Abstract：Shakespeare's "the Merchant of Venice" is a famous comedy in the second stage of his artistic career，it was written in 1596 to 1597 and was one of the of six comedies during this creation period. In this comedy, Shakespeare utilized the humanism as an ideological weapon to show the contradictions between the new commercial capital and the feudal usurious capital in that period. The general uses of the poetry and vivid language, multiform and splendid tropes, tensing and labyrinthian scenes and comedic ideal end make the readers never forget and a recollect again and again.
摘要： 《威尼斯商人》是莎士比亚在其艺术生涯的第二阶段创作的著名喜剧，写于1596年到1597年，是莎士比亚在这一时期创作的六部喜剧之一。莎士比亚在该剧中以人文主义为思想武器，运用诗歌一般优美生动的语言、春日繁花一般灿烂多样的修辞、侦探小说一般紧张曲折的情节向读者展现了那个时代新兴商业资本与封建的高利贷资本之间的矛盾，并赋予其理想主义的喜剧性结尾，让读者回味再三、永生难忘。
Shakespeare's "the Merchant of Venice" is a famous comedy in the second stage of his artistic career，it was written in 1596 to 1597 and was one of the of six comedies during this creation period. It just located the British heyday when Britain's Queen Elizabeth was ruling the Britain and the Britain was showing a thriving prosperity vision. In this period, the ideas of the humanism emerged like the shooting bamboos. Shakespeare accepted the ascendant humanism ideas and integrated the humanism ideas into his comedies. Moreover, on this basis, he expressed his insightful thoughts and opinions, which made his comedies is not only full of optimism colors but also some banters with a touch of melancholy sarcasm. In this comedy, Shakespeare utilized the humanism ideas as an ideological weapon to show the contradictions between the new commercial capital and the feudal usurious capital in that period. The general uses of the poetry and vivid language, multiform and splendid tropes, tensing and labyrinthian scenes, and the comedic ideal end leave the readers a profound impression.
Writing Background
William Shakespeare is renowned as the English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in history of English literature. He was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of King’s Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. Shakespeare's works are often divided into four periods beginning with what is referred to as an experimental period starting around 1591 and ending around 1593 which includes Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew. The second period ending around 1601, marks the establishment of Shakespeare and the Merchant of Venice was written in this period. At the same time, he wrote the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the comedies A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor and the history plays, Henry IV, Parts I and II, Henry V, Richard II, King John and Julius Caesar（Weiss，1971；Tillyard，1965；Sinsheimer,1947）.
Shakespeare's comedies reflect the British anti-feudal struggle process of the bourgeoisie during the 16th century and early 17th century, they incarnate the demands of the emerging bourgeoisie. Shakespeare's work "the Merchant of Venice" just located the British heyday when Britain's Queen Elizabeth was ruling the Britain and the Britain was showing a thriving prosperity vision. The emerging bourgeoisie won a series of anti-feudal struggle. In the end, the emerging bourgeoisie with an unstoppable trend mounted on the stage of the history. In this period, the humanism ideas emerged like the shooting bamboos. Then, the humanism ideas developed to all the places of the Britain. They advocated human rights, freedom, individuality and they were against feudal separatism and religious rules. At this time, Shakespeare's profound thoughts have been maturing, rather than those unrealistic and mysterious thoughts and the neglect of the politics in the juvenile. In his works, he had shown more deep thoughts, witty language, exquisite writing techniques, and a variety of expression method, he has reached the top of his creation summit. He accepted the ascendant ideas of the humanism ideas and integrated the humanism ideas into his comedies. Moreover, on this basis, he expressed his insightful thoughts and opinions, which made his comedies is not only full of optimism colors but also some banters with a touch of melancholy sarcasm.
Ideological weapon of the humanism
The Merchant of Venice reflected the contradictions between the new commercial capital and the feudal usurious capital in that period (Shenyu,2002).
The comedy described the intelligent cunning and speaking gab of Bassanio who was the representative of the emerging commercial capital and profoundly revealed the ruthless greed and selfishness of Shylock who was the representative of the feudal usurer(Auden,1965; Walley,1967；Widers，1969; Lelyveld,1961; Grebanier,1962;) Charlton,1938).This comedy praised the humanism of friendship, Love of freedom and individual liberation and gave the ugly faces of the ruthless greed and selfishness of the feudal class the merciless lash. The theme of this comedy is praising the caring, friendship and the love, at the same time, the comedy are penetrated the unique perspectives of the author to the issues of the money, law and religious in the bourgeois society. The whole scenes of the comedy shine with the radiance of the humanism ideas, Shakespeare's humorous witty language and the interesting plots filled with optimism(GuoYuanbo,2006)
In the comedy of the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare depicted the Belmont where the ideal shape of Bassanio lived as an ideal world and compared the ideal Belmont with the real world of Venice where was full of money and evil, which shows that Shakespeare has a profound understanding of the dark reality(Holland,1964). He has seen through the far distance between the ideal and the reality. The whole scenes implied the author's cannot help and criticism(XiaofuCong,2003).
In the period of the European Renaissance, the emerging bourgeois as a revolutionary class was locating the growth period. Although the feudal forces have come to the end of the rope, but they still tried to do their death throes. The infiltration of the old culture and the feudal ideas could be seen everywhere. At that time, the society strongly required the emergence of a spokesman who was the representative of the emerging bourgeois and the spokesman could use a sharp pen point to struggle cleverly and skillfully with the feudal remnant forces and the religion dark forces. The spokesman could guide the majority of the people to accept the bourgeois ideology and culture. At that time, William Shakespeare just conformed to this trend. In his drama, from the theme to the characterization of the figures in detail, all this shone the strong anti-feudal, anti-religious ideology of the humanist. He effectively used the ideological weapon of the humanism to criticize the merciless world of the feudal usurer and expose the hypocrisy nature of the religion. The humanistic thinking of the emerging bourgeoisie was blazoned forth. Moreover, he paved the way for the smooth development of the emerging bourgeoisie, which accorded with the trend of social development and greatly promoted the historical development.
Super writing skills and methods
Shakespeare inherited and carried forward the fine traditions of the British folk drama of the ancient Greek and Roman theater, he ignored the "three and one" regulation of the monastery and broke the boundaries of comedy and tragedy. He did a creative innovation to the dramas from the contents to the forms. His dramas usually have two or more staggered clues in the stories, the clues set off each other and syncretized together in the end. The Merchant of Venice is more one of the representatives, the drama interwove with the three parallel clues in the story on the limited stage and a limited time frame to the readers, a broad social picture were shown to the eyes of the readers. Moreover, each distinct character was clearly shown by using the individualized language. A three-dimensional vision with full flesh was shown.
The language in Shakespeare’s comedy was refined and vivid. He not only used the interleaving written and oral languages but also widely used the folk proverbs and slang. The most important is that he also endowed by the nature of creating the new language term, when the existing vocabularies could not vividly express the strong storyline, Shakespeare will start his flexible thought and created the new language term with innovative and fresh force to be added to his comedy. His language was broad and rich, flexible and effective. The different characters could be shown with different and according personality, identity, status of the characters. The Merchant of Venice was mainly used the body of no rhyme, it was not only full of the rhythm beauty but also good at using analogies to describe the vivid and distinct characters, and the enthusiastic bold fantasies. The writing skills and methods can analyzed from the fowling five aspects：
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