Gratiano
Character Profile – At a Glance
- Role: A young Venetian gentleman of Bassanio's circle, the play's most voluble talker, suitor and then husband of Nerissa, the most aggressive Christian voice in the courtroom — and Hazlitt's "very admirable subordinate character," the figure whose self-defence speech of 1.1 contains, in Hazlitt's reading, "a whole volume of wisdom."
- Key Traits: Witty, hot-tempered, garrulous, prone to overstatement, capable of philosophical writing under pressure, given to coarse humour — and, in his moments of greatest exposure, the comedy's most explicit voice of religious aggression against Shylock.
- The Core Conflict: A young man whose comic register operates within a Christian-supremacist moral economy that the play does not, finally, critique — and who is the most visible representative of that economy's reflexive aggression toward the figure of the Jewish moneylender.
- Key Actions: Delivers the "Let me play the fool" self-defence in 1.1; reads Lorenzo's letter from Jessica in 2.4; assists in the elopement in 2.6 and pronounces Jessica "a gentle and no Jew"; gets engaged to Nerissa at the casket-scene in 3.2; calls Shylock a dog and worse in 4.1; gives away his wedding ring to the doctor's clerk in 4.2; is exposed in the ring trick in 5.1; closes the play with the most coarse-comic couplet in any of Shakespeare's comedies.
- Famous Quote:
"Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans."
(Act 1, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Marries Nerissa in the offstage double ceremony in 3.2; gives away his wedding ring to the doctor's clerk in 4.2; is exposed in the ring trick in 5.1; ends the play paired off in the Belmont household, the closing lines of the play in his mouth — and the closing lines among the coarsest in any of Shakespeare's mature comedies.
"Let Me Play the Fool"
Gratiano's first sustained speech is the play's first piece of substantive philosophical writing, and Hazlitt — the most influential nineteenth-century reader of Shakespeare's characters — singled it out as containing "a whole volume of wisdom." Antonio has just opened the play with the line "I know not why I am so sad"; Gratiano, hearing this, articulates his philosophical alternative.
Original
Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
…
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll play fool:
My jokes cause laughter-lines, like old-age wrinkles,
And, liver, make me hot and red with wine
Before my heart goes cold from dull complaining.
Why should a man, whose blood flows warm within him,
Sit like a stone-cut statue of his grandad?
…
There is a type of man who likes to look
Lifeless, like scum upon a stagnant pond,
And quite deliberately keeps very still
Intending to create a reputation
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit.
The speech is, on Hazlitt's reading, the most substantive piece of philosophical writing in Gratiano's role, and the speech that allows him to be read as more than a comic supporting figure. The argument operates within the Renaissance humoral medicine tradition — the body's four "humours" (blood, choler, phlegm, melancholy) were thought to determine temperament — and Gratiano is arguing that the warm-blooded man's natural condition is mirth, and that the cultivation of false gravity is a kind of moral disease. The image of men who "cream and mantle like a standing pond" — covered with the scum that forms on water that does not move — is one of Shakespeare's most precise descriptions of pretended profundity. Gratiano's diagnosis is exact: men who "do a wilful stillness entertain" in order to be thought wise are, in his analysis, performing wisdom rather than having it. The speech is delivered to Antonio, who has just diagnosed himself as melancholic, and the implicit reproof is gentle. Gratiano is not telling Antonio that he is one of these false-wise men; he is offering, in advance of the diagnosis, the alternative philosophical position. Hazlitt's praise of the speech as containing "a whole volume of wisdom" is exact. The speech is the first piece of evidence the play offers that Gratiano is not, despite his subsequent garrulousness and aggression, a merely comic figure — and the second is, by Hazlitt's continued analysis, his philosophical speech in 2.6 "on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit in taking off the force of passion."
"A Gentle and No Jew"
Act 2, Scene 6 is the elopement scene, and Gratiano's role within it is structurally specific. He has accompanied Lorenzo to Shylock's house; he watches Jessica descend from the window and join Lorenzo; he pronounces, in a single line, the play's most explicit piece of religious-supremacist judgement.
