Do Shakespeare’s characters mean what they say?

Modern criticism tends to assume that the excess of meaning in Shakespeare's language gives voice to forces other than the motivations of his characters. But this critical tendency diminishes Shakespeare's approach to characterisation. Focusing on The Merchant of Venice, my essay shows how the play continually encourages spectators and readers to sense implicit meaning in a character's speech, without clarifying whether any meaning is actually being implied. The surprise of the play is that its characters turn such ambiguity to their advantage by employing proxy forms of expression that allow them to say indirectly what they would otherwise feel powerless to say. These proxy languages, however, exact a cost: they alienate characters from themselves by distancing them from their own intentions. While moneylending, for example, helps the title character of the play, the merchant Antonio, express his love for Bassanio with increasing fervency, it also turns him suicidal; so, too, does Shylock's moneylending empower and then disempower him. The more successful form of proxy expression in the Merchant seems to be Portia's disguise as Balthazar. But the essay ends by asking whether Shakespeare himself thought he paid a price for speaking indirectly through disguises.