Is The Merchant of Venice a Comedy or a Tragicomedy ?

This essay aims at discussing some issues in the play The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. Even though some may assume that the play is a comedy, the problem of its literary genre is a rather problematic issue today. Some critics debate its inclusion in the comedies, because it is not at all a funny play. The label ‘comedy’ did not suggest that it was a funny play in Shakespeare’s age. If some critics think that it is not a funny play, Shakespeare may have designed Shylock as a tragic character. In fact, the play’s effects of Shylock’s energy and tragic dimensions deeply influenced the audience in the moment when it was first staged. This essay first discusses the problem pathos and inwardness in Shylock’s speech. After that, it discusses the issue of literary genre and argues that it should be classified as a tragicomedy.


Introduction
Someone may ask whether The Merchant of Venice is not just a comedy. The use of such genre may be suggestive because it enables to introduce ambiguities in the text, letting the reader and the audience feels ambivalent reactions: on the one hand laughing at Shylock's comic traits and at the play's happy ending, on the other hand, bitterly feeling the awkward sensations that Shylock is simply ruined without moral scruples. The tragic and comic opposition in the play constructs the character of the play, especially Shylock, as a rather complex character. His anger and his rage may seem comic, but they suggest and represent his inward feelings and dimensions: his hatred, desire of revenge, resentment and anxieties.
Though some assume that The Merchant of Venice is a comedy, the problem of the literary genre of play is problematic issue today. Some critics have pointed out that the play was tragically designed. It is not a comic play, but an uncomic comedy. They criticize the inclusion of The

Merchant of Venice in the comedies because it
is not at all a funny play. The label 'comedy' did not suggest that it was a funny play in the age.
If some critics think that it is not a funny play, Shakespeare   ; Laurie Maguire's Studying Shakespeare, 2004; and James Shapiro's Shakespeare and the Jews, 1996. crying need for choosing a point of view when reading and analyzing such a polemic play as The Merchant of Venice. Moreover, it is not only an issue of this research, but surprisingly it is also a tendency noticed in our contemporary criticism, especially from the 1980s, that sees Shylock simultaneously as a villain and a victim.
If there is a reactive remainder in literary criticism against the 20 th century anti-Semitism and the horrors of Auschwitz, it is not surprising at all that the contemporary readings of the play seem to 'defend' Shylock. 3 In that sense, for example, Derek Cohen (2003) reveals that it is not merely inevitable that these two characters [Shylock and Caliban] themselves are historical subjects, but also that today it is difficult, and even morally problematic, read Shakespeare's Jew and his Slave as though the concentration camps and the institution of slavery never happened; to read them purely historically, that is, and to concomitantly obscure the terrible consequences of a marginalization that in Shakespeare is relatively benign. I attempt thus to link Caliban and Shylock to the subsequent histories of their nations or kinds by an examination of the contemporary contexts of marginalization described by the plays and to link that context to a larger and more catastrophic history, a history as old as social experience. (p.13) Thus, the focus of the analysis may fall on Shylock's inwardness and pathos, pointing out his suffering and resentment towards the Christians represented in the play. Consequently, if one regards Shylock as the hero of the play, rather than Antonio, the discussion may reconsider the literary genre of the play. This discussion is based mainly on Maguire (2004), Gross (2006), Garber (2004 and Auerbach (2007a;2007b)

Pathos and Inwardness
The Merchant of Venice is a play specially focused on appearances and subtle inner feelings of the characters. It is a play that represents the paradoxes between outwardness and inwardness, which is suggested by the Shakespearean mirroring device, silences, non-said, bodily gestures, breaks of language and twists of language. But inwardness was a Renaissance issue emerging from previous forms of the representation of an inner self in other literary forms. However, outwardness was supposed to be false, deceitful, and even dangerous, whereas the notion of the inwardness was seen as true and sincere, even though it was imperceptible to the senses. The forms, molds and shapes of the appearances could be calculated pretentions, which may not be seen as the symptoms of a truthful inward disposition of the mind. Such paradox was not at all an unfamiliar issue to Shakespeare's coevals. Thus, to overcome this gap certain forms of discourses described and identified discursive traits, which constituted the constellations of the rhetoric of inwardness in that age (MAUS, 1995).
Inwardness is an inward space of the self, which is constituted by feelings, thoughts, and ideas which appear in ever so subtle and sometimes puzzling details of the text. In fact, inwardness is Considering inwardness as an epochal cultural construct, its traits and shapes are quite different from the modern concept of subjectivity. Inwardness is still a broader concept in English Renaissance Age, rather than our modern concept of subjectivity, which is inevitably pervaded by philosophical concepts and psychoanalytic assumptions, as discussed by Ludwig (2018;2020, in press (2003), possesses more greatness than Shylock: Shakespeare acknowledged and understood with more depth the human problematicity of his Jew. For him, Shylock is, regarding his social position and considering the aesthetic view, a lower figure, unworthy of the tragic, whose tragicity is invoked during one moment, but it is not more than a flavor of a triumph of a higher humanity, nobler and freer, and also more aristocratic. (2007a, p. 280).
