The Ethics of Equivalent Exchange in The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

Karl Marx severely criticizes the monetary exchange system by quoting Timon’s attack on money from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Does Shakespeare agree or disagree with Marx’s opinion? Does Shakespeare support or criticize a market system in which the exchange of monetary or other signs is the principal means of life? This article attempts to find an answer to this question in The Merchant of Venice, a Shakespearean comedy which deals with the issues of money and exchange in full scale. To give the answer in advance, this article suggests that Shakespeare in this play not only acknowledges the monetary exchange system but also finds a life ethics in it, namely, that an ethical way of life in the emerging capitalistic society like Venice, Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice suggests, can be found in its neutral exchange system. To develop this argument, this article looks at the play as an economic revenge play, traces the cycle of Shylock’s, Portia’s, and Antonio’s revenges circulated in the various economic forms, and reveals that in these circulations of retaliation lies an ethics of equivalent exchange. This article, focusing on both the conflation of the human realm with the economic one and the confusion between revenge and mercy, derives Shakespeare’s hypothesis that an equal or symmetrical exchange process operating at the basis of human life can be a revenge or an ethics, depending on ‘who, where, when, why, how’ use it. Sometimes, the economics of equivalent exchange can lead to constructing the restrictive laws or legal systems, making the inhuman contracts, and seeking vengeance. If it is wisely used at the right time for the right person or circumstance, however, it can be embodied in impartial verdicts, equitable contracts, or the exchange of love and thus can effectively function as an ethics to enhance or enrich our life. To prove this hypothesis, this article analyzes the revenge narratives represented in The Merchant of Venice, which circulate from Antonio, via Bassanio, to Shylock, and recirculate from Shylock, via Portia, to Antonio, centering on the two thematic axises-the monetary exchange and revenge psychology.