Original
Now, by my hood, a gentle and no Jew.
(Act 2, Scene 6)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I swear she is a gentile, not a Jew.
The line is one of the play's most carefully constructed pieces of pun, and one of its most exposing pieces of religious positioning. "Gentle" and "Gentile" were essentially homophones in early modern English, and Gratiano's line operates on both meanings simultaneously. The surface meaning is that Jessica is "gentle" — soft, mild, well-mannered, fair — and the deeper meaning is that her gentleness has, by her flight from Shylock's household, structurally converted her from Jew to Gentile. The pun does the comedy's religious work in a single phrase. The play does not, anywhere, give Jessica a moment of formal religious instruction or conversion — the conversion is implied by the marriage to Lorenzo rather than performed on stage — but Gratiano's line treats the conversion as already complete the moment she has chosen flight over inheritance. The "gentile" she becomes is, on Gratiano's account, not a religious identity she has converted to but a moral quality she has revealed by leaving her father. The line is the comedy's clearest piece of evidence that Christian identity in the play operates not principally as a theological position but as a marker of social acceptability — Jessica is "no Jew" because she has demonstrated qualities that the play associates with Christianity (gentleness, romance, willingness to abandon her father) regardless of any theological commitment. Gratiano's line is also one of the play's quietest pieces of dramatic foreshadowing. The argument it implicitly makes — that Jewishness can be erased by behaviour — is the same argument Portia's 4.1 verdict will make at the level of legal practice when she requires Shylock to convert as the price of his life.
The Courtroom Aggression
Act 4, Scene 1 is the play's most consequential scene, and Gratiano is the figure within it who articulates Christian aggression at its most exposed. Portia has turned Shylock's bond against him; Shylock is, by the scene's procedural arithmetic, defeated; Gratiano celebrates.
Original
A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!
Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.
…
A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It's Daniel's second coming, Jew! It's Daniel!
I've got you by the short and curlies, heathen!
…
There's another Daniel then, a Daniel!
I thank you, Jew, for teaching me that word.
The lines are the play's most exposed pieces of Christian-aggressive speech, and they have been one of the most-discussed sections of the play in modern criticism. Several things are happening at once. First, Gratiano is turning Shylock's own earlier praise of Portia ("A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!" — Shylock's celebration of her seeming endorsement of the bond) back against him. The "second Daniel" line is a piece of verbal triumph that uses Shylock's own biblical reference as the instrument of his defeat. Second, Gratiano is using religious-ethnic slurs — "Jew," "infidel" — as the rhetorical register of the celebration. The contempt is not implicit; it is the speech's principal vehicle. Third, the line "I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word" converts Shylock into Gratiano's pedagogical victim — the man whose biblical literacy has, in Gratiano's reading, been used to school him in the language of his own destruction. The structural arithmetic is the play's most uncomfortable. Gratiano is, on the one hand, celebrating the legal salvation of Antonio — a friend whose life was at stake — and that celebration is, on its own terms, comprehensible. On the other hand, the celebration is conducted in a register of religious aggression that the play, in its other scenes, has been more careful about. Hazlitt's reading captures the structural difficulty. He calls Gratiano "the jester of the piece" — preserving the comic frame — while remaining clear in his broader chapter that Shylock is treated "hardly... by his judges" and that Christian conduct toward him is no better than what Shylock has done to anyone. The "second Daniel" lines are the most exposed evidence of this judgement.
The Ring and the Closing
Act 5, Scene 1 contains Gratiano's exposure in the ring trick, and his lines within the closing scene — including the play's final couplet — are some of the coarsest writing in Shakespeare's mature comedy.
Original
By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;
In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk:
Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,
Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I swear by moonlight that you're hurting me!
I promise that I gave it to the court clerk;
I wish that man that got it gets castrated
Because, my love, it's caused you so much pain.
