Tesina - The Role of Venice in Shakespeare s Plays

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Venice in Shakespeare’s Plays

The Role of

During the time in which Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice and Othello,

Venice was considered by English one of the most mythical cities in Italy. In his article,

Franco Gaeta distinguishes three different elements of the Venetian Myth: ‘the myth of 1

Venice the mixed state, of Venice the state of liberty, and of Venice the city of pleasure’ ,

the last one was also known as ‘Venezia-città-galante’. For these reasons, and also due to

the political sagacity of the Venetians, the city had never been conquered and was

considered to be an ideal form of government. Venice as a capital of pleasure was, to

Shakespeare, one of the crucial element that determined the myth. But in the sixteenth

century Venice had also some dark sides along with the bright ones, so it is important to

analyse every aspect of the city’s reputation: Venice the Rich, Venice the Wise, Venice

the Just and Venice città galante. The city was famous for its economic power, which had

been built especially through commerce to Asia and Africa. These trade routes and the

massive presence of foreigners on the territory ensured that Venice was regularly

supplied with goods and products from across the globe. The city could rightfully be

regarded as the ‘marketplace’ of the world.

Despite having gained, during the centuries, this enormous amount of social, economic

and cultural richness, Venice was not expanding as much as it used to be in the world

market and, as a consequence, Venetian find their source of incoming in symbolic capital

and create out of their name a currency that navigated through Europe, exploiting their

influence in multiple fields such as global tourism, paintings, travel and literature.

Surrounded by the sea, which determines the unique urban structure of the city and has

always represented a fabulous element, Venice benefited from a great protection as well

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as a great vulnerability. The words ‘This is Venice: my house is not a grange’ (1.1.110) ,

are pronounced by Brabantio to emphasize the idea of Venice as a perfect city where to

live. In fact, it was the location where a multitude of nationalities, ethnicities and

religions made their way through the years, into the core of the mythical landscape, as

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Lewes Lewkenor refers to ‘a common and general market to the world’. ‘Venice would

have appeared to Elizabethans as a place of both ethnic diversity and relative tolerance

for Protestants. Even though Venice was firmly Catholic, its resistance to the Papacy was

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well known.’

A century ago the Scottish historian Horatio Brown wrote ‘the scattered allusions to be

collected from [Shakespeare’s] plays prove an intimacy with Venice which is surprising in

1 Franco Gaeta, ed. Nunziature di Venezia (Rome, 1967)

2 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Agostino Lombardo, (Milano, Feltrinelli, 1996)

3 Gasparo Contarini, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, trans. Lewis Lewkenor (London, 1599;

reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p.132

4 Kent Cartwright, ‘The Return from the Dead in The Merchant of Venice’, in Vision of Venice in Shakespeare,

Laura Tosi and Shaul Bassi, 167-181 2

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a man who probably was never out of England’. According to this, it can be supposed

that sufficient information would have been available in London to create an accurate

image of Venice. Safely we can say that Shakespeare read the translation of Lewes

Lewkenor of Gasparo Contarini’s book The Commonwealth and Government of Venice

(1599). At that time, as we mentioned before, Venice was experiencing a process that

turned a real city into a myth and this was rapidly acquired by non-Venetian; the

longevity of this mythical city, in fact, has to be attribute to visitors and foreigners. The

original myth of Venice comes from the notion that the city was the true successor to the

ancient Roman Republic. This myth was created in 1543 by Gasparo Contarini’s De

magistratibus et republica venetorum. Before this publication, the principal source of

English’s perception of Venice was William Thomas’s History of Italy and this work was,

for a long time, of crucial importance for the English conduit of Italian culture. Thomas’s

aim was to make English readers judge and study the various Italian states and then

learn a different lesson from each one. According to his point of view, the best state was

Venice, thanks to all the advantages of stability and liberty, and due to a system that

encourages its citizens to take part of public affairs; thus, with no doubt, the most

important aspect for Englishman enthusiasm was the political one. Representing Venice,

for Shakespeare, was a means of thinking about the problems and opportunities of

Elizabeth England.

Shakespeare sets two of its greatest plays in Venice, The Merchant of Venice and Othello.

In these plays Venice as city-state creates an image of the Renaissance culture of

paradox because, in fact, both plays create opposite view; in both, Venice has a

significant importance. In The Merchant of Venice and Othello, Venice is built up as ‘a

puzzle of utopian and dystopian qualities that gives a hint of what England might become

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and the way in which it could deal […] with internal and external conflicts.’ Thus, Venice

can be considered the most eternal of all symbolic landscape of the Elizabethan period,

but, as David Meinig claimed ‘we regard all landscapes as symbolic, as expression of

cultural values, social behaviour, and individual actions worked upon particular localities

over a span of time. Every landscape is an accumulation […] and every landscape is a

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code, and its study may be undertaken as a deciphering of meaning.’

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare structured the play partly on the contrast

between idealistic and realistic opinions about society and relationships. On the one

hand, the play tells us that love is more important than money, mercy is preferable to

revenge and love lasts forever, but, on the other hand, a more cynical point of view tells

us that money rules the world, mercy alone cannot govern our lives and love can

evaporate after marriage. The play switches suddenly between these different attitudes;

5 Horatio Brown, Studies in the History of Venice, vol. 2 (London: John Murray,1907), p. 160

6 Laura Tosi and Shaul Bassi, Introduction, in Vision of Venice in Shakespeare, p.1-14

7 David W. Meinig, ‘Introduction,’ in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed.

D.W.Meinig (New York and Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1979), p.6. 3

Shakespeare organizes this shifts between idealism and realism by associating the two

concepts with the play's two locations: Venice and Belmont. These two cities have

similarities but also several differences. One of the first similarity that can be noticed is

expressed in Act 1, Scene 1 and is that both are places where people may be unhappy;

Antonio is unhappy in Venice and he does not know why: in the very first line he says, ‘In

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sooth I know not why I am so sad’ (1.1.1) and he denies that it is his business or love

that are making him unh