Professor Richard Weisberg wrote of Merchant of Venice, “[p]erhaps no text except the Bible and the United States Constitution has so implicated audiences in fierce struggles for dominance and control.”  The remark’s seeming hyperbole diminishes when the state of the legal scholarship is considered.  Though a majority of literary critics agree that the play is thematically rich presenting a “parade of binaries,” for legal scholars the crucial theme is the tension between law and mercy and how, or whether, justice unifies that tension within itself.  This theme alone has generated widespread and vehement debate.  It is the same with the literary criticism.  In that realm one finds a vigorous debate about the moral constitution of the individual characters and the ultimate justice of each’s position.  Scholars pit against each other in attempting to decide whether it is Shylock and his merry bond which deserves sympathy, or if indeed it is Portia’s fellow citizens who deserve praise for sparing Shylock’s life.  It is popular today to see the play as belonging to Shylock, both in terms of the centrality of his role and, perhaps more important, as a symbol for the ugliness of anti-Semitism.  On the other side is a body of dramatic criticism that insists the play must be understood within the theological context of “Christ’s redemptive sacrifice” or perhaps even as simply a romantic comedy in the classic tradition.  In this latter body of interpretative work Portia retains her primary, and untarnished role. 
 This essay suggests an alternative reading of Merchant arguing that the first mistake in coming to terms with the play is the assumption that in the various opposing relationships one side must be “right,” while the other is “wrong.”  Merchant of Venice is neither a simple tale of an unfounded prejudice, nor is it a tale that pits justice against mercy merely characterizing a puzzle without offering an, albeit tentative,  resolution.  Rather, the play offers a conception of justice that embraces both law and mercy.  What one learns by the end of the play is not that vengeance overtakes mercy or that  mercy trumps law.  Instead, the play suggests that mercy, understood properly as an undeserved sacrifice, is a necessary condition to the fulfillment of law, understood as that which binds a community together in its bond. 
 Why do legal scholars in particular overlook this reading of Merchant of Venice?  A partial and likely explanation is that they write about the play in light of its text rather than against the backdrop of a particular production.  It is, after all,  with the written text that legal scholars are most familiar.  An argument can be made that seeing a performance of a play is always likely to provide insights superior to those one will glean by only reading its text.  But The Merchant of Venice offers a more precise reason why legal scholars should think about the play in light of a specific performance.  The play teaches that discernment of  mercy’s intimate relation with law requires remaining focused upon the particular facts of a dispute, and the concrete persons involved.  This requires the immersion of our senses as well as our intellect when pondering the dimensions of a controversy.  As Richard Posner  noted, Portia manifests not only the worldly, but the sensual in comparison with the “frugal, chaste, and self-denying” natures of both Shylock and Antonio.   She reminds us that it is in ordinary physical reality – in the hearing of mercy’s plea, the seeing of revenge’s countenance, the smelling of conflict,  that we will discover the details and shaded edges of a situation. 
 The lesson that the play teaches demands the form in which it is to be learned.  At the core of Merchant is an understanding of justice, incorporative of both law and mercy, which tells an audience that keen sight and flexibility of perception is required for its actuality.  The development of such sight, in turn, requires allowing passion and life to enter the place where the dry airless and immutable word is posited.  Thus Merchant cannot be understood without being witnessed.  This  essay will focus upon Jonathan Miller’s 1980 production of Merchant of Venice for the BBC’s Shakespearian project.  By moving between the text and an instance of interpretation, the aim is to uncover an understanding of the play that is both demanded by its language and yet open to infinite modes of expressions. 
  I.  The Perplexing Backdrop
 Three delicately interrelated stories comprise Merchant, each providing its own dilemma.  The legal issue in the play results from Bassanio, a Venetian gentleman, needing funds to woo Portia and being without assets to provide security for a loan.  Antonio willingly gives his bond to the moneylender Shylock who agrees to a “merry bond” without requiring his usual rate of interest on the ground that Antonio agrees to forfeit a pound of his flesh if he should default on the loan.  Through no fault of his own, Antonio defaults and Shylock insists upon his forfeit.  In Act Four the audience is transported to the famous trial scene. 
 There are two other trials as equally important as the first.  In order to win Portia’s hand, Bassanio must meet a test devised by Portia’s dead father and which constrains her choice of a husband.  Bassanio must choose among three caskets, of gold, silver and lead, correctly guessing which one awards the contestant Portia’s hand in marriage.  The only clues are cryptic inscriptions attached to each casket.  Bassanio succeeds in his ordeal thereby winning Portia.   The third trial is related to the second as well as to Shylock’s suit.  Upon winning her hand, Portia gives Bassanio a ring telling him “which when you part from, lose, or give away / Let it presage the ruin of your love and be my vantage to exclaim on you.”  Bassanio swears to never part with the band of gold.  Yet, at the end of Shylock’s failed suit, Bassanio gives his wedding ring to the learned doctor of law who has come to Venice to settle the dispute between Antonio and Shylock.  The doctor is, of course, Portia in disguise.  Hence, upon returning home, Bassanio stands as quasi-defendant before Portia who, in confronting him with the loss of the ring, must pronounce his judgment.
 These are not three different stories only vaguely related by common characters.  Both the casket trial and the ring trial stipulate and detail the mercy Portia attempts to call Shylock up to in her famous speech of Act Four.  It is in understanding the particulars of mercy as played out in these two trials that one can come to see how it manifests at the conclusion of Shylock’s failed suit to obtain his forfeit.  Each trial teaches that the honoring of the bonds (qua law)  that tie humans to each other requires the refining hand of mercy for only by it’s touch will sturdy and sympathetic relationships endure. 
  The story of Portia and Bassanio, which both overlaps and stands independent of the drama of Antonio’s bond, offers clues to the human conditions necessary for law’s possibility if we are to understand law properly as that which bespeaks an obligation – wherein the word bond is buried.  Four conditions, in particular, resonate in the tale, each illuminating a portion of the whole we call mercy.  The first is humility.  It comes to the audience in the body of Portia who personifies all the word connotes: an ability to forestall argument, to remain open to correction, and to acknowledge where she may lack.  Notwithstanding that she first appears as a masterful character,  in control of her world and those around her, Gemma Jones manifests the sense of weariness that weighs upon Portia as she laments her fate: “O me, the word ‘choose’! I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father.”  Constrained to marry who passes the casket test devised by her father, Portia laments.  Nevertheless, she does not rant.  Indeed, she dismisses her own words as idle chatter not suited to finding herself a husband, ruefully acknowledging that she “can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.”  It is important to note that Portia holds her bonds, her obligations, dear thereby willing to “live to be as old as Sibyall” and to “die as chaste as Diana” unless she obtains a husband in the manner of her father’s will. 
 The same humility which honors the law enables Portia to be bounteous in her adoration so that when Bassanio chooses the right casket, she raises him to heroic proportion telling him with a kind of childlike earnestness that she is “an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised,” and “[happiest]” in her knowledge that “her gentle spirt / Commits itself” to Bassanio’s to “be directed.”  Gemma Jones’ performance leaves no doubt that Portia’s modesty is crucial to the structural integrity of Merchant.  The modern viewer must not squirm nor turn away aghast from Portia’s giving over of herself in seeming complete self-disclaiming.  It comes from a woman neither simpering nor infirm as her later cleverness attests.  It is a quality of ardor that leaves Bassanio “bereft” of all words able to only respond from a “wild of nothing save of joy.”   Her humility allows her to give in a way that the more prideful person never can.
 This first scene foreshadows what will become explicit in the Third Act when Bassanio succeeds at his test.  Selflessness, a willingness to abase one’s ego that an otherwise “hot temper” may prompt one to satisfy, is mercy’s most salient feature.  Though some assume Portia tricks leading Bassanio to the right casket through clues,   Gemma Jones,  wears a solemnly sincere face when, out of Bassanio’s hearing, she declares that like Hercules and Hesione “I stand for sacrifice.”  Humility and selflessness are intimately related.  Humility  connotes an acute awareness of “other” in that one forbears or restrains oneself from over-shadowing another.  Thus humility assumes sight of all that is beyond oneself.  It is this sight which can then lead to the putting aside of one’s  interests, pride, or needs if they conflict with one’s decision to act on behalf of another.  It is from this posture that Portia declares to Bassanio:
 Beshrew your eyes,
 They have o’er looked me and divided me,
 One half of me is yours, the other half yours,
 Mine own I would say: but if mine than yours, and so all yours

 As Lawrence Danson remarks,  the trope of surrendering oneself to another was not only common in the period but often little more then rhetorical ornament.  In Merchant, however, it is decidedly more.  The virtue that is sacrifice serves as the play’s motif.  We see it in Antonio’s quick and genuine exclamation when he interrupts Bassanio’s slow speech, [m]y purse, my person, my extremest means / lie all unlock’d to your occasions.”  And, at the play’s end again Antonio stands as Bassanio’s surety pledging to Portia his “soul upon forfeit” if Bassanio should again “break faith.”  Gratiano too receives benefit in the shape of  Bassanio’s indulgence.  When he is chided for his wild behavior, Gratiano responds with a similarly wild promise to not offend again. Though his extravagant promise surely foretells that he will offend again,   Bassanio allows him the mercy that “drops manna in the way of starving people” keeping his brash friend by his side.  Similarly the spirit of sacrifice traces the air as Portia gives up her “claim” against Bassanio at the play’s end forgiving him for his parting with her ring. 