Likewise, Richard III is a rather villainous and vicious character, even though he expresses remorse and conscience at the end of the play, as discussed by Ludwig (2017). On the other hand, Shylock's inward dimensions and human feelings are not determined simply by his actions. According to Auerbach, there is a notion of destiny, not in the ancient sense, but in the sense of life experience which precedes the action itself. Auerbach focuses his analysis on the idea of destiny, not in the Greek sense, but as the configuration of the character's pre-history and on-stage actions.
Due to a multiplicity of themes and to the remarkable liberty of movements of the Elizabethan theatre, there are clearly shown, in each case, a special atmosphere, life conditions, a pre-history of the characters; […] we can observe thus many other things on the main characters; one makes a big picture of his normal life and of his peculiar character, independently of the plot wherein he is involved now. Thus, destiny means here something more than the current conflict. In ancient tragedy, it is almost possible to distinguish clearly between the natural character of the personage and the destiny he is doomed to. In Elizabethan tragedy, we are faced in many cases, not only to the purely natural character, but to a cha-racter already pre-determined by birth, vital circumstances, by his own pre-history (that means, by destiny); a character in which destiny already partakes in a great measure, before it is accomplished in the form of the tragic classic determined conflict; this is often only the motif through which a tragicity long ago in process is realised. This is seen with special clarity in Shylock's and Lear's cases. What happens to each one is especially destined to them, for the special character of Shylock and Lear, and such character is not only natural, but pre-formed by birth, situation, pre-history, that is to say, by destiny, when it reaches an unmistakable peculiarity and the tragedy destiny to him. (AUERBACH, 2007a, p. 284-285) Pre-historical seems to refer here to a set of life experiences which one can imaginative build from the character's behavior, feelings, thoughts, ideas and gestures. His condition as an outcast, his problematic relation to both Antonio and Jessica makes his own deeds to go against him.
He is a sort of victim of his own actions and of his circumstantial situation as a usurer and a Jew. what's that good for?' (SHAKESPEARE, 2010: 283) Then Shylock answers such question in his most astonishing and touching speech: To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (SHAKESPEARE, 2010, p. 284 -285).
First of all, he presents his reasons for his bond.
The desire of revenge and his reasons for it are clearer now, though he had already mentioned them beforehand in the play. All his losses were caused by the Christians, as well as by his daughter, who is now a converso. He unveils that Antonio was bound to disdain his way of earning money and his customs, such as religion, faith, and nation. The only reason for Antonio's ill-treatment to him is because Shylock is a Jew. Thus, he claims that a Jew has the same feelings, affections, desires, organs and dimensions as any Christian has. Jews are subject to the same vicissitudes of life as a Christian is, such as poisoning, hurting, and dying. However, he uses such comparisons to justify that if a Christian can take revenge, so the Jews will take the same revenge. Although the Christians highly praise the value of 'mercy', they are as merciless to Shylock as he is to them.
Finally, Shylock reveals that Antonio and the Christians' deeds have taught him to be merciless, revengeful, perfidious, and villain: 'The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.' (SHAKESPEARE, 2010: 285 His energy in this speech is quite enigmatic.
He makes the audience feel the pity for his loss, his anger, anxiety, desire for revenge, and his resoluteness for it. His pathos is vibrating and deep, because he is simultaneously mourning the loss of his daughter 7 , money and roaring his inward rage against Antonio. His inwardness is represented in its deepest dimensions and we see that his humanity is enhanced by this energy, strength and vigor of such inward feelings coming out so violently. As Cohen points out (1980: 59): 'He is a suffering human being.' In fact, many critics analyze his speech as a claim for his humanity, such as Goddard (1963), Charlton (1984), Hinely (1980, Sherman (2004), Cooper (1970), Cohen (1980. His humanity is enhanced by his suffering. Furthermore, in this speech there are some 6 In the same way, Shakespeare puts a similar speech in Macbeth's mouth, as he fears his conscience: 'But in these cases / We still have judgment here; that we but teach / Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return/ To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice / Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice / To our own lips.' (Macbeth, I, vii, 7-12) 7 In love poetry pathos is common place which enhances the lover suffering and pain. For an example, see Aguiar and Ferreira (2018) Parallelism, periodicity, and balance and/or antithesis are structures that in fact lend themselves rather readily to interpretation. Balance and antithesis are above all principles of ordering: parallelism (a more fundamental operation, and more widespread in language) creates what we can call temporary semantic equivalents between parallel elements, and periodicity is a syntactic image of closure (no addition to the structure is possible). as "hero" where the passive would consolidate the subject as "sufferer" ' (1992, p. 150). Thus, the focus on passive sentences answers rather to a 'preference for objectivity and distance, which seeks for avoiding personal attachment, commitment, and responsibility to one's speech'. (1992, p. 150). In classical terms, passivisation was named hyperbaton. Rhetoricians always tried to analyze the infringement of the natural order of the sentence, whose order is disturbed and whose meaning are changed (COETZEE, 1992, p. 150). Thus, Coetzee presents some important aspects of classical passivisation or hyperbaton: In the interest of aesthetic appeal, or for the sake of emphasis, or (in Longinus) for the sake of representing dramatically states of inner passion, transgressions of the natural, logical order may take place.
