Wealth
Bassanio’s pursuit of Portia is first announced as his scheme “to get clear of all the debts I owe”, because Portia is rich. He refers to Portia’s famed “worth”, and calls her a “rich” “gem”. He marvels: “Look on beauty, / And you shall see ’tis purchas’d by the weight.” And while Shylock demands the fulfilment of the “bond” that Antonio signed, the pledged lovers twitter happily about “love’s bonds”, and Graziano speaks of the “bargain” of their faith. At the end, Portia tells Antonio that he is going to be Bassanio’s “surety”, to guarantee his faithfulness.
It seemed obvious, in that production’s aftermath, that Shakespeare was satirising the commercialisation of love relations, the infection of ordinary life by money-talk. Yet most critics – including the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, John Russell Brown – have assumed that the Portia story represents a redemptive and happy version of finance, shown to be harmonious with true love. There seems an awful lot of room to doubt this interpretation. For example, Portia promises to pay off Antonio’s debt and then says: “Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.” Alexander Pope thought this line unworthy of Shakespeare, but Brown calls it “a joyful acknowledgement of the pleasures of giving for love”. Yet it’s surely a deliberately uncomfortable echo of Shylock’s reference, in the trial scene, to his “dearly bought” pound of flesh.
We also, after all, use the term “investment” today when we’re not talking about money. We might say something is a good “investment” of time, or energy. But the financial crisis has reminded us that, as they say in the small print, the value of your investment can go down as well as up. And anyway, isn’t it strange, when you think about it, to speak of investing time? When you invest time in something, you don’t get that time back at a later date, with added interest. The time is gone, whatever you did with it.