Antidote to Sadness

A ntonio of Venice is inexplicable sad. So is Portia of Belmont, her “little body . . . aweary of this great world” ( Merchant of Venice 2.1). Antonio and Portia have all that they could want. They aren’t anxious about money; neither is pining for love. Why so sad?

Marjorie Garber ( Shakespeare After All , 286-7) points out that “sad” “carried a more specific gravitas in Shakespeare’s period than perhaps it does in our own, deriving from the same word as ‘satiated’ or ‘sated,’ having had one’s fill.” Antonio and Portia “are rich, they are well attended, and yet their lives seem empty.” Shakespeare is capturing the paradox of desire. Desire is enlivening only when it’s not entirely fulfilled. Once we have all we desire, we feel empty. It seems that fullness comes from the desiring itself.

Garber argues that to overcome their accedia, “Antonio and Portia have to leave the prison of the self-sufficient self and commit themselves to the world, and to human relationships, friendship, passion, and love.” They have to risk, as the inscription on the lead casket has it, prepared to “give and hazard all.”

She elaborates, “Giving and hazarding are, in a way, the opposite of Shylock’s usury, security, and interest. Antonio begins to lose his melancholy when Bassanio appeals to his friends and seeks to borrow money from him. Since he does not have the money on hand, he has to borrow it, to go into debt to Shylock. Taking on this debt is what, in an odd way, revitalizes him, giving him a purpose for living, a purpose of love and friendship toward Bassanio. The Antonio we see in the trial scene, ready to give his life in payment of the debt, is strangely happier and more alive than the Antonio of the play’s opening lines.” Antonio risks, in part, because Bassanio embarks on an adventure, a quest to gain the golden fleece of Portia. And Portia is drawn out of her sated sadness by risking much to plunge into the court to save her husband’s friend.

Shakespeare’s antidote to sadness: Take a plunge.