Bassanio's Golden Fleece.
- Author/Editor
- Sklar, Elizabeth S.
- Title
- Bassanio's Golden Fleece.
- Published
- Texas Studies in Language and Literature 18.3 (Fall 1976): 500-09.
- Review
- For Sklar, Book V of Gower's "Confessio"--focusing on the sin of avarice--is foundational to the complexities of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." First, how do we interpret the conflicted figure of Bassanio, who is both a spendthrift courting an heiress for her money, and "a romantic hero . . . capable of inspiring love" (500)? The contradiction is resolved in Bassanio's comparison of his beloved to the "golden fleece," making this the only Shakespeare play that refers to Jason and his quest. In the medieval mythographic tradition, Jason is both "admired for his valor," and condemned as a deceiver in love, just as Bassanio wins the lady, but breaks his word never to part with her ring (501). Book V of CA, which was known to Shakespeare, is a network of prototypes for the characters and themes of "The Merchant." Gower presents "two versions of the casket motif . . . [with] striking thematic and verbal parallels" to the play, as Genius's instruction on the arbitrary fortunes of love--"every mon mot take his chance" (2260), is followed by Portia's "You must take your chance" (II.1.44). For both poets, this "chance" may not reward the most deserving (503). A larger theme of Book V is "covetousness in love . . . a confusion in the mind of the lover between true emotion and love of money" (504-05). This "confusion" explains not only the mercenary goal of Bassanio's courtship, but the tendency of most Venetians to describe their deepest affections in monetary terms, not limited to Shylock's outcry "My daughter! My ducats!" (505). In CA, Jason's sin of avarice in love is perjury, a defective oath, a stratagem endemic to the culture of self-interest in Shakespeare's Venice (also his England?), and exposing the "double nature" of Bassanio (506-07). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2]
- Date
- 1976
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis