“The Will of a Living Daughter Curb’d by the Will of a Dead Father”: Spectral Authority in The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been both a timeless and timely play: It is timeless because of the questions it raises about friendship, love, religion, justice, and mercy, and it is timely due to the very same questions that are always topical across centuries and countries. The play also asks questions about the power dynamics between the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen through Portia and her deceased father. Portia’s father is never seen in the play, yet his authority has a spectral effect, haunting his daughter. As the play unfolds, it is understood that Portia will never be able to choose the husband she desires nor refuse whom she dislikes since her choice of a husband is controlled by her father through a casket test; thus, the dead, turning into a symbol of patriarchal control, manipulate the living. With this seemingly trivial detail in the background, this article will try to revisit The Merchant of Venice through Derrida’s concept of hauntology; it will examine Portia’s relationship with her unseen father and attempt to understand the tension between Portia’s autonomy and her father’s imposed legacy and to what extent paternal authority is resisted and/or negated.