Bassanio chooses lead, when asked to select from the three caskets that Portia offers to test her suitors. She is happy that he wins, and the lead is supposed to be the correct choice, for the person who chooses lead is supposed to be a man who has hazarded all he has, to win Portia. But in truth, Bassanio has hazarded nothing and desires Portia's gold. It is Antonio who has taken the risk in lending money for his friend. Now that Shylock is angered because of the loss of his daughter, he resolves to call upon the bond Antonio made in jest, a pound of flesh. The jest-like nature of the false bond was reflected when Antonio said that: "The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind." (I.2) in other words, Shylock asked for no interest or money upon the loan in an effort to cement his relationship with Antonio (another example of how Shylock does not always put money before relationships). However, Shylock's kindness turns to cruelty, because a Christian has sundered his relationship with his beloved daughter -- a Christian, incidentally, in need of money that willingly spends the ducats...
Portia offers to pay the debt, when she learns of what has transpired. Even learning of Bassanio's poverty and his borrowing of funds to woo her, she still wishes to marry him, and offers to pay the debt owed by Antonio the merchant to save Antonio's life. Shylock refuses the accumulating wealth, clearly not a man, once again, who prizes money over all things. Portia must resort to a legal trick to win her case when she is disguised as a lawyer, rather than giving Shylock money, but her own victory is shown to be hollow at the end of the play. Portia marries Bassanio, but only after learning how quickly he is willing to sacrifice the ring she gave him, in payment for services bestowed upon the friend who lent him money at the beginning of the play.
Shylock Character the Merchant Venice Portia and Queen Elizabeth: Through the trenches of the microcosm of play, no character serves as much semblance to Elizabeth Tudor as Portia. I agree so, and forthwith draw more comparisons between her and a contemporaneous learned Renaissance woman going by her terrific rhetorical skills, markedly in the trial scene. By all measure, Elizabeth Tudor was a learned woman, possibly of the highest caliber in all of
The Jews were no longer a part of English history, and in fact were expunged from it. It was into this atmosphere that Shakespeare was born in 1580, 300 years after the Jews had been forced out of England. If there were Jews in London at the time of Shakespeare, they were certainly in the minority. In 1589, Marlow created a play entitled the Jew of Malta. It was a play
He states, "If you deny me, fie upon your law" (IV.i.101) if they choose not to keep their own law when it does work according to their preferences at the time. Shylock is making a statement here that property - whether or not it is human - is property. His implication is that the law is good for all and, mercy can indeed trump the law as long as
Shylock is also perceived and portrayed as an enemy of the Christian faith and as the nemesis of the play's protagonist, Antonio. He therefore serves a distinct literary purpose by contrasting the depth of friendship exhibited by Antonio's group. Because he is not viewed as a friend, he cannot truly betray any of them. Thus, when Shylock does not back down from his bond with Antonio he is merely
The parallels between these situations and Frye's basic assessment of the plot of New Comedies are not, perhaps, immediately apparent, but they have the same effect by the end of the play, where "the audience witnesses the birth of a renewed sense of social integration" (Frye 94). The parent/child relationships have been largely done away with in favor of te romantic ties that seem to be favored by the play.
Also, the role of the Duke would not be as prominent if the city of Venice would not have been selected for the majority of the activity of the play. The city in itself ensures a certain aura that traditional cultural life as well as the fame of a modern, yet traditional in many instances cities, that provides the story a special twist, embedded in culture, yet modern in
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