The Merchant of Venice: Shakespeare, Lewkenor and the Venetian Republic

A Shakespearean comedy about law, money, strangers and mercy leads us to an Elizabethan soldier and translator, an unpublished manuscript, a remarkable Stratford family connection and two performances before James I.

The Venetian connection

In 1599 Sir Lewes Lewkenor published his translation of Gasparo Contarini’s The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, one of the most detailed accounts of the Venetian republic available in English. Its descriptions of the Doge, Senate, magistrates, courts and administration of justice provided readers with an unusually intimate understanding of a state whose political institutions differed considerably from those of England.

For Shakespeare’s Othello, the importance of this book had been recognised by Edmond Malone as early as 1790. But The Merchant of Venice presents an even more intriguing problem. The comedy is generally dated to the later 1590s, before Lewkenor’s Venetian translation appeared in print.

How, then, might Shakespeare have acquired the knowledge of Venetian government and legal procedure displayed in the play?

In April 1964 Christopher Whitfield addressed precisely this question in an article published in Notes and Queries, entitled Sir Lewis Lewkenor and The Merchant of Venice: A Suggested Connexion.

Whitfield’s investigation identified two potentially significant circumstances: Lewkenor’s translation had existed in manuscript before publication, and Lewkenor possessed a family connection with Shakespeare’s acquaintances in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Christopher Whitfield’s discovery

Whitfield began by examining the apparent absence of any relationship between the Sussex soldier and translator and the playwright from Stratford. At first sight the two men seemed to belong to different worlds. Lewkenor was a gentleman of Sussex, a veteran of continental warfare and a member of the Middle Temple. Shakespeare was an actor and playwright associated with the London theatres.

But Whitfield uncovered a relationship through the Combe family.

At first sight there would appear to be no likelihood of any link between Lewkenor and Shakespeare, but this is not entirely true.

The connection centred upon William Combe, a member of the Middle Temple, who was both Lewkenor’s cousin and a member of the Stratford family closely associated with Shakespeare.

The importance of this discovery is easily overlooked. The Combes were not distant names appearing in an unrelated pedigree. They belonged to the social and financial world of Shakespeare’s Stratford. John Combe was sufficiently close to Shakespeare to be remembered in his will, while Thomas Combe also appears among its beneficiaries.

Lewkenor himself had entered the Middle Temple on 14 October 1579, under the bond of his uncle Sir Richard Lewkenor. The surviving admission record establishes his presence within the legal community in which the Combe connection becomes significant.

Whitfield therefore supplied something much more valuable than a speculative resemblance between two books: a plausible social route by which Shakespeare might have encountered Lewkenor’s knowledge of Venice.

The Inns of Court were centres of literary and theatrical culture as well as legal education. Lawyers, students, writers, patrons and actors moved through overlapping London circles. Shakespeare’s plays were performed in precisely this environment.

The Middle Temple connection thus brings together the playwright’s Stratford acquaintances, Lewkenor’s legal education and the manuscript of a work describing Venetian government.

The manuscript before publication

The chronological difficulty is central to the argument. The Merchant of Venice appears to have been composed before 1599, the year Lewkenor’s translation was printed.

Yet the book had not suddenly appeared from nowhere in that year. Lewkenor had worked upon the translation earlier, and its prefatory material indicates that he had supplemented Contarini’s account through reading, observation and conversations with Venetian gentlemen.

In his address to the reader, he explained that he had assembled additional material to clarify subjects not adequately treated in the original work.

His project was therefore an accumulation of historical, political and personal knowledge, not merely the mechanical translation of an Italian text.

Whitfield suggested that Shakespeare might have encountered the manuscript before publication, or acquired the relevant information directly through conversation with Lewkenor.

The second possibility is particularly interesting because the proposed Combe connection provides a social context for such an encounter.

Shakespeare did not need to possess a printed copy of the book if he could obtain information from the man who was translating it.

Nor was Lewkenor an obscure scholar isolated from theatrical society. His writings attracted commendations from Edmund Spenser, Sir John Harington, Maurice Kyffin and Henry Elmes. His connections reached into the Inns of Court and the households of aristocratic patrons.

The possibility of literary exchange between Lewkenor and Shakespeare therefore deserves to be considered within a recognisable Elizabethan network.

The Doge and the authority of Venetian law

The trial scene of The Merchant of Venice depends upon an unusual political arrangement. The Duke presides over the proceedings, but his authority is constrained by the laws of the republic.

