April 26, 1564

April 26, 1564 is the date on which William Shakespeare was christened. Just a few years earlier Queen Elizabeth I had assumed the English throne (1558).

We look now at one of his not infrequent cat references. In The Merchant of Venice Shylock says:

....[T]here is no firm reason to be rendered
Why he cannot abide ....
...a harmless necessary cat.

This may sound like a lukewarm endorsement of felines. In fact if you know much about the England of that era, it is clear Shakespeare's words come from a space of a love of cats. At Elizabeth's coronation part of the festivities included torturing cats; their cries were said to be the sound of the Roman Catholic Pope being admitted to hell. This was the background of normalcy against which we must measure Shakespeare's description.

And while we set the record straight: People who carry on about who wrote the plays we ascribe to Shakespeare base their arguments on an oversimplified view of human nature. One typical argument says since Shakespeare never apparently traveled to Italy, how were his scenes set there so authentic. What these writers miss is the very nature of genius. It cannot be explained by speaking in many languages, or seeing many countries. About genius, "there is no firm reason to be rendered."

April 26, 1616

Our William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564 to April 26, 1616): his writing is so analyzed and so rarely conclusively.

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, ...

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.