See thou render this Into my cousin's hands, Doctor Bellario;
- Act III, scene iv, lines 47-50
Portia's cousin Bellario is apparently a professor of law at the University of Padua (see page I-447), and her plan involves him and, as she quickly explains to Nerissa, their masquerading as men. (This is a favorite device in the romances of the period. Shakespeare has already used it in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, see page I-469, and in this play, Jessica has already made use of the masquerade. Thus, all three female characters in The Merchant of Venice appear, at one time or another, in the costume of a man.)
... the sins of the father...
With Portia and Nerissa gone, Lorenzo and Jessica are in charge at Belmont, and with them, of course, is Launcelot Gobbo, who affects to be unimpressed by Jessica's conversion. He refers to an Old Testament text to make his point when he says:
... look you the sins of the father
are to be laid upon the children.
- Act III, scene v, lines 1-2
This is taken from the Ten Commandments themselves. As part of the second commandment, God is quoted as saying: "... I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" (Exodus 21:5).
This is actually a rather primitive view, which is altered in the course of the Old Testament itself. The prophet Ezekiel, writing in the time of the Babylonian Exile, quotes God as saying: "Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezekiel 18:19-20).
Nevertheless, the harsher and more primitive verses of the Old Testament seem always the better known to Christians (perhaps for the greater contrast they make with the New).
... Charybdis your mother. ..
Of course, Launcelot admits, it may be that Jessica's mother was unfaithful and that Jessica is not truly the daughter of Shylock. Jessica points out that then her mother's sin of infidelity would be visited upon herself and Launcelot agrees and says:
Thus when I shun Scylla your father,
I fall into Charybdis your mother.
Well, you are gone both ways.
- Act III, scene v, lines 15-17
Scylla and Charybdis were a pair of deadly dangers which in Homer's Odyssey are described as being on either side of a narrow strait. The strait in question is generally accepted as being the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily-which is two and a half miles wide at its narrowest
Scylla is described as a monster on the Italian side of the strait. It has twelve legs and six heads. Each head is on a long neck and is armed with a triple row of teeth. (It is almost impossible to resist the temptation that this is the distorted description of a large octopus with its sucker-studded tentacles.) The heads bark like so many puppies and during the confused yelping, the necks dart forth, with each head snatching at a sailor on any ship that passes beneath.
Charybdis was the personification of a whirlpool on the Sicilian side of the strait, which three times a day sucked down the waters and then threw them up again.
Odysseus had to pass the strait twice. First, with a full ship, he chanced Scylla and lost six men. The next time, alone on a raft, he passed across Charybdis, seizing a branch overhead when the raft was sucked down and waiting for its return before proceeding.
To be "between Scylla and Charybdis" is the classical way of saying "between the devil and the deep sea." The statement "avoiding Scylla, he fell into Charybdis" was used by the Roman poet Horace, whom Launcelot is here paraphrasing.
... saved by my husband. ..
Jessica, however, counters all Launcelot's misgivings with a reference to the New Testament, saying:
/ shall be saved by my husband.
He hath made me a Christian.
- Act III, scene v, lines 18-19
St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians says "... the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: