The Quality Of Mercy

 

In Shakespeare’s play, ‘The Merchant Of Venice’, the lady Portia masquerades as a male lawyer, and makes a speech urging Shylock, a moneylender and a petitioner bent on vengeance, to be merciful in his attitude, in a legal case in which Shylock is attempting to regain what is rightfully his.

It’s a famous speech, one of the set pieces of Shakespearean drama. Portia speaks in exalted style about the divine attribute of the quality of mercy, which transcends and guides justice. It blesses the person who forgives as well as the one forgiven. 

The mutuality of this blessing embodies a Christian principle of human equality as sinners, expressed in the phrase: ‘...That in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, / And that same prayer doth teach us all to render/ The deeds of mercy’.  (The Merchant Of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1) 

This is a ‘big picture’ view, and appeals to the majoritarian view in Christian Venice at that time. But Shylock has a grievance, and it is not easy for a person who has been not only continually racially profiled, but discriminated against and defiled, to be merciful. A person who has unjustly been made to feel small finds it hard to be a ‘bigger person’, in word and deed. 

Indeed, even when he is legally granted the restoration of the money owed to him, Shylock seeks punishment for the man to whom he has lent money. This desire for retribution, over and above justice, leads to Shylock being excluded from the optimistic and comedic outcome of the play. His daughter informs on him and elopes with an unbeliever, and he loses a large part of the fortune he has amassed for the vindictiveness with which he pursued the life of his opponent, Antonio. 

Shylock has been insulted due to his minority status in an anti-Semitic City state, and reviled in word and deed by the boorish Christians who use his services. The temptation to even the scales is severe. 

From a spiritual perspective, Shylock’s attitude increases the negative attachment he has to this situation. He has the legal right to claim recompense and assert his rights. But the accumulated bitterness of years causes him to engage further, and demand that compensation be made to him for all the years of minority status. 

Whenever a person attaches so much significance to one case, one incident, or one relationship, we can see that they are setting themselves up for an ordeal. The complex challenges of life suggest to us that taking things lightly, staying on a factual, problem-solving level, is a good strategy for maintaining personal equilibrium. 

This requires self-evaluation, and self-restraint. The moral awareness required for the recalibration of the conflicted self in situations like this centres on foreseeability: that we see the negative impact that pursuing vengeance will have on ourselves, and so refrain. 

Punitive thinking affects the person who seeks to punish. Judgment is severe, and, in a moral sense, an act of violence.    It is engaged in by those seeking to make order out of the chaos of human conflict. Often those who have suffered greatly seek to find relief and closure in seeking redress. But to draw a personal line under a devastating incident is in effect an act of self-care. 

To extend that mercy to oneself is surely the best exit out of vengeance and into a greater and more lasting freedom.