 The profundity and strength of the characters’ action will be clouded if not experienced by a viewer.   It is in sensing Gemma Jones’ vitality in her giving, in hearing the lightness of her voice, and in seeing the merry grace that comprises her bearing that one sees also the beauty and potency of her acts.  And indeed what matters in all sacrificial acts is the joyfulness with which they are done for a gift is a gift precisely because one does not expect the receiver to incur a debt, even of guilt.  At all times, Portia acts in high spirit.  It is with a cheerful and quick voice that, when upon hearing of Antonio’s plight, Portia offers payment many times over to deface the bond.  And again, upon forgiving Bassanio his transgression, we witness a Portia full of levity, though not lacking in seriousness.  She teaches in her giving but at all times restraining from proclaiming that she teaches.
 The third aspect of mercy is the brave entertaining of peril; a maxim made explicit at the casket trial. The first casket of gold bears the inscription “who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire;” on the second of silver it is written “who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves,” and finally on the third plain and “pale” casket of lead is inscribed “[w]ho chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.”  It is this last casket which promises Portia’s hand in marriage.  The teaching that one receives only in giving and risking all tracks theological teaching that covers both Old and New Testament alike.  It is exemplified in Job’s anguish, in Abraham’s faith, and in Christ’s injunction that all who follow him must abandon all that hereunto provided security and comfort.  Neither action premised on a conception of “just desserts,” as Aragon discovered in choosing the silver casket, nor controlled by one’s desires, as Morocco in his hubris found out in choosing the gold, provide the conditions upon which a bond can be sustained.  The casket trial sets down all qualitites of mercy as the ground upon which law, that which binds, must rest.  These qualities sharply contrast to those of pride, self-protection, and pettiness that inform the world of trade and commerce that is Merchant’s Venice.    Aggressiveness, sarcasm, and poison tipped insults fly as Shylock and Antonio come to terms, the film emphasizing the tension by quick edits back and forth to each man.  On one side, no matter the sympathy one may feel for Shylock’s treatment at the hand of Christian, William Mitchell’s performance  makes obvious that Shylock is not likeable.  Contemplating his loan to Antonio he reflects that he “hate[s] him for he is a Christian,” and swearing to “feed fat the ancient grudge” he bears Antonio for extending loans without interest.  He later resolves  to “go in hate” to dine with Antonio and Bassanio and to “feed upon the prodigal Christian.”  We, the viewer, are to experience Shylock’s resentment as that from which we should recoil.   Yet, recoiling from Shylock does not incline the audience toward Antonio.   Though kind to his friends, Antonio expresses unbounded spite his treatment of  Shylock.   He does not pause to openly express his hatred.  Previously he has called Shylock “misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, and spit” upon his “Jewish gaberdine.”  In his answer to him at first meeting, Antonio declares  that “I am like to thee [dog] again, / To spet on thee again, to spur thee too.” Again, the audience is invited to turn away.
 Yet there is an astounding feature to Antonio’s and Shylock’s exchange.  Insofar as one holds a notion of justice as commensurate in quality and quantity to the wrongs and injuries to which it responds, no criticism can rightly be made of either man’s conduct.  If justice is giving to each his due, nothing short of this (nor more) occurs.  As suggested by the text, and played by the actors, each man simply matches the other by responding in kind to what has been thrown at him.  The theme of justice consisting of the giving and receiving of one’s due – as a kind of exchange which presupposes an ability to price the worth of an injury or benefit  – runs throughout the play.  At the start, when he comes to Antonio for a loan, Bassanio begins by speaking, seemingly hesitantly, of his debt to Antonio not only in money but “in love” and from which he has a “warranty.”  Again a notion of deserts crops up after the trial scene where Bassanio pleads with a disguised Portia to take payment for her services.  And commence and coin, which permeates so much of the Merchant, is intimately tied to an understanding of justice as desserts, and thus to equivalency, transactions, obligations, debts, and cost.   Yet, the audience of Miller’s film is invited to feel intense discomfort with justice’s identity with exchange, and hence (implicitly) with the juridical tradition’s definitional conventions.  It is not evident on the surface why discomfort should be felt and hence the play forces our attention.  Though Gratiano’s delight in “mirth and laughter” becomes an ugly sort of joy at Shylock’s defeat, it is difficult to say why.  At least this true if one keeps with a traditional understanding of what comports just action.  Though reasonable minds may disagree, an argument can be made that Shylock has conspired to murder Antonio, and hence it would seem joy should attend the law’s winning out.  Yet, neither the vindication of Shylock’s bond, nor the discovery of Antonio’s potential claim against Shylock for attempted murder invites the audience to experience any kind of satisfaction. 