The line is Gratiano at his most characteristically coarse, and the wish "would he were gelt that had it" — that the clerk who received the ring be castrated — is the play's quietest piece of preparation for the closing couplet. The scene proceeds. Nerissa reveals that the "scrubbed boy, the doctor's clerk" who took the ring was, in fact, Nerissa in disguise; the trick lands; Gratiano accepts the comic discipline; the marriages are restored. What follows is one of the most exposed structural decisions in the play. Shakespeare gives Gratiano — the most garrulous, the most aggressive, the most coarse of the Christian men — the play's final couplet.
Original
Well, while I live I'll fear no other thing
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll live the rest of my life in such fear
About my keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
The closing couplet is one of the most-discussed in Shakespeare's mature work. The pun on "ring" — a wedding ring, and, in early modern slang, a piece of female anatomy — converts the play's final words into a piece of coarse-comic wordplay. The line is Gratiano's whole character in two lines: the loudest, most physical, most coarsely sexual voice in the Christian circle, given the play's last word. The structural decision is one of Shakespeare's most pointed. The pastoral lyricism of Lorenzo's "patines of bright gold" speech, the legal triumph of Portia's "quality of mercy" speech — neither of them closes the play. The play closes with Gratiano's anatomical joke, and the closing register is what the play, finally, leaves the audience with. The comic resolution at Belmont is real; it is also, in its closing image, no more elevated than Gratiano. Modern criticism has read this several ways. Some critics treat the couplet as an inappropriate descent from the play's higher register; others read it as Shakespeare's deliberate refusal to allow the comedy to close in the lyric mode Lorenzo has established. The latter reading is the more structural. Gratiano's couplet is the play's quiet acknowledgement that the comedy operates within an economy of coarse human appetite as well as within an economy of celestial harmony, and that the comedy's closing arithmetic must include both.
"Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate character. He is the jester of the piece: yet one speech of his, in his own defence, contains a whole volume of wisdom."
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1817
Key Quotes by Gratiano
Quote 1
Let me play the fool:With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll play fool:
My jokes cause laughter-lines, like old-age wrinkles,
And, liver, make me hot and red with wine
Before my heart goes cold from dull complaining.
Quote Analysis: Gratiano's most-quoted single piece of self-introduction, and the speech Hazlitt singled out as containing "a whole volume of wisdom." The lines operate within the Renaissance humoral medicine tradition — the body's four humours determining temperament — and Gratiano is arguing that the warm-blooded man's natural condition is mirth. The "let my liver rather heat with wine" image is exact for the period: the liver was thought to be the seat of the body's heat and the source of vital energy, and Gratiano is naming his philosophical position as a piece of bodily physiology rather than abstract ethics. The speech is the play's first piece of evidence that Gratiano is not, despite his subsequent garrulousness, a merely comic figure.
Now, by my hood, a gentle and no Jew.
(Act 2, Scene 6)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I swear she is a gentile, not a Jew.
Quote Analysis: One of the play's most carefully constructed puns and one of its most exposing pieces of religious positioning. "Gentle" and "Gentile" were essentially homophones in early modern English, and Gratiano's line uses both meanings simultaneously — Jessica is "gentle" (mild, fair) and therefore "Gentile" (not Jewish). The pun does the comedy's religious work in a single phrase. The play does not give Jessica a moment of formal religious instruction; Gratiano's line treats her conversion as already complete the moment she has chosen flight over inheritance.
A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!
Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It's Daniel's second coming, Jew! It's Daniel!
I've got you by the short and curlies, heathen!
Quote Analysis: The play's most exposed piece of Christian-aggressive speech and the moment Gratiano's comic register tips into religious contempt. The "second Daniel" line uses Shylock's own earlier biblical reference (Shylock had praised Portia as "A Daniel come to judgment" when he thought she was endorsing his bond) and turns it back as the instrument of Shylock's defeat. The repeated address — "Jew," "infidel" — converts the celebration of Antonio's rescue into a piece of religious humiliation. Hazlitt's reading of the trial scene captures the unease: Shylock is treated "hardly... by his judges," and Gratiano is the figure who articulates the harshness at its most exposed.
