Antonio and the Pelican

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
Its beak can hold more than its belly can.
It can hold in its beak
Enough food for a week.
I’m damned if I know how the hell ‘e can.

I’m going to explore the theology of Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice”.

Any candid reader will be obliged to admit that William Shakespeare was not politically correct. “The Taming of the Shrew” was not a feminist play, and Elizabeth Taylor’s wink is not enough to make it so. Despite his sympathetic treatment of Othello, Shakespeare insults the black skin of Moors in his other plays. He allows us to see a human side of Shylock, just as he allows us to see a human side of Richard III, but that doesn’t prevent him painting either man as the villain of the piece.

However, his condemnation of Shylock is not based on the difference between Jew and Gentile. It is based on the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between the demands of the law of Moses and the mercy shown by Grace. It is theological prejudice, not racial prejudice.

The first clue is in the introduction of his antagonist, Antonio, in the very first line of the play; “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad”. He admits that he has no immediate reasons for sadness. He hasn’t yet learned about his friend’s financial needs. This “want-wit sadness” has become, for the moment, part of his nature. He is being presented to us as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah ch53 v3).

Then see how Shylock presents himself in Act 4, when he’s calling in the debt and demanding “the penalty and forfeit of my bond”. He says “I stand for judgement”, and again “I stand here for law”. His immediate meaning is that he is the champion of judgement and the law, because he needs them both in his case, but we could also take it in the colloquial sense that he stands as a symbol to represent judgement and the law.

In other words, he stands for the system which the gospel has replaced. We are told that God has “cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands” (Colossians ch2 v14). Again, we are told that Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law”, the curse being the judgement imposed on those who do not keep the provisions of the law (Galatians ch3 v10 and v13, which must be read together). These things are echoed in the redemption of Bassanio’s debt by his “nearest kinsman” Antonio.

Another clue is the reason for Shylock’s hatred of Antonio. It is because Antonio is a Christian who undermines his usury with “Christian courtesy”. He is “a fawning publican”, straight out of the story of the publican and the Pharisee. “He lends out money gratis”. And “gratis”, of course, is Latin for “by grace”, meaning something that is freely given.

The same point on the other side is being made by Portia’s keynote speech on the quality of mercy, pointing out that it comes from heaven “like the gentle rain”. It is an attribute of God himself, who shows us how “mercy seasons justice”. She points out that “in the course of justice none of us should see salvation”. In fact the final outcome of the play is an exposition of the verdict given by James; “For judgement is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy; yet mercy triumphs over judgement” (James ch2 v13).

Thus Portia “(“the doorway”) is the one who presents the gospel message most explicitly. She was presenting it more obliquely when she offered the three caskets to her suitors. Pay attention;

“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.”
Obviously this is the path of sin.

“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.”
This is the promise of the path of salvation by works, and we all know where that leads.

“Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.”
This is the path of faith, throwing ourselves upon God in trust.

Finally, we need to consider the way in which Antonio counters the demands of judgement. He does it by offering his life to redeem the debts incurred by another man. We may observe his attitude when his death at Shylock’s hands is approaching. He says “I do oppose my patience to his fury”, and he is disposed “to suffer with a quietness of spirit.” A little later, he calls himself “a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death”. This brings us right back to the “man of sorrows” of Isaiah; “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and and lie a sheep that before its shearers is dumb” (Isaiah ch53 v6).

You will be wondering where the Pelican comes in. This image goes back to the zoologists of the Middle Ages, who were always being led astray by long-distance observation without binoculars. The resulting misunderstandings gave us the suicidal packs of lemmings and the ostriches hiding their heads in the sand, turning them into proverbial metaphors. Something similar happened to the pelican. Nowadays, we understand how pelicans feed their young. The rhyme at the top of the page could have been written by Charles Darwin, but probably wasn’t. But the understanding of the Middle Ages was that pelican mothers were visibly opening up their breast in order to allow their children to draw from and feed on their own blood.

This was enough to establish the pelican as a standard image of Christ, who gave his own blood to save his own people, and allowed them to drink it in the Eucharist.

And from where is Antonio expecting to lose his pound of flesh? From his bosom, the area closest to his heart. (Yes, of course Antonio has a bosom. Everybody has a bosom. Just the one) In other words, from the same area that was broken into by the pelican’s beak. That key detail marks Antonio as the image of a pelican, and thus as the image of Christ.

He was offering up his own life in order to save his friends from the demands of the law.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Absolutely outstanding!

I’ll never read Shakespeare the same again. And now I will have to read him again.

Thanks

a reply to: DISRAELI

Excellent post. I've read many Shakespeare plays, but never The Merchant of Venice. I need to explore it, and with your revelations, hopefully I'll be able to read the deeper between-the-lines meanings; as is often the case with The Bard's works.

As with the pelican, the albatross is a symbolic bird. I enjoy Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which that bird is pivotal. Have you ever analysed it to see if there is a deeper meaning in that poem or how it may correlate to Biblical studies?

a reply to: Encia22
I had to study the Ancient Mariner at school and even answered an examination question on it in 1969 (about "the harmony of man and nature in Coleridge"), but in those days I was a private Epicurean about to become an atheist. I couldn't even "get" the religious aspects of "The Spire" or "Mr. Weston's Good Wine", let alone the poetry of Wordsworth or Shelley.

a reply to: DISRAELI


Very good.

I feel your pain. Keats is my favourite, either doom & gloom or love for Fanny... straightforward.

a reply to: Encia22
I came to Cowper by an indirect route. An anthology called "Poets of the Thirties" was one of the set books for a different paper, but our class rebelled against it (there was a limit to our tolerance of boring ramblings about Spain), and read "Mr Weston's Good Wine" instead, and that novel contains a reference to Cowper which induced me to obtain a copy in later years.

He was a Christian struggling with a psychology which gave him a sense of rejection. I believe "Lines written during a period of insanity" is the bleakest poem which exists in English literature, containing the single bleakest line.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb am
Buried above ground.

Heh.

Cheers

a reply to: DISRAELI

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

I never heard of Cowper... I can see why our English literature teacher would have kept us away from his works. I'll endeavour to read more.

The verse quoted by F2d5thCavv2 is brilliant. I also like:

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,

I actually like the poem. My poetess wife writes in a very similar fashion, and it is the fruit of her anguish. Her best poems have always come from the worst of personal situations. However, she often has rays of hope thrown in, which make her overall message more optimistic.

a reply to: Encia22
Yet this was also the author of;
"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform."

a reply to: DISRAELI

Yes, I was just skimming through some of his other poems and they're not all dark and gloomy. I also just read some more about him and his importance in his literary epoch. I can't understand why my school (North London, late 80s) avoided mentioning him at all, even as an extracurricular source to study.