The Instagram reel can really reduce a not yet well-explained idea to a groatsworth of wit. I actually love discussion. Don’t get me wrong. Let me explain more on Antonio’s subtle homoeroticism.
I do realise Elizabethan friends might put friendship in their first priority. Antonio may indeed manifest the idea.
Antonio and Bassanio are friends, but we needn’t dismiss Antonio’s homoerotic, to use a modern and understandable word, homosexual, attachment to Bassanio. Their relationship are platonic and likely homoerotic. Let’s hear me out. My reading focuses on Antonio’s ambiguity in language.
I am not forcing this reading out of the play as many criticise who is on the same ground as mine. I believe in close reading. If we talk more about the context than the text, we are not doing the text justice.
Here is the revised comment I posted on Instagram.
I’m not sure if Antonio is noble or actually self-centered and manipulative as Shylock since he wants the recognition of Bassanio for his sacrifice. He tells Bassanio not to think about the bond, but by saying so it haunts Bassanio throughout the first three acts. His guilt culminates when he receives Antonio’s letter about his forfeiture of the bond.
I’m not denying Antonio is a noble friend. Could be.
But we should also think about Antonio's sadness. He is perhaps worried about two things. The 'merchant-marring rocks' and Bassanio's secret 'pilgrimage' to Belmont.
Even though Antonio dismisses the concern of the mercantile risk, the risk does come in Act 3. When Bassanio leaves, Antonio's eyes are 'big with tears.’
Well, a dramatic friend very much 'in [platonic] love' may really act like this. Then, let's not shy away from the very rare exclamation mark in 'Fie, fie!' This expressive punctuation mark doesn’t even appear much in Shylock's vehement monologues. Shakespeare should be meaning something here. If Antonio is not love, why is he so desperately denying? If Antonio doesn’t love Bassanio, who is the romantic partner? If that's someone else who doesn't even appear in the play, Shakespeare should have cut it out already.
Also 'love' is a very ambiguous word used throughout the play. Act 1 Scene 1 'in love' is used again in Portia and Bassanio's relationship. Shakespeare seems to open up the discussion of love here for us.
Also, the 'tainted wether (castrated sheep)' is weird. Antonio's sudden hint of sexual potency when death is approaching. It seems to be addressed to Bassanio that I can't love you anymore as a friend and a possible homoerotic partner. I am not very certainly saying the relationship IS homoerotic, though many books and essays argue. With all these ambiguities. I’m saying the theme of love is complicated by Antonio's homoeroticism.
I tried to explain my questions I shared in the comment without resorting to homoeroticism. I failed to reach a fruitful reading. I frown upon simply dismissing them as Shakespeare’s blunders.
If you are doing HKDSE, I cannot be sure whether HKEAA favours Antonio’s homoeroticism. If we talk about the Elizabethan times, anti-semitism was not really a problem as we think it was. Harold Bloom goes,
Shakespeare’s England did not exactly have a Jewish ‘problem’ or ‘question’ in our later modern terms, only about a hundred or two hundred Jews, presumably most of them coverts to Christianity, lived in London.
HKEAA obviously favours anti-semitism, the main theme getting The Merchant of Venice into Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’ canon.
As always, let's discuss and I'd love to hear from you!
-Louis. 11th March.