Well, while I live I'll fear no other thing
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll live the rest of my life in such fear
About my keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
Quote Analysis: The play's closing couplet, and one of the most-discussed structural decisions in Shakespeare's mature work. The pun on "ring" — a wedding ring, and, in early modern slang, a piece of female anatomy — converts the play's final words into a piece of coarse-comic wordplay. The structural choice is pointed. The pastoral lyricism of Lorenzo's 5.1 speeches, the legal triumph of Portia's "quality of mercy" — neither closes the play. The play closes with Gratiano's anatomical joke, and the closing register is what the comedy, finally, leaves the audience with.
Key Takeaways
- The Jester With Wisdom: Hazlitt's foundational reading positions Gratiano as "a very admirable subordinate character" whose "Let me play the fool" speech contains "a whole volume of wisdom" — preventing the character from being read as merely comic.
- The Gentle/Gentile Pun: "Now, by my hood, a gentle and no Jew" is the comedy's most efficient piece of religious-supremacist wordplay — the line that converts Jessica's elopement into a structural conversion before any formal religious change has occurred.
- The Courtroom Aggressor: Gratiano is the comedy's most exposed Christian voice — the figure whose "second Daniel" and "infidel on the hip" lines convert the legal defeat of Shylock into a piece of religious humiliation.
- The Coarse Closing Couplet: The play's final lines — "while I live I'll fear no other thing / So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring" — are some of the coarsest in Shakespeare's mature comedy, and one of the most discussed structural decisions in the canon.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why is Gratiano so important if he is not a principal character?
The question captures one of the play's most interesting structural choices, and the answer is that Gratiano's importance operates at the level of register rather than plot. He has no central plot arc — he does not woo Portia (Bassanio does), he does not save Antonio (Portia does), he does not generate the comic geometry (Shylock's bond and Portia's caskets do). What he does is voice the Christian community's reflexive positions at their most exposed. His "Let me play the fool" speech in 1.1 gives the comedy its philosophical opening; his "gentle and no Jew" line in 2.6 articulates the religious-conversion pun that runs through the elopement; his "second Daniel" lines in 4.1 expose the religious aggression that the more careful Christian characters tend to soften; his closing couplet in 5.1 sets the play's final register. Hazlitt's "very admirable subordinate character" formulation captures the placement exactly: Gratiano is structurally subordinate to the play's principals, but his function is to articulate, at the level of speech, the positions the principals hold but do not always say. Modern criticism has increasingly read Gratiano as the play's diagnostic voice — the figure who reveals what the more polished Christian characters are also thinking. The reading is structurally defensible. Bassanio would not call Shylock an "infidel" in court, but Bassanio does not need to, because Gratiano does it for him. The friendship structure of the Christian circle is therefore not flat — Gratiano is the figure whose register the more careful figures rely on to do work they would rather not do themselves.
What is the "gentle/Gentile" pun and how does it work?
The pun is one of the play's most carefully constructed pieces of religious-political wordplay, and it operates at the level of pronunciation as well as meaning. In early modern English, "gentle" and "Gentile" were essentially homophones — both pronounced approximately "jen-til" — and the distinction between them was visible in writing but not in spoken delivery. The semantic overlap was also substantial. "Gentle" carried the meanings of well-born (the source of the modern "gentleman"), mild-mannered, and morally fair. "Gentile" was a religious-ethnic term — non-Jewish, Christian — drawn from the biblical Latin gentilis. The pun exploits the fact that, in Christian theology of the period, "gentle" qualities (mildness, fairness, mercy) were positioned as Christian rather than Jewish virtues, and the pun allowed speakers to convert religious-ethnic identity into moral character with a single word. Gratiano's "a gentle and no Jew" deploys the pun at its most efficient. The surface reading — Jessica is gentle and therefore not a stereotypical Jew — is one piece of the line; the deeper reading — Jessica is a Gentile, has converted by her action, no longer needs the religion she was raised in — is the other. The line does both at once. The same pun appears elsewhere in the play. Lorenzo calls Jessica "gentle Jessica"; Shylock, in the courtroom, deploys it ironically ("What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?"). The pun is therefore one of the play's structural devices — a piece of wordplay that allows the religious-ethnic boundary to be both maintained (Jews are not Gentiles) and dissolved (Jews can be "gentle" if they behave well, by which point they have become "Gentile" in the sense the play cares about).