. II. Searching for The Right Answer
 What leads to a sense of stalemate in Act Four, is not Shylock’s legalism when he notes 
there is no provision for a doctor in the bond, nor Portia’s literalism when she reveals the bond is impossible to perform since it does not provide for the taking of blood.  Instead what traps both the audience and the characters is an understanding of justice as giving each man his due.  From the legal standpoint, many a scholar has remarked that of course the bond would seem to imply that blood was to flow.  And if one conceives of justice as giving each his due,  the bond between Shylock and Antonio would seem to imply Antonio’s obligation to willingly give up his life.  Indeed, William Mitchell’s cry that he will have his bond carries a kind of wretched passion that evokes one to pause upon his claim though the merchants dismiss him.  Nevertheless,  it seems somehow unjust for Antonio to forfeit his life.  On the other side, the argument is available that Shylock conspired to kill a citizen. There is nothing obviously repulsive about the fact that the supposed law refers to an alien killing a Christian given that in this age one’s very humanity was fused with one’s membership in a community of a particular faith.  It seems that in Shylock’s refusing a doctor to attend to Antonio when he takes his pound of flesh, Shylock tacitly confesses his intention to take Antonio’s life.  In the attempting taking then, Shylock owes his own forfeit.  Yet again, the penalty seems too much. 
 At the outset of the trial, Shylock declares Portia to be a Daniel when she seems to interpret the Venetian law to his favor.  And the image of Daniel arises again when Gratiano, in his cruel joy of the turning of the tables upon Shylock cries out, “A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel! / I thank thee Jew for teaching me that word.”  What strikes is that a Scriptural image of justice is evoked exactly where justice seems to lack on either’s side.  Each claim appears tainted transforming opposition into identity.  The film leaves the audience to squirm as it watches Antonio bare his chest preparing for Shylock’s blade, and to hear the Duke sternly pronounce sentence upon Shylock.  There is, at this point in the play,  no moral relief from the tension. 
 It can be no other way if one thinks of law as ensuring that a wrong is corrected,  undone, by imposing a like pain upon a defendant.  From this standpoint, when an injury occurs, an equivalence is provided by the creditor receiving a kind of “pleasure – the pleasure of being allowed to vent his power” (even when limited by the rule of lex talois) upon the “one who is powerless,” as he is now held in the law’s grip.  The creditor is given his due pleasure only in making the debtor suffer – “de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire.”   Shylock is of course explicit in this desire crying out “I will have my revenge.”  But as he makes clear this conception of justice is what bounds him and Christian together in “resembl[ance].”  The problem of the play then is not a tension between strict legality and a more equitable justice.  Equity is simply a more refined application of the law to a given situation which fills in the gaps and cracks left open by the virtue of law’s generality.   As stated above, reasonable minds could differ on the meaning of the bond, a point that Portia seemed at labor to make.  Nor is the tension between the Old Testament and the New.  Shylock, it should be noted,  neither appears to honor obligations unless it is to his advantage, nor does he follow his faith’s injunction to “do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Thy God.”  The problem is, instead, with the characters’ conception of justice. 
 What  Merchant proposes in Act Four is that a conflict will always remain impassive to just resolution when justice is understood to be giving each his due.  This understanding of justice  will always transform a plaintiff’s plea or a state’s charge into vengeance for, given that a past injury cannot be undone, what is re-tributed is merely the joy of like pain being inflicted.   As Shylock has heatedly pointed out, “[i]f A Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge.  If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why revenge.”  Contrary to Daniel Kornstein, Merchant does not simply present an image of law being used to exact  revenge as if the two were distinct conceptual categories.  Instead, both Bassanio and Shylock, as well as less important characters conceive of law’s corrective hand as vengeance personified. 
