Byatt in Possession: "And you know, and I know, do we not, dear children, that he must always choose this last, and the leaden casket, for wisdom in all tales tell us this, and the last sister is always the true choice, is she not? But let us have a moment's true sorrow for the silver blisses the Childe would have preferred, adn the sunlit flowery earth which is my own secret preference, and then let us decorously follow as we must, as he takes up the hand of the third, as his fate and the will of his father's decree, ans says, half-musing, I will come with you. And one day we will write it otherwise, that he would not come, that he stayed, or chose the sparkling ones, or went out again onto the moors to live free of fate, if such can be. But you must know now, that it turned out as it must turn out, must you not? Such is the power of necessity in tales." But Byatt cheats. She did write about the eldest princess, who did walk out of her tale and became free of the fate of being narrated. So on the one hand it would seem that the casket scene is, you know, the standard sort of tosh you churn out in high school literature classes, objective correlative and all that? And yet that isn't exactly what happens in the play. Bassanio is warned against external appearances, or at least Portia turns a number of her servants to singing clues - and he takes the hint about not trusting to appearance, but I not at all sure his choice comes out of ignoring appearances. You don't see him repeating what's written on the caskets, discussing the possible meanings of each, so either he chooses intuitively, because he's a sensible reader of fairy tales, or he chooses based on appearance - Gold is "gaudy", Silver is "common", Lead has a "paleness that moves me more than eloquence". What on earth is a paleness that moves you more than eloquence? Appearance innit?
Why don't the words matter? Is the riddle in the metal or the words? Why not a visual riddle of three caskets without any inscription? Why not three caskets of lead with the inscription being the only clue? Doesn't that make it a double riddle, at least, two superimposed on each other. You could answer either one but not both at once, which is the mistake Morocco and Aragon made. The trick is to disregard the words and be wise as Byatt's Childe and Eldest Princess and know you're trapped in a story, or to ignore the value of the metal and look at words. But even then the solution to the riddles - ours, and Portia's father's, though they lead to the same casket, isn't necessarily based on the same reasoning. Because you don't need the words at all - only fairy tale logic. Because, at least according to the message in the first casket: "all that glisters is not gold." That's all you need to have learnt. Not: we don't want trophy bride sso that we can possess that which all others desire, nor: we aren't loved becos we're worthy of love, love isn't in the deserving, not: true love means we can care so much we are willing to hazard all for a person. The riddler's logic is fairy-tale influenced, his explication assumes the chooser chose based on appearance - that's positively nasty.
But in my current very sleepless state, I am probably reading all of this incorrectly, and I suppose it doesn't help that it's been nearly 9 years since I last read the play and never liked it. I should probably spend one morning reading the casket bits again and seriously think instead of saying the first thing that comes to mind. sigh.
Rather peeved about the Merchant of Venice, which contains two kinds of riddles. There's the ending, you know, Portia and Nerissa disguised as men and rowing with Bassanio about the ring and whether a woman or a man has them. Something to do with Spenser and Britomart and bedtricks and gender identity? But that's absolutelystandard mumbo. I think the casket scene, with the "real" riddles, is so much harder to write about. I thought it would be a straightforward reading, but now I'm confused, terribly, because I think it's a double riddle. Because it does seem obvious that, righto, what have we got here, gold silver and lead? We know how this story goes. Anyone who knows anything about fairy tales of course knows you should go for the lead. Chappies who go for the gold and silver are deceived by the splendid appearances of the caskets, and aha! The chappie who looks beyond appearances and goes for humble lead gets the girl.