In act 1, scene 3, Antonio readily agrees to the terms of Shylock's bond and risks a pound of his own flesh in the process. When Bassanio objects to these steep stakes – ‘I'll rather dwell in my necessity’ (1.3.152), he pleads, Antonio insists that he is more than willing to accept Shylock's unusual conditions, and feels confident in his ability to make good on the debt.

Some critics have characterised Antonio's ready acceptance of Shylock's terms here as an indication of his Christ-like self-sacrificial qualities (in act 1, scene 1 he offers his ‘person’ as well as his ‘purse’ to Bassanio), or of a venturing economic spirit eager to accept risk, an ethos that found growing support in the later decades of the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth. In the previous chapter, I looked to the Genesis Jacob cycle to suggest a different set of motives, arguing that Antonio exhibits an Esau-like inability to plan for future eventualities, radically discounting the future value of his own fl esh in order to supply Bassanio's ‘present wants’. Evidently Antonio feels very good about his ships’ prospects today because his friend really needs a loan today; but Shylock, in a much more Jacob-like capacity, takes the long view in calculating risk and gain, and sees that ‘ships are but boards, sailors but men’ (1.3.21). In act 2, Shylock comments on his servant Launcelot's departure from his household in a way that reflects this same prudent regard for risk, which he contrasts with Bassanio's profligacy. ‘Therefore I part with him [Launcelot], and part with him / to one that I would have him help to waste / his borrowed purse’ (2.5.48–50). Shylock's remark rings with a Jacob-like disapproval of short-term wastefulness as he bids Launcelot good riddance and bequeaths him to Bassanio, whose household he imagines squandering the very credit that he, Shylock, had just extended.