The Children of Usury: the Market of Democracy between Plato’s Republic and The Merchant of Venice by W. Shakespeare

This essay is intended as a philological annotation on the anthropological plot that underlies the story narrated in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. This Shakespearean play stages a conflict of and among generations (fathers and sons), families (the nuptial theme), and political choices (to love/to hate), in which the circulation of money as interest takes a pivotal role. Such a complex scenario cannot be sufficiently explained by means of the Plautinian comic scheme – that match full of twists in which the adulescens wins treasure (and a wife) against the senex, transparent representation of the exogamous exchange. I therefore invite the readers of The Merchant of Venice to recall the Platonic stage of The Republic where the Athenian philosopher defines democracy as a «general store of regimes» trigged by the circulation of money/gold as an interest-bearing capital. Is thus Modernity devised in Shakespeare’s ironic representation as a society of shrewd gamblers and money-makers in a way that recalls the Platonic depiction of democracy?