange accident” (278).

By ancient tradition the symbol of the Catholic Church is aship, after Peter’s frail fishing vessel. The meaning of Antonio’s ships and theirdestiny is clear. During Jesus’ ministry Peter, Andrew, and the other apostleshad little success in their mission to preach the Kingdom. The apostles them-selves fled and abandoned Him at the crucifixion. Anyone looking at theChurch founded on the rock of Peter at the moment of the Crucifixion wouldhave said it had failed. Only after the Resurrection did the Church begin tosucceed and grow as the Gospel “merchandise” was sent out to nations aroundthe world. This is the “better news” that Portia brings to Antonio at his Easterappearance in Belmont. We do not learn whether any of his vessels success-fully crossed the channel on its mission to England.

CO N C LU S I O N

The esotericism of Christianity’s great poets is an extremelycomplex problem. This article will have achieved its purpose if has shown thatThe Merchant of Venice covertly preserves and affirms the Eucharistic princi-ple at the heart of the Catholic Mass, which Elizabeth’s government wasdetermined to eradicate.

Shakespeare deeply understood and appreciated classicalphilosophy. During the Middle Ages the Church became the home and refugeof philosophy, sheltering and preserving its literary treasures and traditions inmonasteries, universities and libraries against despotic kings and maraudingbarbarians. It was far from clear that the Reformed version of Christianity,founded by a king who sacked those treasures, could accept the heritage oflearning which Shakespeare loved. If Shakespeare did not embrace the truthsof Catholicism, he had no other reason to take such pains to conceal the


liturgical mystery which constitutes the living heart of the Catholic Church.On a literary level Shakespeare himself in Merchant of Venice imitated the “merchant priests” forced to celebrate Mass in secret. Shakespeare’s esotericism constituted the means by which the flesh and blood of Christmight be salvaged during an age of ferocious persecution, against the daywhen England, instructed by his poetry, might recover its ancient faith alongwith its political sanity.

September 2005 A.D.Year of the Eucharist

AD D E N D U M

As the first draft of this article was being completed, ClareAsquith’s ingenious book Shadowplay came to my attention. Asquith has gonebeyond any previous interpreter in recognizing and showing thatShakespeare’s plays rest on an “encoded” or secret pro-Catholic foundation.

Asquith’s book is a remarkable example of the truth ofStrauss’s teaching on how intelligent readers learn to read esoterically. So far asI can tell, Asquith’s account of how she came to discover the encoded nature ofShakespeare’s writing gives no indication that she has ever read or heard ofLeo Strauss or his method of interpretation. More remarkably, her personalexperiences of a Moscow performance of Chekhov which opened her eyes to literary ambiguities and secret literature uncannily resembles Strauss’shypothetical example of esoteric writing in a one-party “totalitarian country”(Strauss 1973, 24-25; Asquith 2005, xiii-xiv).

I believe she has made a number of mistakes in her approach,but these errors are traceable to two problems: first, the enormous scope ofthese works needs more meticulous study and time than she has given them,and second, her unwarranted assumption that Shakespeare was carrying on akind of dialogue with Queen Elizabeth to persuade her to end anti-Catholicpersecution. Asquith does not recognize that Shakespeare, in the context ofthe religious conflict of his time, addressed an enduring issue of political life,termed by Strauss the theological-political problem. His plays and poetry haveperennial and universal significance because they speak to an issue that tran-scends his place and time.

That said, Asquith has discerned so many features ofShakespeare’s covert art and so clearly identified his pro-Catholic intention,that all Shakespeare interpretation in the future must take account of her


brilliant insights. Shadowplay marks a revolution in Shakespeare studies.

This article’s thesis concerning Merchant of Venice is virtually the same as that developed in Shadowplay for the entire Shakespearecorpus. I was especially persuaded by her insight into Merchant’s encoded ref-erences to the Easter Triduum and vigil ceremonies (119) and I have introduced some of her observations, which I gratefully acknowledge, inrevising this article.

RE F E R E N C E S

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Asquith, Clare. 2005. The Catholic Bard. Shakespeare and the “OldReligion.” Commonweal 132:12 (June 17, 2005). http://www.common-wealmagazine.org/article.php?id_article=1297

Asquith, Clare. 2005. Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics ofWilliam Shakespeare. New York: PublicAffairs.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of theoriginal tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared andrevised, by His Majesty’s special command. Authorized King James Version[KJV]. n.d. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

The Holy Bible: Translated from the Latin Vulgate, diligently compared withthe Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages. Douay RheimsVersion. [DRV] 1971. Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers.

