Therefore
lay bare your bosom.
Ay, his breast:
-Portia/Shylock
The Merchant of Venice Act
IV, scene i Line 250
Well I’m not sure where to start. Perhaps a brief explanation
of the line.
The first part of the line, ‘Therefore lay bare your bosom,’
is spoken by Portia who is masquerading as a male doctor, and the second part,
‘Ay, his breast,’ by Shylock (who, by the way, is NOT the merchant of Venice;
he’s the money lender of Venice). You will notice that combined it’s a perfect
verse of iambic pentameter. At this point in the proceedings it looks like
Portia is about to agree that Shylock’s claim is valid and that Antonio (THE
Merchant of Venice) is going to have to surrender a pound of his flesh to
Shylock. Of course we know how this thing ends up, so no need to worry about
Antonio.
Now I’m inclined to get philosophical about this play on the
whole (and there’s a lot to philosophize on here), but I’m going to try to
stick to this specific line instead even though it’s a somewhat innocuous line
(at least in comparison to some of the other ones in this scene). Or is it?
Portia (disguised as Doctor Balthazar, and I’m not even
going to start in on Shakespeare and his love of having women masquerade as men
– which by the way ends up as men (all the actors in the plays back then were
men) masquerading as women masquerading as men) says ‘Therefore lay bare your
bosom’ to Antonio. Now keep in mind that Antonio is the guy who started this
whole thing rolling by signing this deal in the beginning of the play to borrow
money from Shylock. Why did he borrow the money? He borrowed it because he was
cash poor; all his money was invested in ships he had out at sea seeking
treasure. But what did he need the money for? To give to his friend Bassanio. And
what did Bassanio need it for? He wanted to impress a rich young woman so that
he could get her to marry him and then he would come into her money at which
point he’d be able to pay Antoino back, and then Antonio wouldn’t forfeit on
the loan and have to pay the pound of flesh. And who was this rich young woman
that he was able to impress and marry? Portia/Bathalzar. The whole plan worked,
except not quite quick enough and Antonio defaulted on the loan before Bassanio
completed his end of the task.
Now in all the stuff I’ve read about this play (and I’ve
read a bit) this little circle of events is never really addressed. There is
boatloads of analysis on all sorts of aspects of the play, but I’ve never run
into Portia being much troubled by Bassanio’s duplicity in courting her, or
Antonio’s part in that duplicity. And yet at this point she knows all these
facts. So I say, based on this little circuitous train of thought, and keeping
in mind that at this point Portia knows all of it, isn’t it just possible that
when she says ‘bare your bosom’ to Antonio she’s asking Antoino to ‘fess up and
spill the beans on helping Bassanio to deceive her? Well isn’t it? So this line
just might be a really, really key line that no one ever keys in on.
There, I’ve done it. I’ve left the very famous ‘quality of
mercy’ and the ‘(but not) one drop of Christian blood’ lines completely alone, and
I’ve focused purely on today’s Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line which, as
usual, appears to be anything but random. Well I feel pretty good about that.
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