 Yet, mercy, as first presented in Merchant, also does not seem to promise an honorable resolve to the conflict between Antonio and Shylock.  Though Salarino asks Shylock to not take Antonio’s flesh, he offers Shylock only his insults declaring that there is more “difference between [Shylock’s and his daughter’s] flesh . . .than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish.”  Shylock’s grief at losing both daughter and coin is ignored.  Similarly, the Duke’s entreaty to Shylock that “we all expect a gentle answer, Jew” seems to smack of a waving off of whatever may be justified in Shylock’s claim.  Shylock is treated with disdain by all involved.  For Shylock to grant mercy at this point would seem to force him to perform an act of indignity.  On the other side, Antonio’s bestowing of mercy unsettles the modern audience, with its demand for conversion and taking of Shylock’s property, as does Portia’s pushing at the law in order to place Shylock at the court’s mercy.  And as played in Miller’s production,  “mercy” simply becomes a vehicle whereby the merchant-mob may debase and torture Shylock.  Moreover, even if staged a bit differently, it is not evident at this point of the play that a gentler mercy would be acceptable in light of Shylock’s intention toward Antonio.
 What Shakespeare presents us, the audience, is the same dilemma that has perplexed theologians for centuries: the conundrum of the relationship between justice and grace.  Yet a twist is added, for he also presents a concept of justice seemingly bereft of beauty and possible conceptions of mercy inadequate to resolving the situation.  The question remains then, how can mercy solve a problem of justice in Merchant and does it?  How do the conditions set in the romantic context of Bassanio’s and Portia’s bond translate into the public realm of a law and courts?
 III. Mercy as a Condition of Law
 What Portia brings to the court is her knowledge that what obligates us to honor our obligations, which is to say our laws, is love (understood more arduously than the romantic would have it).  It is that quality of sentiment translated in the public realm as civic commitment which sustains the binding of one’s bonds.  In this sense then, it is mercy as exemplified at the casket trial that nurtures law. 
   Prior to Portia’s plea for mercy which she offers in disguise as a doctor of law, others have asked Shylock to forego his bond.  Yet, none have done so with humility, selflessness, nor vulnerability, condition necessary both to the giving and to the receiving of mercy and the consequent establishment of good relations.  In a kind of arrogance, the Duke intimates that he sees Shylock’s “mercy” as a requirement to negate his “strange apparent cruelty.”  The Duke and the other merchants begin from the position of unappreciative beneficiaries expecting Shylock’s “remorse”; yet, the forgiving of a debt, which closes a gap or breach, presupposes both a compassionate giver and a grateful receiver.  It is the mutual reaching out to other that cancels out the distance created by a conflict.  This idea of mutuality is explicit between Antonio and Bassanio.  The latter, who stands in Antonio’s debt, never forgets his position.  Bassanio recalls it with a sense of love and urgent desire to aid his benefactor crying out “what, man, courage yet! / The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all, / Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.”  In contrast, none will yield to Shylock in kindness.  Antonio assertively insults Shylock noting that Bassanio “may as well use question with the wolf,” and Bassanio’s harsh assertion that nothing “unfeeling” and “cruelty” comport Shylock’s claim.   Graziano is like in his judgment accusing Shylock of being “wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.”  The subtle, though clear undertone of the exchange is missed by all: Each man’s anxiousness to voice his hatred of Shylock, and inability to sacrifice his temper, appears as starved and wolvish as his adversary’s. 
 With the men’s lack of humility comes a rigid self-focus that forecloses all possibility of selflessness on the part of either the one who extends mercy or receives it.  It is the very self-assuredness of the characters that each holds a legitimate position which seems to spurn on the insults.  Antonio nearly spits his caution to Bassanio to make no mind of Shylock’s jabs for he “may as well do anything most hard \ As seek to soften that – than which what’s harder? - \ His Jewish heart.”  Shylock is no less guilty of pride certain as he insists, “[t]here is no power in the tongue of man to alter” his mind.  All are stagnated in their certitude. 
 It is with Portia, that a truer and more rigorous understanding of what mercy requires on both the part of the benefactor and the receiver enters into the conflict.  Legal scholars tend to find grave fault with Portia.  At the worse she has been accused of exacting her own vengeance upon Shylock by not only employing legal quibbling to keep Shylock from exacting his forfeit, but going further in finding a statute which puts Shylock’s life in jeopardy.  Others criticize Portia for seeming to act simultaneously as judge and counsel for the defense, or for not stating that the suit should immediately be dismissed as unenforceable.  The most common charge is that Portia leads Shylock on.  Legal scholars in particularly are inclined to see Portia’s move from agreement with Shylock to a strict literalism that upsets his claim as a contrived move which she has planned from the start.