The New Jerusalem Bible. 1985. New York: Doubleday.

Bloom, Allan. 1964. On Christian and Jew: The Merchant of Venice. InShakespeare’s Politics, by Allan Bloom, with Harry V. Jaffa. New York andLondon: Basic Books.

Book of Common Prayer (including “The order for administration of theLord’s Supper, or Holy Communion”). 1559.http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1559/BCP_1559.htm

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Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests, Issued by Order of PopePius V. [Roman Catechism]. 1982. Trans. John A. McHugh and Charles J.Callan. Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers.

Cullen, Dolores L. 1998. Chaucer’s Host: Up-So-Doun. Santa Barbara: FithianPress.

De Groot, John Henry. 1968. The Shakespeares and “The Old Faith.”Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press.

Hartnoll, Phyllis. 1980. A Concise History of the Theatre. New York: CharlesScribner’s Sons.

Hoever, Hugo H., ed. 1961. Saint Joseph Daily Missal: The Official Prayers ofthe Catholic Church for the Celebration of Daily Mass. New York:Catholic Book Publishing Co.

Hopper, Vincent Foster. 2000. Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources,Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression. Mineola, NY: DoverPublications, Inc.

Hughes, Philip. 1960. A Popular History of the Reformation. Garden City, NY:Image Books.

Hume, David. 1850. The History of England: From the Invasion of JuliusCaesar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688. Vol. IV. New York:Harper & Brothers.

Jungmann, Joseph A. 1986. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins andDevelopment (Missarum Sollemnia). Vol. II. Trans. Francis A. Brunner.Westminster, MD: Christian Classics.

Klyber, A. B. 1953. Introduction: The Chief Rabbi’s Conversion. In Why IBecame a Catholic (Before the Dawn): Autobiographical Reflections, byEugenio Zolli. Harrison, NY: Roman Catholic Books.

Knight, George A. F. 1971. The Book of Daniel. In The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary On the Bible, edited by Charles M. Laymon.Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Lewalski, Barbara K. 1962. Biblical Allusion and Allegory in The Merchant ofVenice. Shakespeare Quarterly 13:3 (Summer 1962), 327-43.

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The Sarum Missal.http://www.justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Sarum/English.htm.

Shakespeare, William. 1994. The Merchant of Venice. The ArdenShakespeare, Third Series. Ed. John Russell Brown. London and NewYork: Routledge.

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Tovey, Barbara. 1981. The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchantof Venice. In Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis andThomas G. West. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

White, Howard B. 1964. Bastards and Usurpers: Shakespeare’s King John. InAncients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy inHonor of Leo Strauss, edited by Joseph Cropsey. New York and London:Basic Books.

_____. 1968. Peace Among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of FrancisBacon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

_____. 1970. Copp'd Hills Towards Heaven: Shakespeare and the ClassicalPolity. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Yaffe, Martin D. 1997. Shylock and the Jewish Question. Baltimore andLondon: Johns Hopkins University Press.


9 3A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

“Still, we should not fight harshly with one another, but shouldrather make a calm inquiry about the present matters, since we, aswell as they, are very serious about these things.” (Plato, Laws)

I

The European reception of Leo Strauss has been and continues to be a complicated matter, to say the least. To be sure, his work hasbeen welcomed into a number of European countries for a long time, withFrance as a leading example. However, the process of recognizing Strauss as amajor European thinker in his own right and, subsequently, of his thought as a“permanent possession” of the European scholarly tradition is still in an earlyand precarious stage.

Without doubt, a decisive impulse was given by the publication of Strauss’s collected works. The first three volumes that appearedbetween 1996 and 2001 made available a host of early writings, mostly inGerman, which had been inaccessible previously. They revealed a distinctlyEuropean Strauss, searching and finding a proper voice, both political andphilosophical, in the fascinating clamor of the Weimar Republic. As a result, anincreasing number of readers and critics inside as well as outside of Germanybegan to take notice.

Before long, however, this process took an unexpected turn.In the light of geopolitical events, Strauss suddenly found himself more or lessforce-fed to the European public, albeit in a completely different capacity. In


A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments”on Carl Schmitt Revisited

D A V I D J A N S S E N S

TILBURG UNIVERSITY

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almost every European country, the media outdid themselves in exposing himas the godfather of neoconservatism, and to denounce him as ultimatelyresponsible for an aggressive policy of regime change abroad and mass deception at home. Even though this portrayal was misguided, not to say ludicrous, it is likely to have influenced the European perception of Strauss’swork for some time to come.

