H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e9 0If Shylock’s stubborn clinging to the letter of the law seems
legalistic, so is the ruse by which Portia triumphs over him, by
pointing out that his bond permits him to take flesh but not blood.
No actual court would allow such an outrageous quibble. The law
must work according to common understandings, not duplicitous
nitpicking. In any case, mercy may not be strained (constrained),
but justice surely is. Punishments, for example, must be propor-
tionate to crimes. To be merciful is indeed a virtue, but it must not
be allowed to make a mockery of justice. There are several reasons
for suspecting that there is more to this affair than Portia’s setpiece
speech would suggest. Yet because we have no voice- over to tell us
what to think, we are left to draw our own conclusions.
There is a similar problem with Polonius’ advice to his son
Laertes in Hamlet, which ends with the much quoted lines ‘This
above all – to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the
night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Is this
really sage counsel? What if you are a natural- born con man and
decide to be true to your nature? There is no way of knowing what
Shakespeare himself thought about this piece of paternal guidance.
It has a sententious air about it that may strike some readers as
authoritative. On the other hand, Polonius sometimes comes up
with portentous statements which are of dubious value. Perhaps
the play is simply poking fun at him, as it so often does. Or perhaps
for a precious moment he swerves from his customary self-
importance into a genuine moral insight. It is also possible that
Shakespeare did not stop to ask himself whether he thought this
advice was sound, or that he thought it was sound but was mistaken.
Perhaps the case of the natural- born twister did not occur to him.
We should not be afraid to impute failings to the Bard. His comedy,
after all, hardly leaves us rolling in the aisles. We do not generally