 Gemma Jones, however, play Portia in her full noble possibility.  The portrayal seems right-headed for it glosses the play with richness and depth that is in keeping with Shakespeare’s continual injunctions through out the play to not be fooled by surface appearance, to take heed that “[a]ll that glistens is not gold” and that a “fair ornament” conceals “grossness.”  Justice may be something other than it appears.  Indeed, as played by Gemma Jones, and as others have observed,  it seems without doubt that “the more legalistic the criticism the further we are from the play’s essential fictional shape and spirit.”  What gives Act Four its vitality is exactly the uncertainty and humility with which Portia conducts herself.  Gemma Jones’ Portia does not manipulate nor contrive.  Instead, she adapts and improvises changing strategy moment to moment in response to each character’s perception of the right.  She demonstrates a kind of practical wisdom as she declares “Tarry a little” to Shylock as he lifts his knife.  Rather than toying with Shylock, Portia’s face communicates to the audience that she buys one second of time to continue to think what to do next – but each action she takes is aimed at a singular object, the resolve of rather than a simple judgment in the dispute. 
 Granting the above, the perhaps most damning criticism of Portia remains.  Her’s and Antonio’s “mercy” inflicts suffering upon Shylock.  As played by Warren Mitchell, the suffering is apparent as opposed to other portrayals such as Patrick Stewart’s where Shylock is presented as a cold man simply happy to be alive.  Rather than criticizing Mitchell’s interpretation, the more interesting task for those interested in Merchant’s lessons about the nature of justice is how can mercy allow such suffering?  And if it does, in what way does such suffering sustain bonds – laws – between persons? 
 As Jay Halio has commented, “if The Merchant of Venice is about anything . . . it surely is very much about mercy, but mercy in the context of justice. . . For without that context – without justice – mercy is empty, meaningless.  It turns into sentimentality.”  In the most famous speech of the play, Portia tells Shylock that “the quality of mercy” is “twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”  The twofold nature of mercy’s blessing is a lesson not only for Shylock, the one asked to give, but for Antonio the one asked to receive.  In an epoch much better versed in penitential teaching then today, it was understood, albeit in a hazy sort of way by the popular mind, that  mercy entails a sacrificing of one’s just cause.  So too, it entails a sacrifice on the part of the receiver who must forego pride and haughtiness in becoming a debtor.   She follows her own teaching. 
  Portia is gracious and respectful of Shylock and open in her capacity to see that she asks 
from him a sacrifice, a true mercy.  Unlike the other characters, Portia acknowledges Shylock’s claim.  She states simply and unabashedly “[t]hen must the Jew be merciful.”  But, what is critical is that she does not speak in a manner to deny his claim.  So too, when Shylock resists her plea, she does not assault as Bassanio, Graziano, and to a lesser degree Antonio do.  Instead, she responds granting Shylock dignity in that she takes his question seriously.   In that she has claimed Antonio as the “semblance” of her own “soul,” by considering Shylock’s claim she foregoes the easy comfort that comes when one insists on one’s right as well as the security of ground others find in seeing Shylock as an inferior.  Portia asks Shylock to “consider.”  She does not approach him as if she may as well “forbid the mountain pines to wag their high tops.” What she asks him to consider is that though “justice be his plea,” that “in the course of justice none of us should see salvation.”  The beatitude, that state of utter at-homeness that nevertheless experiences itself as a moment of unceasing awe at the wonderment of the union, is the salvation of which Portia speaks.  She asks, then, that Shylock stand for sacrifice and hazard and give all by foregoing his right to the forfeiture.  At the ethical level, she asks him to quit his claim to honor his, albeit at times unfriendly, bond with others.
 Though some commentators insist upon seeing Portia’s speech as ornament, the force and weight of the words oppose such brushing aside.  And indeed, the words’ import continue to strike gentle chord after gentle chord through Gemma Jones’ performance.  Rather than turning away from grace and back to the hope of bargain, Portia’s soft urging to Shylock that “there is thrice thy money offered thee,” and again softly, “be merciful take thrice the money.  Bid me tear the bond,” invites Shylock to consider himself a benefactor by accepting the coin as an offering rather than as satisfaction thereby not losing face as to the justness of his claim.  Whereas Bassanio’s pressing upon Shylock to accept the coin smacks of an attempted  payoff, Portia’s respectful speech toward Shylock transfigure’s the potential significance of his agreement to accept the coin.  What Portia has introduced to the trial is not simply a concept, but alertness, vitality, and breath.  Her speech on mercy “catch[es] us and the court unaware, catches us by the throat, enkindles us” in reminding us that law is, at its loftiest and highest, a living bond that requires humility, sacrifice, and risk.