Most of the accusations leveled were hardly new. Thus, it didnot come as a surprise that much was made again of Strauss’s “Comments” onCarl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (Strauss 1965, 331-51). Reverting tothe stratagem of guilt by association (or reductio ad Hitlerum) already deployedby earlier debunkers (Holmes 1993), many critics held up this text as proof ofStrauss’s hyper-Schmittian, anti-liberal, authoritarian and bellicose intentions.There is no need to respond to these allegations, or to dwell upon the signifi-cance of the “Comments” for the understanding of Schmitt’s thought: othershave already done so with great competence (Berkowitz 1994; Behnegar 1995;Meier 1995; Howse 1998; see also Strauss 1999). Rather, in this paper I want toreverse the perspective, and assess the significance of the “Comments” forStrauss’s thought. As I will venture to show, this penetrating critical essay, whileexposing the difficulties of Schmitt’s defense of the political, also offers thecareful reader a glimpse of the position of its author. Elucidating that position,moreover, throws light on those aspects of Strauss’s thought that may beregarded as characteristic of the European reception.

II

As every reader of Strauss’s famous autobiographical prefaceto Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (Strauss 1965, 1-31) learns, by his own judgment the “Comments” on Schmitt mark an important point in his work.At the end of the preface, Strauss takes a stern and critical look at his own firstbook in a well-known and often-quoted passage:

The present study was based on the premise, sanctioned by power-ful prejudice, that a return to pre-modern philosophy is impossible.The change of orientation which found its expression, not entirelyby accident, in the article published at the end of this volume [i.e.,the “Comments” on Schmitt], compelled me to engage in a numberof studies in the course of which I became ever more attentive to themanner in which heterodox thinkers of earlier ages wrote theirbooks. (Strauss 1965, 31)

This passage more or less encapsulates the second sailing thattook Strauss upon the fascinating voyage generations of readers have had the

9 5

opportunity to become acquainted with. With the rediscovery of the art ofwriting of “heterodox thinkers of earlier times,” he gained access to a self-understanding of pre-modern thought strikingly at odds with the modernunderstanding. At the same time, however, the passage carries a singular andoblique reference to the “Comments” that raises a number of questions. Tobegin with, in what respect can the “Comments” be said to “express” a “changeof orientation,” let alone an “orientation”? And why did Strauss select this occa-sion as a first public demonstration of this change, as he indicates? For thewords “not entirely by accident” suggest that some kind of intentionality is atplay. What was Strauss’s purpose in writing and publishing the “Comments”?In sum, and in Platonic parlance: what, if any, is their logographic necessity?

The first question already poses something of a challenge. Forwhile the “Comments” offer an incisive critique of Schmitt’s position, on a firstreading they appear to disclose little about the author’s own perspective. Oncloser inspection, however, there are some interesting, albeit obscure clues. Themost patent one occurs at the end, when Strauss reaches the critical conclusionthat Schmitt remains too much entangled in the “astoundingly consistent sys-tematics of liberal thought” to be able to provide “a radical critique ofliberalism” (Strauss 1965, 351). Such a critique, Strauss states, requires twothings that are closely related: “gaining a horizon beyond liberalism” by devel-oping “an adequate understanding of Hobbes,” whom he has just identified asthe founder of liberalism (336-38; 351). This is the “urgent task” he sets himselfand which, we may say with the benefit of hindsight, he will carry out with sur-prising results (Strauss 1936).

From Strauss’s conclusion, one might construe him as sayingthat adequately understanding Hobbes is both the necessary and the sufficientcondition for gaining a horizon beyond liberalism. However, when one rereadsthe “Comments” in the light of its end, things prove to be more complex: ade-quately understanding Hobbes requires that one has already begun to recover ahorizon beyond liberalism and thus beyond Hobbes.

