The Merchant of Venice, (Act 4, scene 1) contains an explanation as to why Shylock demands a pound of flesh. Shylock's response is that there is no rational answer for the likes and dislikes of men. He, Shylock, despises Antonio, and wants his recompense according to the strictest terms. The reasonableness of this demand, is not open to question anymore than other dislikes men reveal:
Some men there are love not a gaping pig,
Some that are mad if they behold a cat,
And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,
Cannot contain their urine. ...
Now, for your answer:
As there is no firm reason to be rendered
Why he [an ordinary person] cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he,[cannot abide] a harmless necessary cat;
Why he, a woollen bagpipe, ...
As there is no firm reason to be rendered
Why he [an ordinary person] cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he,[cannot abide] a harmless necessary cat;
Why he, a woollen bagpipe, ...
So can I give no reason,....
On another question, though, some light may be gained for the critic.
The phrase "a harmless necessary cat" may, may... cast some light on the question of Shakespeare's Catholic sympathies. I say this because the phrase displays, for me, a silent, rueful, gaze on the playwright's part, at the extraordinary cruelty often shown cats at that era. That cruelty was often displayed then, by Protestants who discussed the Pope as a cat. No one has convincingly argued for these sympathies. I merely suggest that the resonance of the phrase, "a harmless, necessary cat," might be a bit of a weight in the question.
And should my sense of the weight of this phrase be accurate, it casts light on the theme of the whole play, which would then be not about a specific religion, but about the way religions can distort relations between people and their world.
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