[…] Hyperbaton must be used sparingly, since it depends for its effectiveness on the maintenance of the norm of natural word order. (1992: 151).
Coetzee argues that in classical English writers, such as Defoe, Swift, Gibbon and Henry James there is a rather intense use of the passive and of the agentless sentence as a rhetorical device.
Such device tends to abstractness, generality, and irony, i. e. 'the aristocratic mode of irony' (1992, p. 159). Such authors also employ twists in language which reverse the expected idea proposed by the passive. In Coetzee's opinion, the analysis of the implicit meaning of the passive, specifically the short passive, that which 'the agent is "never there"' can be sustained by 'comparative, historical, and psychological' evidence (1992, p. 173). For him, a way of thinking the passive is to consider them as sentences whose agent is not merely veiled (but still there behind the veil) or deleted (but once present) or unexpressed (but thought), but is actually null, void. The short passive is the principal means language provides to enable us to talk about acts as though they occurred without agents. (COETZEE, 1992, p. 173).
Thus, meaning and form are twisted together in order to create multiple and ambivalent meanings, which are enhanced in the twist of the form. (COETZEE, 1992, p. 174). In that sense, Shakespeare also uses the passive ironically, because in this speech Shylock does not mention anything directly about the Christians; however, one can infer that the Christians are being targeted when he utters verbs in the passive. By omitting the agent in some of the sentences of Shylock's speech, Shakespeare creates a vague but known and foretold idea of what is behind the characters' faces in the play: the Christians are represented as a mirror of Shylock and they are hypocritical by criticizing him, yet they try to hide that they injured Shylock. He is trying to enhance his condition as a sufferer and a victim, revealing that the causes of his anger and anxiety are Christian actions and mistreatment. In that sense, Coetzee enhances that the passive, despite its convenience, leaves an uneasy feeling: it opens up an area of vagueness that can simply be skated over (as most of us do in everyday usage), but that can be explored and exploited for their own ends by writers who take seriously the question of whether language is a good map of reality. (1992, p. 174).
Such 'uneasy feeling' is enhanced throughout the play, but it gets at its top in this speech. Even though Shylock uses prose when he speaks, its tension is emphasized by the use of passive. To a certain extent one can say that 'God' may be the agent of some  (STAIGER 1997, p. 121). His pathos may be felt as exaggerated and even histrionic. Nevertheless, Staiger points out that whereas in the lyrical poetry feelings are quite inwardly kept, in the action of the pathos feelings are not much discreet. As Staiger defines, the action of the pathos implies resistance -a rude clash or mere apathy -which tries to shatter with impetus. Thus, stylistic peculiarities are explained in this new situation. The pathos is not spread out in our inner self; it must be engraved many times by force in our inner self. The context of the sentence does not dissolve itself oneirically as in the lyric work, but the whole strength of the speech is cored on loose words. (1997, p. 122) For Staiger, such twists are intentionally made by the dramatist, who proves that he violates the verse and its language spontaneously (STAIGER 1997, p. 124). With such intentional twists and breaks Shylock tries to persuade the Christians and the audience of his human condition. What moves him is his desire and will to recover his daughter, money, honor, and respect. In this sense, 'the pathetic man is moved by what must be and his passions invest against the status quo. ' (1997, p. 125 Hence, it is a way the dramatist can elevate the characters, because even though they are lower people, they are able to express their feelings and inwardness through pathos. The grandeur or nobility of pathos dwells on the factuality of 'being ahead' of his status quo. (STAIGER 1997, p. 126). In many senses, Shylock is ahead of his entourage, because he perceives that the Christians are hypocritical and cynical and do not consider him as a human being, always treating him as a stray dog. In a subtler level, he represents a rhetorical device to point the Christians' contradictions, who are no longer able to smooth over them.
Furthermore, Staiger sums up the intentions of the use of pathos in dramatic works and its effects: Everything leads to this: the impetuous rhythm is due to the tension between present and future, the strikes which affect us as an unquestionable exigency, and the pauses show the vacuity of the inexistent as the vacuity in which the status quo is absorbed, the situation to be changed. (STAIGER 1997, p. 126) What Shylock foresees is the vacuity of his loss.
He tries to revenge himself and cry out against the Christians as a retaliatory act, as a reaction to satisfy his anger and resentment. However, as soon as he claims for justice in the trial scene, he will be obliged to face his fate and accept his ruin imposed by Portia and the Christians. Thus, the bend of such devices aims at representing floatation of Shylock's inwardness.
Shylock feels and expresses pathos, whose meaning and feelings have received deep Christian dimensions. In that sense, Erich Auerbach  'fervor', and 'inebriety' (2007b, p. 89). Therefore, in comparison to all previous ideas of pathos/ passio, it turned out to be something praised and sought for in the late Middle Ages and in early Renaissance. Despite that, its ambiguity is embodied in its modern concept: pathos/ passio is seen as something good and terrible simultaneously. In the end, Auerbach makes clear that pathos/passio 'always comes from superhuman powers -from the depths as well as from the heights -it is always received and endured as a magnificent and terrible gift. ' (2007b, p. 93

Is the play a comedy or a tragicomedy?
Though some assume that The Merchant of Venice is a comedy, the problem of the literary genre of play is not a well-solved issue until today.
Some critics have already pointed out that the play was tragically designed, as Nicholas Rowe, Heine and Ulrici affirmed. In a similar way, Laurie Maguire has recently pointed out that the play is 'a deeply uncomic comedy ' (2004, p. 147), because 'the last scene is unusually private and anti-social.
It is also indifferent to the preceding events: the characters indulge in bawdy jokes, oblivious to the fact that they have just destroyed a man. ' (2004, p. 149). Also, Graham Midgley, in The Merchant of Venice: a reconsideration (1969), recognizes the difficulty in reading Shylock and the tendency to forget the events of the trial scene (1969, p. 191).
Thus, he criticizes the inclusion of The Merchant of Venice in the comedies because it is not at all a funny play (1969, p.195).
The label 'comedy' did not imply that it was a funny play in Shakespeare's Age. They were represented in the Festivals. Comedy can be defined as a play that represent funny situations through artistic devices, which make the reader or the audience experience comic. (MAGUIRE, 2004;GARBER, 2004). Tragedy, on the other hand, represents the tragic fate of a hero who may pay his faults (hybris) with death (MAGUIRE, 2004;GARBER, 2004, ARISTOTLE, 1980 Despite that, the play ends in a happy-ending scene with the couple's reconciliation and marriage. Furthermore, according to Marjorie Garber (2004), The term 'festive' refers not so much to the plays' presumptive joyousness as to their thematic links and plot links to seasonal festivals from May Day to Christmas and Twelfth Night, and it is noteworthy that in each of these plays, especially the Merchant, there is much that actively resists joyful celebration. (2004, p. 284-285 Here is testimony that already in Shakespeare's own day the public was puzzled by the title of the play and had substituted for, or added to, the author's another title more expressive of what seemed to be its leading interest and central figure. The world did not have to wait for Kean and Irving to discover its 'hero'. [...] The public needed two titles. Shakespeare is content with two-in-one. (1969, p. 150 we eye-witness the cruelties that the Christians had impinged on him. We share the uneasiness provoked by the sensations and feelings of such opposing moments of the play.
The greatest problem of the play that makes uneasy to analyze it as a drama is the fifth act, with its effacing devices and the total forgetfulness of the cruelties that the Christians inflicted upon Shylock. The last act's effect is rather conflicting.
The talking about love and romance, music and stars, the reconciliation of the couples Portia and Bassanio, Nerissa and Gratiano, who have just quarreled about their giving away their rings are over-determining elements which foreclose the sour effects of the fourth act. In that sense, according to Drakakis (1998), The process that we see operating through the text of The Merchant of Venice is one which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be shown to constitute a systematic 'forgetting', effected through the conversion of Shylock, and the formal shift into the genre of comedy as a means of effecting closure. Whereas in tragedy what we experience is the isolation of the protagonist, in comedy the closure is usually one which incorporates participants into an inclusive definition of 'society'. (1998, p. 188) Against Shylock's isolation and exclusion is necessary a comic and pretended happy ending to efface the play's sour effects. However, such closure is not dramatically convincing, since the play provokes a sort of bitter feeling at its end, which we try to reject or assimilate. This feeling provoked by such occlusion is disquieting and disturbing. However, some other elements point to sadness and discontent in the last act. Antonio ends the play completely alone. Like Shylock, he continues to be a sort of outcast of the play, a social outcast who is not happy. Likewise, Jessica remains sad and discontent in the final act. The opposing elements -festivity and sadnesshave annihilating effects in the audience and the reader. The play's aesthetic effect is thus rather conflicting and anguishing.