This becomes apparent from the way in which Hobbes isintroduced in the “Comments.” In the second of the essay’s three sections,Strauss discusses the manner in which Schmitt undertakes to affirm thepolitical, understood in terms of the distinction between friend and foe, overagainst the liberal project of neutralizing this distinction. To begin with, hepoints out that Schmitt’s affirmation of the political requires “a critique…ofthe prevailing conception of culture” (Strauss 1965, 335). As he goes on toexplain, this conception, which understands culture as “the sovereign creation

A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

of the human mind,” is ultimately based on an understanding of nature as disorder, to be conquered and suppressed by human effort. Subsequently,Strauss singles out the thinker who introduced this understanding of nature on a political level: in accordance with the specifically modern concept ofculture, Hobbes “understood the status civilis…as the opposite of the status naturalis” (336).

In this way, Strauss delicately criticizes Schmitt’s enthusiasticespousal of Hobbes as an ally, by showing that Hobbes is in fact “the anti-political thinker, if we understand ‘political’ in Schmitt’s sense” (Strauss 1965,339 n. 2). However, he does not merely expose the profound differencebetween Hobbes and Schmitt. At the same time, he adumbrates a position thatdiffers from that of both Schmitt and Hobbes. In the paragraph preceding theintroduction of Hobbes—which, incidentally, is the central paragraph ofthe central section of the “Comments”—he contrasts the modern concept ofculture with an earlier and more original concept:

[C]ulture is always cultivation of nature. Originally that means: cul-ture develops the natural disposition; it is careful cultivation ofnature—whether of the soil or of the human mind; in this it obeysthe indications that nature itself gives. (Strauss 1965, 335; emphasisin the original)

In the same paragraph, moreover, he adds an observation that articulates thepolitical consequences of this original understanding:

[S]ince we understand by “culture” above all the culture of humannature … and since man is by nature an animal sociale, the humannature underlying culture is the natural living together of men….The term for the natural living together thus understood is statusnaturalis. (Strauss 1965, 336; emphasis in the original)

Oddly enough, when Strauss goes on to introduce Hobbes, hemerely hints at the fact that, on this latter point as well, the modern position isradically opposed to the ancient: insofar as Hobbes “characterizes the status nat-uralis as the status belli simply” (Strauss 1965, 336), he espouses a differentunderstanding of the status naturalis that denies the natural sociability of man(see Hobbes 1994, Ch. 13; Strauss 1936, 123; 1953, 169; 1959, 176 n. 2; 1983, 144).

Thus, both as regards culture and as regards human nature,Hobbes makes his appearance in the “Comments” in contrast with an earlier,more original position that differs no less from the position taken by Schmitt.Although Strauss doesn’t explicitly identify this understanding, his choice ofwords reveals its pedigree: while animal sociale clearly recalls the Aristotelian


definition of man as a zôion politikon (Aristotle 1977, 1253a8), the reference toculture as the cultivation of the human mind in obedience to the indications ofnature echoes the Ciceronian definition of philosophy as cultura animi (Cicero1971, II.v.13). In other words, when Strauss introduces Hobbes, he immedi-ately does so in the light and against the backdrop of classical philosophy.

Other indications join to confirm this impression. In the thirdand final section of the “Comments,” Strauss carries his critique of Schmitt onestep further, by showing that the latter’s affirmation of the political is ulti-mately an affirmation of the moral. In the argument leading up to thisconclusion, he questions the close connection Schmitt posits between thepolitical and the dangerousness of man. Affirming the former would requireaffirming the latter, Strauss observes, especially if the affirmation is itselfintended as a political act, as Schmitt asserts. However, can one uphold theconsequence that whoever is at war actually affirms and wishes the dangerous-ness of the enemy? As evidence to the contrary, Strauss again appeals to aclassical source, a remark of the Roman military commander Caius Fabricius.Hearing an exposition of the philosophic teaching that pleasure is the highesthuman good, Fabricius is reported to have said: “O Hercules, may Pyrrhus andthe Samnites cherish these doctrines as long as they are at war with us” (quotedin Strauss 1965, 342). Viewed from what according to Schmitt is the politicalperspective par excellence, Strauss argues, human dangerousness is seen topoint beyond itself. Simply affirming it thus proves to be insufficient to explainthe political. One is almost reminded of Plato’s Laws, where the AthenianStranger, in a discussion with the Spartan Clinias, a Hobbesian avant la lettre,argues that peace, not war, is the highest good for the city (Plato 1967, 624c-626b, 628a-e).

