[돈의 심리] The importance of the Western social contract, where the promises of the parties take precedence
I reread William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Merchant of Venice’ after 30 years. When I first read it, the main character, the moneylender Shylock, seemed like a bad person who only cared about money. Shylock lent Antonio money and promised to receive a pound of flesh (about 453g) if he did not repay the money on time. Antonio failed to repay the money on time and was forced to take the pound of flesh. Shylock was a bad person who tried to kill someone because they did not repay the money.
Was Shylock the best in money?
Reading it again, the situation is not simple. One of the reasons Shakespeare’s works are recognized as masterpieces is because the characters are not simply divided into good and evil. Strengths become weaknesses, and weaknesses become strengths. Hamlet, due to his good nature, fails to avenge his father and ends up dying in agony. King Lear’s love for his daughter becomes poison and ruins his life. The Merchant of Venice is the same. Is Shylock a bad person, and are Antonio, who borrowed money from him, and Bassanio, who borrowed money from Antonio, good people? At least from the perspective of money, it is not that simple. First, was money the most important thing to Shylock? Shylock lent Antonio 3,000 ducats. One ducat was worth 3.5 grams of gold, which is about 1.2 billion won today. Antonio failed to pay the debt on the due date, and had to give him a pound of flesh instead. Antonio’s friend Bassanio hears this news and offers to pay it back for him. He asks Shylock not to take Antonio’s flesh, saying he will pay several times the amount Antonio borrowed. The judge in court asks Shylock if he would accept 9,000 ducats (about 3.6 billion won) and break the contract with Antonio.
If Shylock really loved money, he should have accepted this offer. If he said he would repay 1.2 billion won with 3.6 billion won, it would have been natural for him to accept it if money was his goal. However, Shylock refused. What Shylock wanted was Antonio’s life. Shylock only wanted to get revenge on Antonio, who had continuously cursed and criticized him, and not to make money. If Shylock was really a person who only pursued money, he should have immediately received 3.6 billion won and made the contract with Antonio void. Shylock is telling us that personal grudges are much more important than money. Shylock, who is criticized for only knowing money, is actually a character who shows that there are things more important than money.
Second, from my personal perspective, the most problematic character in The Merchant of Venice is Antonio’s friend Bassanio. Antonio borrows 3,000 ducats from Shylock and lends the money back to Bassanio. Antonio borrowed the money for Bassanio. The reason Bassanio needed the money was to win the heart of a woman named Portia. Portia was a wealthy heiress. Bassanio wanted to marry Portia, but he needed money to do so, such as giving her gifts, so he borrowed 3,000 ducats, or 1.2 billion won.
Bassanio had been wasting money and was in debt to Antonio. However, if he married the wealthy heiress Portia, he could repay not only the debt he owed Antonio, but also the new debt he had received. Bassanio told Antonio about this and asked him to lend him money, and Antonio, who learned of the situation, borrowed money from Shylock so that Bassanio could bear fruit in love. Of course, Bassanio and Portia were young and liked each other. However, Bassanio’s background as a wealthy heiress played a big role in Bassanio’s activeness toward Portia. In this respect, Bassanio seems more problematic than Shylock. Above all, his behavior of taking on even bigger debts in order to repay his debts is a case in point. In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio’s gamble to become Portia’s groom was successful, but if he had not married Portia, Bassanio would have gone completely bankrupt.
Venice in contrast to Joseon
Third, the part that surprised and impressed me the most while rereading The Merchant of Venice was the social system and contract law system of Venice at the time. Since Shakespeare’s works were written in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, it would be safe to say that it was the system of England and the Western empires at the time.
Antonio, a Venetian nobleman, borrowed money from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender from the lower classes. When Antonio failed to repay the money, Shylock wanted to receive a pound of flesh as stipulated in the contract. The Duke, the ruler of Venice, begged Shylock, “Don’t do that, just take the compensation and end it,” but Shylock insisted, “I will do it as stipulated in the contract.” In court, the judge tried to persuade Shylock, “Do you really have to do it as stipulated in the contract?” but there was no other way. As long as Shylock did not give up on his own, neither the ruler of Venice nor the judge could ignore the contract.
Could such a story have come from anywhere other than Western Europe at the time? In a book written by a foreigner in the late Joseon Dynasty, the following words were said by a Korean cook working in his own home.
“If I quit here, the bureaucrats will come to me and ask me to lend them money. They will ask me to lend them money, but I will not get it back. If I refuse to lend them money, they will throw me in jail. In the end, I will lose all the money I have saved. If I work with Westerners, they will not touch me. But if I quit here, they will take away all my assets. So please let me continue to work here.”
It is not common for a nobleman to make an equal contract with a commoner. It is also impossible for a nobleman to lose his life because of a contract with a commoner. If the setting of The Merchant of Venice was Joseon, the nobleman would have asked Shylock to “lend me money” and just taken it. At that time, in Joseon, it was considered blasphemous for a commoner to file a lawsuit against a nobleman. Rather, the commoner would have been punished first for insulting the nobleman.
Shylock did not listen even when the ruler of Venice persuaded him, “Why don’t you give up the contract?” In Joseon, if a magistrate or governor had told a commoner, “Why don’t you give up the contract?” and the commoner refused to listen and continued to insist on his own opinion, it might have been a problem if he was a powerful nobleman, but if he was a commoner, the fact that he refused the magistrate’s request would have been problematic. If Shylock had lived in Joseon, he would have been thoroughly retaliated against for daring to refuse the magistrate’s request outright.
Antonio’s rescue was the contract
If there had been a trial, would things have been different? The magistrate would not have acknowledged the contract itself, saying, “Where is this ridiculous contract where I can take a pound of flesh if I don’t pay the money?” It is more likely that he thought that the implementation of justice was more important than the contract. The good Antonio would have been saved, and the bad Shylock would have been punished.
But the civil system of Venice did not work that way. The civil system places the highest priority on contracts. Neither the ruler nor the judge can deny the validity of contracts. The judge is merely an institution that ensures that the contract between the parties is carried out according to the contents of the contract.
In Joseon, a just magistrate would have punished Shylock, saying, “You are a bad man who uses a contract to harm others.” But in Venice, the contract is king. The Venetian court told Shylock, “Do as the contract says, or you will be punished.” In the end, Shylock had to take only one pound of flesh, without taking blood, as the contract said. Furthermore, he had to take exactly one pound of flesh. Anything too much or too little was considered a breach of contract. The reason Antonio was saved was because of the contract, not because of the favor of a ruler or judge.
Because it was a Western society where contracts were the priority, a monster called Shylock was born. However, because it was a society where contracts were the priority, even the commoners could make contracts on equal terms with the nobles, and the nobles had to be bound by those contracts, and the rulers and the courts treated the commoners and the nobles equally. Wouldn’t a system where Shylock could emerge be better than a pre-modern social system where Shylock could not emerge?
Shylock is not just a moneylender who only cares about money. Shylock is a character who symbolizes a society where there are things more important than money, contracts are more important than status, and the will and agreement of the individual parties are more important than the sense of justice of the ruler. It seems that Shylock will continue to be a character that will be reinterpreted in the future.
Dr. Choi Seong-rak…
He graduated from Seoul National University’s Department of International Economics, received a doctorate in public administration from Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Administration, and a doctorate in business administration from Seoul Science and Technology University. He worked as a professor of business administration at Dongyang Mirae University, and after making 5 billion won in assets through investments in 2021, he retired and is now a member of the FIRE tribe.
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〈This article Weekly Donga 〉Published in issue 1453
Seongrak Choi, Ph.D. in Business Administration
2024-08-19 18:51:17