"Let no such man be trusted"
About this Quote
Spoken by Lorenzo in Act 5, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice, the admonition "Let no such man be trusted" concludes his meditation on the power of music as he and Jessica listen to a nighttime concert in Belmont. He has just declared that the person "that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds" is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; his spirit dull as night, affections dark as Erebus. The line crystallizes a Renaissance belief that inner harmony is reflected by a responsiveness to musical concord. To be unmoved by music is to be out of tune with the cosmos and, therefore, morally suspect.
At a dramatic level, the sentence functions as a social rule delivered with a lover's certainty. The play is saturated with acts of trusting and being betrayed: Antonio binds his life to a bond, Bassanio gambles on appearances, Portia engineers a ring test to measure fidelity, Shylock insists that oaths be kept to the letter. Against this web of promises and risks, Lorenzo offers an aesthetic yardstick for character. Sensitivity to harmony becomes shorthand for reliability.
Yet the line also invites skepticism. Its sweep is comic and hyperbolic, an elegant prejudice voiced in a pastoral interlude far from the courtroom. The Merchant of Venice often exposes the hazards of judging by surfaces, whether by caskets, stereotypes, or eloquent speeches. To distrust whoever fails to sway to the music is itself a form of exclusion, and the play complicates any easy equation between taste and virtue.
Still, the imperative has endured because it articulates an intuition: that receptivity to beauty signals a capacity for sympathy. Shakespeare harnesses the language of music to imagine moral accord, and the warning resonates as both a lyrical flourish and a challenge to consider what attunes a person to others.
At a dramatic level, the sentence functions as a social rule delivered with a lover's certainty. The play is saturated with acts of trusting and being betrayed: Antonio binds his life to a bond, Bassanio gambles on appearances, Portia engineers a ring test to measure fidelity, Shylock insists that oaths be kept to the letter. Against this web of promises and risks, Lorenzo offers an aesthetic yardstick for character. Sensitivity to harmony becomes shorthand for reliability.
Yet the line also invites skepticism. Its sweep is comic and hyperbolic, an elegant prejudice voiced in a pastoral interlude far from the courtroom. The Merchant of Venice often exposes the hazards of judging by surfaces, whether by caskets, stereotypes, or eloquent speeches. To distrust whoever fails to sway to the music is itself a form of exclusion, and the play complicates any easy equation between taste and virtue.
Still, the imperative has endured because it articulates an intuition: that receptivity to beauty signals a capacity for sympathy. Shakespeare harnesses the language of music to imagine moral accord, and the warning resonates as both a lyrical flourish and a challenge to consider what attunes a person to others.
Quote Details
| Topic | Betrayal |
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