Although Strauss does not name the source of this story—Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus—it is worthwhile (as it always is) to take a closer look.In fact, Plutarch not only explicitly identifies the philosophic teaching asEpicurean, but he also spells out both its political and its theological implica-tions. As he explains in the same passage, and as Strauss doubtless knew, theEpicureans “would have nothing to do with civil government on the groundthat it was injurious and the ruin of felicity, and…they removed the divine asfar as possible from feelings of kindness or anger or concern for us, into a lifethat knew no care and was filled with ease and comfort” (Plutarch 1968, XX.3).In the context of Strauss’s debate with Schmitt, this remark is not without significance. For the Epicurean position, as it is described by Plutarch, issquarely at odds with the political theology that Strauss discreetly brings to


light underneath Schmitt’s position. It denies both the importance of politicsand of special divine providence for human life, two crucial tenets of theSchmittian teaching (Meier 1995, 1998). Moreover, a reader of Spinoza’sCritique of Religion like Schmitt (see Strauss 2001, 683) is likely have beenaware of the influence of Epicureanism’s apolitical hedonism and anti-theismon early modern political thinkers such as Spinoza and Hobbes, which Strausstraces with great care (Strauss 1965, 37-52; 1953, 169). Needless to say, this con-nection deals an additional blow to the alliance with Hobbes that is claimed bySchmitt.

The most interesting and most important sign of Strauss’sclassical perspective, however, appears after he has brought to light the moralbasis of Schmitt’s affirmation of the political. Concurring with Schmitt’s cen-sure of liberalism’s neutralization and depoliticization, especially of its effort toreach “agreement and peace at any price” (Strauss 1965, 347), Strauss offers thereader a glimpse of the philosophical basis of his assent. At the same time, hepoints to what fundamentally distinguishes that basis from Schmitt’s:

Yet agreement can always be reached in principle about the meansto an already established end, whereas the ends are always controversial: we disagree with one another and ourselves alwaysonly about the just and the good (Plato, Euthyphro 7b-d andPhaedrus 263a). If therefore one wishes agreement at any price,there is no other way than to abandon altogether the question ofwhat is right and to limit one’s concern exclusively to the means.(Strauss 1965, 347)

In this passage, Strauss tacitly shifts from “the political” and“the moral” to “the question of what is right.” Raising this question, he assertsin a voice now unmistakably his own, is what constitutes man’s humanity, andit is in the seriousness of this question that the political finds its ultimate justi-fication (the original German text has Rechtsgrund or “legal ground,” anexpression with particular resonance for an eminent legal scholar like Schmitt).This time, he is entirely candid about the classical lineage of his assertion: headds a telling reference to two Platonic dialogues. In this way, he directs thereader’s attention to what turns out to be the focal point of his critical readingof Schmitt: the Socratic question regarding the right way of life.

From the outset, the Socratic question is the key in whichStrauss understands Schmitt’s guiding intention. As he remarks at the begin-ning of the third section of the “Comments,” “Schmitt sets out to do no morethan to ascertain what is” (Strauss 1965, 339; emphasis in the original), as if


The Concept of the Political were a Socratic inquiry. Similarly, further on in thesame section he points out that the ultimate aim of Schmitt’s affirmation of thestate of nature is not bellicistic: rather, it is an attempt to gain “pure, unpollutedknowledge [integres Wissen]” by returning to “undefiled, incorrupt nature,” sothat “the order of human things”may arise again (quoted in Strauss 1965, 348).Viewed in this manner, Schmitt’s undertaking approximates the ‘physiological’endeavour of classical philosophy.

However, once again this rapprochement brings to light theprofound differences between Schmitt’s position and the Socratic position. Tobegin with, Strauss goes on to criticize the historicism underlying Schmitt’sposition, by exposing the inconsistency between, on the one hand, his quest for pure knowledge and nature and, on the other, his claim that all politicalconcepts are polemical, i.e., historical. Here again, Strauss’s assertion is at thesame time emblematic for his own outlook:

For pure, unpolluted knowledge is never, except accidentally,polemical; and pure unpolluted knowledge cannot be gained from“the concrete political existence,” from the situation of the age, butonly through a return to the origin, to undefiled, not corruptnature. (Strauss 1965, 351)

Moreover, Strauss’s critical analysis suggests that Schmitt considers himself to be already in possession of a certain “pure, unpollutedknowledge,” and thus to already have fathomed “what is” (consider Strauss’sironic allusion to the “decisive battle” between secularism and “the oppositespirit and faith, which, it seems, does not yet have a name,” in Strauss 1965,351). As Heinrich Meier convincingly argues, Schmitt’s historicism is ultimately based on a definite answer to the question of what is right: a political theology based on divine revelation (Meier 1995, 83). Like theSpartan Clinias in Plato’s Laws, Schmitt champions a law that claims to bethe “discovery of what is” on the grounds of its divine origin (Plato 1967,625c-626b; Benardete 2000, 9-10). Against this claim, Strauss is able to takeup the Socratic rejoinder that law only wishes to be the discovery of what is(Plato 1979, 319c-320b). The experience of the plurality of contradictorylaws that lies at the basis of this observation is also the experience that sparksthe Socratic query. Hence, one cannot but concur with this lapidary but fun-damental observation about the “Comments”: “the question of Socrates wasfrom the very beginning, the decisive, fundamental question for Strauss”(Meier 1995, 86). In this respect, the Virgilian maxim that underlies TheConcept of the Political may also allow us to gauge the difference between


Schmitt and Strauss. Ab integro nascitur ordo (Virgil 1978, IV.5; see Meier 1998,256 n. 136): for Schmitt, the integrum has been revealed, so that the rebirth ofthe ordo is primarily a practical matter, the object of religious hope and expec-tation. For Strauss, on the other hand, both the integrum and the ordo are andremain the object of a rigorous theoretical pursuit.

III

Let us now return to the two remaining questions raised atthe beginning. To begin with, in what respect can the “Comments”be said to bethe “first expression” of Strauss’s “change of orientation”? As the statementitself already suggests, this change had occurred previously. With the recentpublication of Strauss’s early writings, we are able to trace it with some degreeof precision. Shortly before he published the “Comments,” Strauss prepared aseries of lectures in which he reported with astonishing clarity and awareness abreakthrough in his thinking. In retrospect, the key elements of this turn aremore or less familiar: the notion of a “second cave” beneath the Platonic cave,the possibility of overcoming historical consciousness and of a genuine returnto pre-modern philosophy, and the recovery of Platonic philosophy, guided bythe Socratic question regarding the right way of life, as a viable alternative toboth modern philosophy and the orthodoxy of revealed religion (see Strauss1997, 377-91, 393-436, 441-64; at 425, Strauss first reports his groundbreakingdiscovery of Avicenna’s remark to the extent that the treatment of prophecyand the divine law can be found in Plato’s Laws). If anything, these writingsshow that Strauss had begun to gain the “horizon beyond liberalism” he hadsought for.

From this perspective, the “Comments” on Schmitt canindeed be read as the first published writing bearing witness of this break-through. Beneath the surface of Strauss’s reticence in his debate with Schmitt,one can already perceive the steady glow of the Socratic question. It will remaindimly visible in his subsequent book on Hobbes (Strauss 1936), only to growstronger in his later works. This, however, leaves us with the remaining ques-tion: why does Strauss write that the “Comments” expressed his change oforientation “not entirely by accident”? In other words, why did he choose adebate with Schmitt as the occasion to communicate it?

On this point, the early writings may provide at least thebeginning of an answer. At the moment of his philosophical breakthrough,Strauss was taking leave, not only of the political Zionism to which he had beenstrongly committed since his youth, but also of political activism and modern

1 0 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n

politics as such. Partly as a result of his study of Spinoza’s Theological-PoliticalTreatise, he had come to question the principles and ambitions of the politicalproject of the Enlightenment, especially its claim to offer a final solution to thetheological-political problem. Although he announced this departure only in Philosophy and Law of 1935, it is safe to say that he had already begun tomove away from political Zionism for some time. Only thirty years later, in the autobiographical preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, would he provide an account for his departure, which culminates in the almost Platonicobservation: “Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create asociety which is free of contradictions” (Strauss 1965, 6).

More importantly, with the recovery of the Socratic questionand the Platonic horizon, it seems that Strauss discovered a way of life that wasmore fulfilling than the political life. In one of the early lectures mentionedabove, he notes that “Socrates gives an answer to the question regarding theright way of life: raising the question regarding the right way of life—this alone isthe right way of life” (Strauss 1997, 412). As he would subsequently learn to appreciate from Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle, the philosophical life is superior to the political life, insofar as its quest for genuine knowledge necessarily transcends the realm of opinion that is politics.

What is more, the early lectures indicate that the superiorityof the philosophic life finds its counterpart in a covert but nonetheless trenchant critique of the political life (Strauss 1997, 411). From Strauss’s correspondence with a number of distinguished contemporaries, we learnthat, in the process of discovering the art of writing of the ancient philoso-phers, he became increasingly aware of the subversive and irreverent irony thatpervades their depiction of the kaloikagathoi, the gentlemen and political lumi-naries of their age (see the correspondence with Jacob Klein in Strauss 2001,544-87, 597). The philosophical interest in and respect for politics, it seems,ultimately served the goal of achieving greater self-knowledge.

Possibly, this hierarchy is already adumbrated in the subtlephrasing of Strauss’s response to Schmitt, that “by the seriousness of the question of what is right, the political is justified” (Strauss 1965, 348; emphasisadded). This, then, may help to explain why Strauss chose to divulge his“change of orientation” in a commentary on The Concept of the Political. InSchmitt, Strauss found a powerful defender of the two challenging alternativesto the philosophic life he was trying to recover: politics and revealed religion(Meier 2003). The “Comments” allowed him to critically gauge their strength,

1 0 1A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

as well as his own, while availing himself of “the specific immunity of the com-mentator” (Strauss 1952, 14) after the manner of the Islamic and Jewishmedieval philosophers who had given him access to Plato.

It is, I believe, characteristic of the recent European receptionof Strauss’s work that it has tended to focus more explicitly and persistently onthis “trans-political” element in Strauss’s thought than the general Americanscholarship has done. Thus, a recent German volume even goes so far as todefend the thesis that Strauss “develops a paradoxical form of politicalphilosophising, to wit a political thinking that is unpolitical at its core” (Bluhm2002, 22, translation by the present author). Similar, though certainly not uni-vocal interpretations have been offered by a number of other non-Americanscholars (Tanguay 2003; Kauffmann 1997, 2000; Jaffro, Frydman, Cattin andPetit 2001; Meier 2003). Very recently, this European approach has beenbrought to the attention of the American audience (Lilla 2004), at a momentwhen Strauss scholarship was on the defense. It is to be hoped that this occa-sion will contribute to regenerating and fostering a genuine dialogue withinand between the two continents, both of which were once a home to LeoStrauss. After all, his legacy can only benefit and flourish by being read andreread by open minds on both sides of the Atlantic.

RE F E R E N C E S

Aristotle. 1977. Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Benardete, Seth. 2000. Plato’s “Laws”: The Discovery of Being. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Behnegar, Nasser. 1995. The Liberal Politics of Leo Strauss. In PoliticalPhilosophy and the Human Soul: Essays in Memory of Allan Bloom, editedby M. Palmer and T. L. Pangle. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Berkowitz, Peter. 1994. Liberal Zealotry. Yale Law Journal 103 (March): 1363-82.

Bluhm, Harald. 2002. Die Ordnung der Ordnung. Das politische Philosophierenvon Leo Strauss. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Cicero. 1971. Tusculan Disputations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan. London: Dent.

Holmes, Stephen. 1993. The Anatomy of Antiliberalism. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.


Howse, Robert. 1998. From Legitimacy To Dictatorship—And Back Again. InLaw As Politics: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, edited by D.Dyzenhaus. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Jaffro, Laurent, Benoît Frydman, Emmanuel Cattin, and Alain Petit, eds.2001. Leo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Paris: Vrin.

Kauffmann, Clemens. 1997. Leo Strauss zur Einführung. Hamburg: JuniusVerlag.

———. 2000. Strauss und Rawls. Das Philosophische Dilemma der Politik.Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Lilla, Mark. 2004. Leo Strauss: The European. The New York Review of Books,Vol. 51, No. 16: 58-60.

Meier, Heinrich. 1995. Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1998. The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinctionbetween Political Theology and Political Philosophy. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

———. 2003. Das theologisch-politische Problem. Zum Thema von LeoStrauss. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Plato. 1967. Laws. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

———. 1979. Minos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Plutarch. 1968. Life of Pyrrhus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Strauss, Leo. 1936. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Oxford: The ClarendonPress.

———. 1952. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

———. 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

———. 1959. What Is Political Philosophy? Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

———. 1965. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. New York: Schocken Books.

———. 1983. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

1 0 3A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s “Comments” on Carl Schmitt Revisited

———. 1997. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Metzler.

———. 1999. German Nihilism. Interpretation, Vol. 26 (No. 3): 353-78.

———. 2001. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Tanguay, Daniel. 2003. Leo Strauss: une biographie intellectuelle. Paris: Grasset.