Shylock insists upon the validity of his bond, demanding the penalty to which Antonio has apparently subjected himself. The Duke cannot simply disregard the law because he dislikes its consequences.

This distinction between the ruler and the authority of the state is essential to understanding the Venetian republic described by Contarini and Lewkenor.

Venice was celebrated for a constitution in which the Doge did not possess the arbitrary powers of an absolute monarch. His authority existed within a carefully regulated system of councils, magistracies and laws.

Lewkenor’s translation explained this constitutional arrangement to English readers, presenting Venice as a republic whose stability depended upon the subordination of individual ambition to established institutions.

Whitfield considered the relationship between the Doge and Venetian law especially significant for Shakespeare’s trial scene.

The Duke’s position is not that of a king who may simply issue an order to resolve the dispute. He presides over a legal system whose authority he must respect.

Portia’s intervention succeeds because she interprets the law rather than openly setting it aside.

Her famous appeal to mercy is followed by a rigorous examination of the bond itself. The reversal depends upon the exact wording of the legal instrument.

Shakespeare’s dramatic confrontation between law and mercy therefore takes place within a constitutional setting that Lewkenor’s book had made intelligible to English readers.

The three caskets and Venetian judgement

One of the most intriguing comparisons in the master manuscript concerns the three caskets through which Portia’s suitors must choose.

In Shakespeare’s comedy, the Prince of Morocco confronts three containers of gold, silver and lead. Each carries an inscription promising a different reward or demanding a different sacrifice.

Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.

The silver casket promises that its chooser shall receive as much as he deserves, while the leaden casket demands that he hazard everything.

Lewkenor’s account of Venetian justice describes a procedure in which judges expressed their decisions through three pots. One signified condemnation, another acquittal, and the third uncertainty or the need for further consideration.

The manuscript draws attention to the structural resemblance between the three alternatives presented to a Venetian judicial body and the three alternatives presented to Portia’s suitors.

The dramatic caskets derive from Shakespeare’s narrative sources, and the comparison does not require us to replace those sources. Its interest lies in the wider Venetian framework: a system in which judgement is expressed through the selection of one among three vessels.

Both episodes transform judgement into a visible act of choice. Shakespeare’s suitors must decide what they value; the Venetian magistrates must determine the fate of an accused person.

The shared structure becomes especially suggestive in a play whose central concern is the relationship between outward appearance, inward worth and the exercise of judgement.

Strangers and the laws of Venice

Venice was one of Europe’s great commercial centres, a city whose prosperity depended upon merchants, sailors, financiers and travellers arriving from many nations.

Lewkenor’s translation repeatedly celebrates the republic’s wealth, institutions and treatment of strangers.

In the prefatory material, he records the admiration of travellers for the city’s hospitality, its entertainments and the splendour of its society.

But Shakespeare’s Venice is a place where the treatment of outsiders is much less straightforward.

Shylock is indispensable to the city’s commercial economy yet remains vulnerable to religious and social hostility. His money circulates through Venetian business, but his Jewish identity marks him as an outsider.

Antonio, by contrast, enjoys the standing of a Christian merchant whose financial dealings are embedded in the city’s trading relationships.

The conflict between them reveals the tension between the republic’s dependence upon international commerce and the prejudices of its inhabitants.

Portia’s eventual use of the law concerning an alien who seeks the life of a citizen brings this distinction into the trial itself.

Shakespeare’s drama turns upon the legal consequences of belonging—or failing to belong—to the community whose laws are being administered.

The same question reappears in Othello, where the republic entrusts its military security to a foreign general while remaining deeply suspicious of his marriage.

Read together, the two Venetian plays examine the limits of a state that prides itself upon welcoming and employing strangers.

The Antwerp merchant and the question of usury

Lewkenor’s Estate of English Fugitives provides another avenue into the commercial and moral world of Shakespeare’s play.

Published in 1595, the book recounts the experiences of Englishmen serving abroad and describes the financial hardships, debts and exploitation that could accompany military exile.

Its discussion of merchants, money and usury belongs to a European world in which credit could determine the fate of soldiers, travellers and exiles.

The master manuscript also develops the episode of an Antwerp merchant and questions of restitution. Such material deserves attention alongside the bond between Antonio and Shylock.

In Shakespeare’s comedy, money is never merely money. The bond becomes an instrument through which resentment, humiliation and revenge are transformed into an apparently lawful demand.