Is Gratiano's courtroom aggression justified?
The play does not, finally, justify it. Hazlitt's chapter on the play is direct: Shylock is treated "hardly... by his judges," and the Christian aggression in the courtroom — of which Gratiano is the most exposed voice — operates "on principles" the Christians themselves would not accept in another context. Gratiano's "second Daniel" lines and "infidel on the hip" outburst convert what is structurally Portia's legal-technical victory into a piece of religious humiliation, and the conversion is not necessary for the legal outcome — Shylock has been defeated by Portia's pound-of-flesh / no-drop-of-blood ruling regardless of Gratiano's celebration. The aggression is therefore additional. It does not produce the victory; it characterises the victors. The structural choice is one of Shakespeare's most pointed. The play could have given Gratiano a quieter celebration — a single line of relief, a piece of friendship to Antonio — and instead chose to give him the loudest, most religiously-aggressive language available. The choice exposes the Christian victory rather than smoothing it. Modern criticism has, since the late nineteenth century, increasingly read the courtroom scene as one of the most morally uncomfortable in Shakespeare's mature work, and Gratiano's role within it is the most exposed evidence. Some productions choose to play him as a young hothead whose aggression is uncharacteristic of the larger Christian circle; others play him as the explicit voice of what the more careful characters also feel. The play's text supports the second reading more clearly. Antonio has, by his own admission in 1.3, spit on Shylock and called him a dog; the difference between him and Gratiano is principally one of vocal register, not of underlying position.
How does Gratiano compare to other Shakespearean comic friends?
The Shakespearean "comic friend" — the figure who accompanies the principal romantic lead and provides comic counterpoint to his more serious register — is a recognisable type. Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet all operate within the tradition. What distinguishes Gratiano is the verbal coarseness of his register. Mercutio is verbally pyrotechnic but his pyrotechnics serve a different register — his "Queen Mab" speech is one of the most beautiful pieces of pure poetry in any of Shakespeare's plays, and his aggression toward Tybalt is the aggression of personal honour rather than religious-political contempt. Benedick's wit operates within the marriage-comedy of Much Ado and is principally directed at Beatrice; Berowne's is principally directed at himself. Gratiano's coarseness is structurally specific. He is the figure to whom Shakespeare gives the religious-political register the play's other Christians do not voice as directly, and he is the figure whose closing couplet refuses the lyric resolution that Lorenzo has established. The closest comparison is probably Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, who shares Gratiano's verbal volume and his comic-aggressive register, but Petruchio operates within a different play's economy. Gratiano is, in this reading, the figure Shakespeare uses to mark the comedy's lower register — the reminder that the play's pastoral resolution is held together by figures whose actual register is much rougher than the resolution would suggest. The "very admirable subordinate character" Hazlitt names is therefore admirable in a specific way: he is the play's honest voice about itself, and his honesty is part of what gives the play its structural complexity.
Why does Shakespeare give Gratiano the play's final lines?
The decision is one of the most-discussed in modern criticism of the play, and the answer has structural and aesthetic dimensions. The structural answer is that Shakespearean comedies frequently close on a coarse-comic or marriage-procreative couplet rather than on a lyric one — A Midsummer Night's Dream closes with Puck's epilogue rather than Theseus's higher register; Much Ado About Nothing closes with Benedick's "Strike up, pipers" and a dance. The pattern is recognisable. The closing couplet typically operates as the comedy's quiet acknowledgement that the lyric register of the resolution must yield to the more grounded register of ordinary domestic life. The aesthetic answer is more pointed. Gratiano's couplet uses the play's central image — the ring — and converts it into a piece of anatomical innuendo. The pun on "ring" (wedding ring / female anatomy) converts the play's most-discussed structural object into a piece of coarse-comic wordplay. The decision is structurally exact. The rings in the play have, by 5.1, carried enormous symbolic weight: Portia's ring as the test of Bassanio's fidelity, Nerissa's ring as the parallel test of Gratiano's, Shylock's turquoise ring (Leah's gift) as the play's deepest emblem of personal loss. The closing couplet collapses the symbolic register back into the bodily-comic one. The result is one of the most discussed structural decisions in Shakespeare's mature work. Critics have read it as Shakespeare's refusal to allow the comedy to close in the lyric mode Lorenzo has established; as the play's quiet acknowledgement that the comedy operates within an economy of human appetite as well as celestial harmony; and as the play's structural recognition that the comic resolution has been secured by a Christian community whose closing register is not as elevated as its mid-play rhetoric would suggest. All three readings are textually defensible.
What does Gratiano reveal about the Christian community in Venice?
Gratiano's function within the play's social arithmetic is to articulate at the level of speech what the Christian community holds at the level of disposition. The community itself — Antonio, Bassanio, Lorenzo, Salarino, Solanio, Gratiano — operates within a specific moral register. They are generous to each other (the play's friendship plot turns on Antonio's willingness to mortgage his body for Bassanio's courtship); they are contemptuous of Shylock; they regard their contempt as consistent with their generosity. Gratiano is the figure who makes the contempt visible. The other figures hold the same positions but tend to voice them more discreetly. Antonio's "I am like to call thee so again, to spit on thee again" in 1.3 is voiced privately to Shylock; Gratiano's "infidel" and "Jew" in 4.1 are public. Lorenzo's "faithless Jew" in 2.4 is delivered to Gratiano as a piece of explanation; Gratiano's "second Daniel" in 4.1 is delivered to Shylock as a piece of triumph. The contrast in volume is constant. What Gratiano reveals about the Christian community is therefore not that it holds positions different from his — it does not — but that the community's polite register depends on having a Gratiano who can deliver the impolite version when the situation calls for it. The closing couplet, with its coarse-comic ring-pun, performs the same function in the marriage-resolution register. The Belmont household needs a figure who can mark the comic-domestic ordinary alongside the lyric celebration, and Gratiano is the figure. Hazlitt's "very admirable subordinate character" is therefore exact: Gratiano is admirable not as a moral exemplar but as a structural reagent — the figure who makes visible the play's economy of speech.
Does Gratiano change across the play?
The play does not, finally, give Gratiano an arc of change in the way it gives one to Shylock or to Portia. He arrives in 1.1 as the play's comic-philosophical talker; he ends in 5.1 as the speaker of the comedy's closing couplet; the register between these two moments is recognisably continuous. What changes is the application of the register. In 1.1, Gratiano's "Let me play the fool" speech is directed at Antonio's melancholy as a piece of philosophical reproof; in 4.1, the same garrulous register is directed at Shylock as a piece of religious aggression. The voice is the same; the target has shifted. The structural decision is one of Shakespeare's most quiet pieces of characterisation. Gratiano does not become an aggressor; he reveals, in the courtroom, that his comic register has always operated within an economy of in-group celebration and out-group contempt that the play's earlier scenes had not made explicit. The 4.1 outbursts are the natural extension of the 1.1 self-defence, not a departure from it. What changes across the play is therefore principally the audience's reading of Gratiano rather than Gratiano himself. The figure who, in 1.1, looked like the comic philosopher Hazlitt praised is, by 4.1, also the figure who voices the play's most exposed religious aggression — and both readings are consistent with the same character. The play's structural argument is that the comic-philosophical register and the religious-aggressive register are not, in the Venetian Christian world, separable. Gratiano holds both because they have always operated together, and the play's quiet achievement is making the connection visible without commenting on it.