Virgil. 1978. Eclogues. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.


John A. Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy: ABibliography. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005, 952 pp., $95 paperback.

D A V I D L E W I S S C H A E F E R

HOLY CROSS COLLEGE

[email protected]

This useful but deeply flawed book provides a list of the writings of Leo Strauss and those of “the several generations of scholars whohave indicated that their way has been illuminated, directly or indirectly, by thelight he has cast.” Although the cover describes the book as including entriesfrom “as recent as 2005,” the list of publications for most authors (understand-ably, given production time) seem to end at 2002 or 2003. The broad range oftheir writings confirms that if these scholars “hold anything in common, it is aserious interest in politics in the widest sense.”

Unfortunately, this volume suffers from several limitations.First of all, the editor’s principle of selection is not consistent, potentially leading those not well familiar with Strauss’s work to misunderstand the natureof his legacy. It is not at all evident why scholars as diverse as Nannerl Keohaneand Claes Ryn, neither of whose writings has (to my knowledge) any evidentconnection with Strauss, are included here. The widely published TheodoreLowi, no Straussian he (albeit a friend to several of them) is also an odd entry—especially since he is credited with only a single article.It appears that Murley sometimes included an author if he reviewed a book by aStraussian—and then went on, in certain cases, to add one or more other publi-cations by the reviewer. As a consequence, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., of all people,makes a single appearance—because he reviewed a book edited by Robert Eden.And the New York Times editorialist Brent Staples is included—on account ofhis ill-informed tirade denouncing “The Sinister Vogue of Leo Strauss”!

Another oddity in the principle of selection is that the editorincluded many essays and reviews merely because they were published either

1 0 5Book Review: Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography


in the present journal or in The Political Science Reviewer,“journals that exhibitthe influence of Leo Strauss.” (So far as I can tell, he seems to have listed theentire contents of both journals.) Of course a high percentage of the articlespublished in Interpretation, but by no means all of them, were written by “Straussians.” And Straussians cannot have published as many as half thearticles in The Political Science Reviewer. To take the most curious result ofsimply incorporating articles from those journals into this bibliography, theBritish mystery novelist Dorothy Sayers’s essay “Aristotle and DetectiveFiction,” reprinted in Interpretation in 1995, is listed. Doubtless, Sayers’s articlemade some points of interest to students of political philosophy, includingStraussians. But she can hardly be said to belong among those influenced by Strauss. Even less fitting is the inclusion of two essays by that conservativeideologue, Russell Kirk, from the Reviewer. And I can assure readers that myonetime colleague Lloyd Jensen’s essay on “Quantitative International Politics”from that same journal had about as little to do with political philosophy,let alone Strauss, as one could imagine. Altogether, this volume must include at least several dozen authors whose writings have nothing to do with Strauss’s “legacy.”

The most obvious weakness of this volume, however, is that itsimply was not proofread sufficiently. In his preface (x), the editor asks hisreaders’ forbearance in this regard, citing Cotton Mather’s observation ofthe impossibility of producing a book without an error. Given advances inprinting technology since Mather’s time, I doubt that his remark holds truetoday. But with regret, I must remark that the frequency of errors of spelling,punctuation, and substance in this volume surpasses that in any publishedbook I can recall encountering.

It would be pointless to list the technical errors I came acrossin a cursory survey of this book. (I will convey them to the editor, as he requeststhat readers do.) But I do wish to point out that Lorraine Smith Pangle’s finebook Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship should have been credited to herrather than to her husband Thomas (519)—especially since he has a long list ofdistinguished publications that are truly his own. Similarly, I shall observe thatsince my wife Roberta and I jointly edited Sir Henry Taylor’s “The Statesman”and The Future of Cities, these books should not have also been attributed to the co-editorship of Robert Martin Schaefer (602). Finally, I must note thatthe list of my publications is at least four items too long, since I found fourpublications that were listed twice. The reviewer is compelled to suspect thatthe editor’s reliance on techniques of “database management” (xi) led him to


put insufficient time into old-fashioned, hands-on proofreading. (Perhaps areference to Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology would beapropos here.)

Readers of Interpretation, and other scholars of political philosophy and American political thought, will find this volume a handy reference work. But all readers should be encouraged to forward the errata theylocate to the editor, in the hope that a new and vastly improved edition can bepublished soon. And Strauss himself should be absolved of any responsibilityfor many of the publications listed in it.

1 0 7Book Review: Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography

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