The question of what one man may exact from another is both commercial and moral.

Lewkenor’s writing about English fugitives similarly examines the consequences of dependence upon creditors and powerful patrons.

These accounts help place Shakespeare’s bond within the broader financial anxieties of the period: the danger of borrowing, the vulnerability of men far from home and the consequences of allowing a private obligation to become an instrument of destruction.

Spenser, Harington and the literary circle

Lewkenor’s Venetian translation arrived surrounded by commendatory verses from an impressive group of Elizabethan writers.

Among them was Edmund Spenser, who praised the translator’s literary accomplishment in a sonnet celebrating Venice.

Yet not so fair her buildings to behold
As Lewkenors stile that hath her beauty told.

The compliment is revealing. Spenser praises not simply the subject but Lewkenor’s style: the literary quality of the English in which the republic has been presented.

Sir John Harington also contributed verses, praising the combination of Lewkenor’s travels and learning.

Henry Elmes, associated with Gray’s Inn and the theatrical festivities of 1594, supplied another commendation.

These names matter because they place Lewkenor within the literary culture of the Inns of Court, aristocratic patronage and theatrical entertainment.

His book was not merely a technical description of foreign government. It was presented as a literary achievement by men whose own careers connected them with the Elizabethan court and the world of poetry and performance.

The dedication to Anne Russell, Countess of Warwick, further situates the volume within an influential aristocratic household.

Such connections make Whitfield’s proposed route between Lewkenor and Shakespeare considerably more interesting than a chance encounter between two strangers.

The Merchant of Venice before James I

The final convergence comes from the theatrical records of James I’s reign.

On 10 February 1605, The Merchant of Venice was performed at court. The play pleased the King sufficiently that a second performance was commanded two days later.

The contemporary record notes that the repetition was ordered by the King’s Majesty.

These performances took place during a season of elaborate royal entertainments in which foreign ambassadors were present at court.

The Venetian representatives had attended masques during the Christmas festivities, and their presence gave the court’s entertainments an additional diplomatic dimension.

Lewkenor was now Master of the Ceremonies, responsible for receiving foreign dignitaries and managing the delicate practical arrangements surrounding their appearances at court.

The King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company, occupied a privileged position within this same royal theatrical establishment.

It is a remarkable historical setting for a play about the government, commerce and laws of Venice.

The translator whose book had explained the Venetian republic was now an officer at a court where Shakespeare’s Venetian comedy was performed twice within three days.

The surviving performance records do not identify every member of the audience, but the circumstances demonstrate how closely diplomatic ceremony and theatrical entertainment had become connected under James I.

The cumulative Venetian case

The Merchant of Venice presents a different problem from Othello. In the later tragedy, Lewkenor’s printed translation provides an identifiable literary source. In the earlier comedy, the question is whether Shakespeare could have encountered the same knowledge before its publication.

Christopher Whitfield’s discovery of the Combe family connection supplies a possible route. The Middle Temple provides a common legal and literary environment. Lewkenor’s manuscript supplies the information, while the Venetian constitution helps explain the unusual authority of the Duke in Shakespeare’s trial scene.

The three caskets, the treatment of strangers, the commercial world of usury and the literary circle surrounding Lewkenor’s translation add further dimensions to the comparison.

Finally, the two court performances of February 1605 return us to Lewkenor’s official career as Master of the Ceremonies.

Once again, literary history, biography and theatrical records converge upon the same figure.

The importance of the evidence lies in its accumulation. Lewkenor’s writings illuminate Shakespeare’s Venice; his family and literary relationships suggest routes through which information could circulate; and his later office places him within the courtly environment where the plays were performed.

The next investigation takes us from Venice to Vienna, where the historical material becomes more surprising still. In Measure for Measure, the disguised friar, the administration of justice and the political world of 1604 lead us back to episodes recorded in Lewkenor’s own writings and parliamentary career.

Continue: Measure for Measure →

Sources and further reading

Sir Lewes Lewkenor,
The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599);
The Estate of English Fugitives (1595);
Christopher Whitfield,
“Sir Lewis Lewkenor and The Merchant of Venice:
A Suggested Connexion,”
Notes and Queries (1964);
Middle Temple admission records;
Shakespeare’s will and the Combe family records;
Edmund Spenser’s commendatory sonnet;
the court Revels accounts for February 1605;
and The Master of the Ceremonies,
17 October 2026 manuscript.