The Merchant of Venice and the demise of hospitality

The Merchant of Venice explores usury and the violation of hospitality’s codes in a world where hospitality is no longer a charitable act. Rather, money is the primary motivation and relationships revolve around commercial transactions not social bonds. Robert Wilson’s Elizabethan morality play The Three Ladies of London provides an important antecedent to Shakespeare’s play in its depictions of Usury, Hospitality, and the usurer-Jew Gerontus. The flesh bond and the wealthy Lady of Belmont appear in one of the probable sources for Shakespeare's play: Giovanni Fiorentino’s medieval Italian novella Il Pecorone. In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare seems to have developed from Il Pecorone the idea that insincere hospitality can have serious consequences. Shakespeare also appears to consolidate distinct concepts from Wilson’s Three Ladies by reshaping the figure of Usury (the sin of medieval morality) and Gerontus (the reasonable Jewish moneylender), into Shylock, a complex figure who elicits both sympathy and revulsion. Where Hospitality is murdered by Usury in Wilson’s play, Shakespeare presents Shylock’s isolation in terms of alterity, dehumanisation, and social exclusion in a world where loyalty and moral obligations have been replaced by the demands of the market.