 Shylock does not see it for it is the law he “crave[s],” the image manifesting a link between those too sternly tied to the law and ravenous beasts.  As played by William Mitchell, he becomes sullen, deaf to entreaty.  In contrast to Portia, he seeks to rip law from its nest of human relations.  But nor do the others see what Portia teaches.  Bassanio responds that Portia should “wrest once the law” to her “authority” and willingly do a “little wrong” to accomplish “a great right.”  Power as that which has dominion, mastery, and command should control here not mercy understood as sacrifice and submission to something beyond the legality of power.  Bassanio has no more heard Portia than Shylock.
 When considering Portia’s course after Shylock refuses her, it seems critical to remember that she stands, in disguise, as teacher. She holds a pedagogic role as the “young and learned doctor” praised by Shylock as a “wise upright judge” and again recommended to the Duke with the statement that never was known “so young a body with so old a head.”  Only by letting the biter fall into the trap of being the one bit, can she teach what she has come to teach.  In telling Shylock “be assur’d / Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st,” she seeks a secular analogue for her earlier statement of spiritual truth.  In insisting that every jot and tittle of the law be fulfilled, Antonio is freed from the bond.  But Shylock now stands bound upon his own principle to answer with his life for directly or indirectly attempting to take the life of a Venetian citizen.  Again, unlike Graziano who gloats and spews “beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself,” Portia speaks as instructor.  Stern, but still as guide telling Shylock “down therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.” 
 The image of the Duke remains arrogant in Miller’s film.  He nevertheless pardons Shylock his life and instead takes half his wealth for the state and gives half to Antonio suggesting a fine may be substituted if Shylock expresses humility.  That Portia does not mean to leave Shylock unaided is evident by her question to Antonio of what mercy he can extend after the Duke has imposed  Shylock’s sentence?  Without pause, Antonio asks that the fine for half of Shylock’s estate be remitted, and he then adds the further conditions that Shylock become a Christian, and make his daughter Jessica and her Christian husband, Lorenzo his sole heirs. 
 The modern taste finds Shylock’s conversion to be a bitter mercy.  In the BBC production, the scene is brutally staged as merchants surround Shylock, still upon his knees, pressing in on him and gloating while Salrino presses the crucifix to his mouth.  Warren Mitchell choose, as many modern actors have, to reveal a deep and inner agony in Shylock at being forcibly “converted” in a manner that alludes to spiritual murder.  And it is not uncommon for legal scholars to see Shylock’s conversion as an example of Portia’s “extraordinary cruelty.”  It is not  too simplistic to remind a witnessing audience that they have entered world of Elizabethan England, not the Elizabethans, the modern.  Thus, in this respect, it may be argued that the film is flawed.  It is not clear at all that a mob wishes to harm Shylock and that individuals instead, such as Antonio, do not wish him well if even at a distance.   The condition may be kindly from the Elizabethan standpoint in that it gives Shylock the opportunity to win eternal life. 
  Moreover, the film’s stressing the conflict between Jew and Christian, rather than 
between individual and singular men, abstracts out all qualities in Shylock and his adversaries except for each’s proclaimed faith.  Gratiano is quite a different man than Antonio; and yet in this last scene there seems to be no differentiation between men but simply a Christian mob, attacking not a fellow man, but only a Jew.  Ironically, the film may, in its zeal to provide a sympathetic Shylock, have done the very thing that Shylock accused the merchants of doing; of forgetting that he was a singular man as well as “a” Jew.  William Mitchell strives to allow the audience to see this not so much by Shylock’s speech but by the emotions that cross his face as he remembers his bride Leah, or quietly recalls to no one “my daughter” in the midst of the trial.  Yet, at the end of the film only a broken Jew cries out in pain that he “is content” and the man has vanished. 
 There are, however, other, more difficult  reasons for being cautious about how one interprets Shylock’s requested conversion.  Even assuming that Shylock endures pain, the existence of pain does not foreclose the possibility that he was extended mercy.  Just as mercy required Shylock’s adversaries to be prepared to express gratitude for the favor they asked of Shylock thereby suffering the bruising of their egos, so too Shylock must suffer the harming of his identity.  It is here that Lawrence Danson’s warning needs to be heeded. Mercy,  in The Merchant of Venice,  must be understood in the context of the redemptive sacrifice.    Mercy, twice blest, entails twice a suffering.  For the one who gives it, something of significance is forgiven – such as a debt.  Hence, the import of Portia recognizing the partial rightness of Shylock’s claim, and the import of seeing Antonio’s potential claim.  But so too, mercy requires sacrifice on the part of the receiver.  This was something the merchants would not yield to Shylock when they requested that his answer to their plea be gentle.  If Shylock too only hates in his receiving than he stands in parity with the merchants.  If, however, he endures the suffering of his identity, of which all mercy consists in that it requires one to go to the knee,  he stands above them. 
