Shakespeare and the Law

At the climactic moment of reversal in the court scene in Merchant of Venice , Portia tells Shylock: “This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.” “Jot” comes to English through the Greek iota , which is linked to the Hebrew YOD through Jesus’ usage in Matthew 5. At this juncture in the play, the word not only denotes “a whit” or “the smallest amount,” but evokes Jesus’ claims about His relation to the Law in the Sermon on the Mount.

That allusion is doubly relevant: First, because Shylock is clearly an example of the false righteousness of scribes and Pharisees, who insist on the letter of the Law but fail to recognize that mercy is the heart of Torah; second, because the very point of the courtroom drama enacted in the play is that “not one jot or tittle of the law” shall be annulled. Shakespeare was a good NT scholar: Jesus does not come to abolish but to fulfill; the gospel does not annul the law, but confirms it.