Heading Out and Heading Home in The Merchant of Venice

Shylock&s;s harsh confinement at the end of The Merchant of Venice seems to refute such a possibility of placelessness or ability to inhabit the earth invisibly. The streets of Venice swell and then shrink in the project to include Shylock. Shut up and impoverished by this sanctuary city, Shylock ends up officially residing in a place that transforms him into something like a documented stranger, the Jew of Venice. Shylock&s;s relationship to Venice is extinguished rather than ongoing, and his estrangement permanent and legal, not something he chooses or can modify. On the surface, Portia and Jessica merely switch places, Jessica heading to Belmont in disguise, Portia venturing to Venice similarly hidden, but the consequences of their journeys are radically different. Portia is careful not to disrupt things, in other words, seeing membership as a matter of occupying a space in an already established community rather than something with the potential to enlarge its confines.