 As the casket trial taught, mercy too consists of a compassion in that the giver foregoes or  sacrifices in a spirit of joy that reaches out to the one benefitted.  In Miller’s film, such joy is lacking in Act Four.  Thus, it would seem Merchant teaches of mercy’s true character by showing the audience what occurs when one of its condition are unmet.   When we turn to the trial of the ring, however, mercy is fulfilled.  Moreover, Portia does more than to engage in a silly trick of her husband.  By tricking him, she teaches the final lesson of the play and reinforces the prior.  Law, which bounds us in obligation to each other, cannot sustain itself, but must depend upon love for it is out of love that we commit to commitment.  The corollary point is that insofar as obligations are founded on love, their worth is priceless –  and hence no equivalency will absolve their breach. Only unbounded mercy can do this.
 This lesson stretches from Act Four to Five.  When Bassanio and Antonio attempt to “gratify” the learned doctor, the language of commerce and calculation of commensurate value is again introduced by Bassanio:
 Most worthy gentlemen, I and my friend
 Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted
 Of grievous penalties, in lieu whereof
 Three thousand ducats due unto the Jew
 We freely cope your courteous pains withal.
 
 Portia refuses her “due.”  She accounts herself paid in “satisfaction” at what has transpired and turns away.  Bassanio, as he did at the trial, insists on a conception of justice that requires Portia-as-doctor to be paid.  Hence, again Portia presses the concept to reveal its inadequacy and she allows matters of love qua charity to be placed in a commercial context whereby she exclaims “I’ll take this ring from you –/ Do not draw back your hand, I’ll take no more,/ And you in love shall not deny me this.”  Portia return Bassanio to the land of Shylock where law untempered, unconditioned, and uninformed by mercy resides.
 Bassanio, through his conception of just dues,  has placed himself in a dilemma from which he cannot escape.  To refuse the favor Portia asks in her role as the doctor of law  is to cause offense; and yet, to give the ring is break vow with Portia, his wife.  What Bassanio painfully and comically learns at end is that no law – no bond – can secure one from harm, dilemma, or conflict.  A ship may fail to come to port, a turn of events may occur where by moral necessity demands one dishonors a vow in order to honor another.   Both humorously and with meaning Portia chastises Gratiano for the loss of Nerissa’s ring reminding him that it was “riveted with faith unto your flesh.”  And though Bassanio swears again that never more will he “break an oath with thee,” Antonio perhaps wiser than his young friend again “dare[s] to be bound again” as surety for he and audience knows that humans cannot attain such moral perfection and hence may always need to stand in debt to mercy’s hand.   Portia showed, with skill, how the law, unmoored from a community of customs and beliefs, could capriciously go where it would as if containing its own relentless will.  Here, in the last act, she intimates the unconditional worth of those bonds.  As she lightly taunts her husband, Portia indicates what has been missed all along. Obligations cannot be priced nor debts paid with coin. Softly the audience was told the lesson before as Shylock himself smirked at Christian husbands who would value their wives below Antonio, and at a daughter who did not glean that her mother’s ring was more priceless than a “wilderness of monkeys.”  Hence, the absolving of a breach always requires the gentle hand of mercy for the breach can never be wiped out through payment as if  it was a debt of commercial exchange.   It is to Antonio that Portia then gives the ring, who kindly returns it to Bassanio. 
 Conclusion
   Miller’s production succeeds even if flawed, for it is careful to maintain each character in his or her complexity.  Miller leads the viewer to think about the underlying themes of love, prejudice, law, and mercy – all species of union or discord -- in a way that the play itself has advised: with humility, uncertainty, yielding, a willingness to hazard one’s own beliefs, and with gracious openness.  The film does not end in unqualified joyful harmony.  Antonio, always a difficult staging question given his place as a fifth wheel, sits alone outside Portia’s home after the happy couples have retired.  Jessica’s face is pensive, and again a conception of justice as dues rears its head when the women swear to be unfaithful in payment to their husbands for their alleged unfaithfulness.  Played with lightness, the actors still allow a bit of unease, a bit if uncertainty, to hover over the scene. 
 This seems right, for in that The Merchant of Venice stands as an Elizabethan morality play, it reminds the audience that even at this harmonious moment when music surrounds all and Lorenzo has praised the musical order of the heavenly spheres, he concedes “we cannot hear it.”  The audience is reminded that “in the course of justice none of us / Should see salvation,” and therein be mercy’s plea.