Portia, The Merchant Of Venice

In William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, there is a motif of women being equated with gold, money, and jewelry. Portia resides in a trapped patriarchal society where her life revolves around the men who play her like a puppet. Ironically, men from both the living and the dead control her. From the beginning, Portia is bounded by the lottery set forth in her dead father’s will which gives potential suitors a chance to choose between three caskets: gold, silver, and lead. This act by her father

Set in 16th century Venice, The Merchant of Venice is a comedic play written by William Shakespeare, following the lives of Antonio and Bassanio, two best friends. When Bassanio meets Portia, a beautiful and wealthy heiress, he borrows money from Antonio in attempt to woo her. As this plot unravels, we discover that Bassanio is not the only one after Portia, and is in fact against many other rich and titled suitors, who Portia unsparingly judges. This is when Portia is first portrayed as cruel and

The character of Portia from William Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice has moved thousands of people throughout the centuries. Her beauty, grace, virtue, but most of all her mercy has captivated those who read or see her. The rich Lady of Belmont shows the gentlemen surrounding her what it means to truly be merciful. She radiates Christian mercy in a way no other character is able to in the play. What is mercy? According to the Oxford Dictionary, mercy is “clemency and compassion shown

about. The women are banned from performing and instead their parts are played by young boys. The character Portia in the play stands out as an independent strong willed women. During the trial scene, Portia disguises herself as a man, along with the character Nerissa, to help Antonio and to prevent Shylock from collecting what is due, a pound of Antonio’s flesh. In the trial scene, Portia enters the courtroom as a unbiased legal authority, and is quick about explaining the loopholes in the contract

The Merchant of Venice is a play set in a very male and Christian dominated society where other religions and women rights weren’t very well accepted by the community. However Portia, a rich woman who had previously been controlled by men, triumphs as she manipulates tricks and saves the lives of the men. We see how she is manipulated by men through her father, who though dead, still manages to control who she marries from his will. He states in his will that from three different caskets the suitors

In Shakespeare’s comedic tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, one prejudice is very central to the theme. The play is dominantly set in Venice, one of the most liberal cities of the Renaissance era. In this place and time period, anti-Semitism is very much in force. The Jewish people are discriminated against and treated terribly by the Christians living in Venice. Shylock, a wealthy Jew, is mercilessly spurned many times by men like Antonio, a Venetian merchant. In contrast to this blind hatred is the

Portia’s speech from Act 3 scene 2 of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, not only directly targets the sex and gender system of Elizabethan England, but also highlights on a number of major themes of the play such as; the law, finances, gender roles and indeed the reversal of. It also takes the somewhat ambiguous title of the play and creates a “mercantile metaphor” which can be seen projected through Portia throughout this speech. From the outset the language contains embedded references to Portia’s

Professor Silva English 200 13 January 2017 The Merchant of Venice: Tragedy, Comedy or Tragicomedy Can time and historical events affect the categorization of a literary piece? William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is a play that is difficult to classify in a specific genre. It is often referred to as one of his problem plays. This means that it does not easily fall into a single category. Most literary sources categorize The Merchant of Venice as a comedy because it fits the description by

Responsibilities in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice The small and seemingly insignificant details in a story often hold together an entire theme of the work. This phenomenon is recognizable in the plays of William Shakespeare, as a speech or incident with a minor character can point the audience to a much larger truth about the work as a whole. The Merchant of Venice contains such a minor character, Lancelot, whose story gives a clue to the reader about the roles of the other characters

Two of Shakespeare’s works, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, both have a parallel plot structure which involves a woman disguising herself as a man in order to accomplish some goal. In the former, Portia disguises herself as a lawyer so as to enter the Duke’s court and help her husband’s friend, Antonio, avoid having a pound of his flesh cut off. In the latter, Viola disguises herself as Cesario so she can enter Duke Orsino’s court and work as a page. This parallel structure is further strengthened