Themes and Issues

Abstract

One of the most powerful themes in The Merchant is that of justice, fair-dealing among men, giving people their due entitlements, a question not always settled satisfactorily in courts of law and involving the natural rights of the individual in society. Different codes of law prescribe different patterns of justice, but what happens when two such codes conflict? Can they both be ‘right’? In a Christian-Gentile society, like Venice, has Shylock’s Old Testament code any validity? How far has the Duke’s court moral, as distinct from legal, jurisdiction in such a case? The play poses many such questions and leaves the audience to ponder over them, but Shakespeare is not to be treated like a textbook on social philosophy and one must never forget that he was writing a play for his own generation.