“Fie upon the law”: The Thomistic Perspective on Justice and Mercy in The Merchant of Venice

This paper attempts to read Shakespeare’s famous trial scene in Merchant of Venice, and particularly Portia’s famous speech, in the context of its remarkable affinity with the Thomistic teachings on justice and mercy. In recent years some scholars argued for the previously unexplored relevance of Thomas Aquinas’s thought in Shakespeare’s plays, especially his analysis of the passions and moral values. In Merchant of Venice the thematic polarity of justice and mercy is essential, yet interpreting it as a dialectic opposition is far too simplistic. From Aquinas’s perspective, a proper understanding of mercy can be secured only when it is situated in the order of justice, and his (and Aristotle’s) distinction between commutative and distributive justice sheds an interesting light on Portia, Bassanio, Antonio, and Shylock. Antonio and Bassanio’s contractual language, as well as Shylock’s unshaken determination to fulfil his bond, mirror the sense of commutative justice, which “directs exchange and intercourse of business” and “consists of mutual giving and receiving” (ST, I.21.1, resp.). Portia’s speech on mercy, on the other hand, introduces distributive justice, which “consist in distribution; (...) whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what his rank deserves” (ST, 1.21.1). Portia’s swerve to hierarchical, regal terminology extends the understanding of justice and mercy, which is not only “enthroned in the hearts of kings”, but is ultimately of a divine nature and “an attribute to God Himself” (4.1.193). Aquinas’s teachings that “mercy of God is always a free gift that works through justice” (Caponi: 2018) are echoed in this speech. The entire trial scene suggests an understanding of mercy which coincides with Thomistic perspective: not as a relaxation of justice, but as its perfection and restoration. Shakespeare eloquently represents these ideas in his dramatis personae who are complex, passionate, and fully human.