What did Shakespeare mean by merit?

Answer 1

The verb means "to deserve". An example is from Act II of The Merry Wives of Windsor: "But whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind or, in my means, meed, I am sure, I have received none." The noun means what you deserve, your "just deserts", and so the worth or value of a thing. Thus in Coriolanus, Act II: " he should have show'd us his marks of merit, wounds received for's country." Or Hamlet, Act II: " The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty." The word was a favourite of Shakespeare's and appears notably in Hamlet Act III Scene 1 in the phrase "the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes." Here the deserving and worthy person's merit is used by synecdoche to represent the whole person, so "patient merit" means a person with a deserved reputation for worthiness, who has to put up with the rudeness and arrogance of those who are "unworthy".