themes in the merchant of venice essay

• The Merchant of Venice

William Shakespeare

• Literature Notes
• Major Themes
• Play Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Act I: Scene 1
• Act I: Scene 2
• Act I: Scene 3
• Act II: Scene 1
• Act II: Scene 2
• Act II: Scene 3
• Act II: Scene 4
• Act II: Scene 5
• Act II: Scene 6
• Act II: Scene 7
• Act II: Scene 8
• Act II: Scene 9
• Act III: Scene 1
• Act III: Scene 2
• Act III: Scene 3
• Act III: Scene 4
• Act III: Scene 5
• Act IV: Scene 1
• Act IV: Scene 2
• Act V: Scene 1
• Character Analysis
• Critical Essays
• Major Symbols and Motifs
• William Shakespeare Biography
• Famous Quotes
• Film Versions
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Major Themes

Explore the different themes within William Shakespeare's comedic play, The Merchant of Venice. Themes are central to understanding The Merchant of Venice as a play and identifying Shakespeare's social and political commentary.

Reality and Idealism

The Merchant of Venice is structured partly on the contrast between idealistic and realistic opinions about society and relationships. On the one hand, the play tells us that love is more important than money, mercy is preferable to revenge, and love lasts forever. On the other hand, more cynical voices tell us that money rules the world, mercy alone cannot govern our lives, and love can evaporate after marriage.

The play switches abruptly between these different attitudes. Shakespeare organizes the shifts between idealism and realism by associating the two concepts with the play's two locations. Venice is depicted as a city of merchants, usurers, and cynical young men. Belmont, in contrast, is the land where fairytales come true and romance exists.

he Merchant of Venice begs the question, does mercy exist in the world? Between religious intolerance and personal revenge, the play seems devoid of a merciful being.

However, against all the odds, Portia does manage to bring about some mercy in Venice. When Shylock faces execution for his crimes, Portia persuades the Duke to pardon him. She then persuades Antonio to exercise mercy by not taking all of Shylock's money from him. Here, Portia's presence turns the proceedings away from violence and toward forgiveness. Portia does, therefore, succeed in transmitting some of her idealism into Venice. Act IV ends with the suggestion that idealism can sometimes survive in the real world.

Throughout the play, and as of Act 3, Scene 4, Launcelot Gobbo is still trying to reconcile his affection for Jessica with his belief that all Jews are devils. This theme continually recurs in the clown scenes, and it seems as though Shakespeare is deliberately making fun of the Christian's attitudes toward the Jews.

The function of a clown is to misunderstand people and undermine their assumptions by asking simple, obvious questions. By highlighting the confusion of biblical texts, and raising pragmatic questions about the conversion of Jews, Launcelot, in his clownish ways, demonstrates the absurdities and complications that arise from the automatic damnation of a religious faith. Ultimately, he prevents the play from simplifying life too much. Beneath the apparently clear-cut cultural divisions in the play is an awareness of the complexities of real life.

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A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, and is widely studied and has been subject to considerable analysis. Contrary to what many people think, the ‘merchant’ of the title isn’t Shylock (of whom more below) but the far less famous character, Antonio. So how well do we know The Merchant of Venice ? Below, we offer some words of analysis, but first, it might be worth recapping the plot of the play.

Plot summary

There are two main plot strands to The Merchant of Venice , both closely intertwined. The first involves Portia, the wealthy heiress of Belmont, who decides that she will marry whichever suitor picks the right casket when faced with a choice of three (made of gold, silver, and lead).

The second involves a loan the Jewish moneylender, Shylock, makes to Antonio, the merchant of the play’s title. These two plot lines are connected because Antonio borrows money from Shylock in order to help out his friend, Bassanio, who wishes to finance a trip to Belmont to try his hand at Portia’s ‘three caskets’ trial. (The princes of Morocco and Aragon both choose the wrong caskets, but Bassanio correctly guesses that the lead casket, and the two are engaged.)

The terms of the loan are as follows: Antonio will repay the money to Shylock when his ships return from their voyage; if he fails to pay up then, Shylock will be entitled to a pound of Antonio’s flesh. When Antonio’s ships are declared lost at sea, he cannot repay the debt to Shylock, who promptly demands his pound of flesh.

These two threads run through the play, becoming united towards the end of the play, when Portia disguises herself as a male lawyer in order to defend Antonio against Shylock’s knife. She is aided by her maid, Nerissa, who is engaged to Bassanio’s friend, Gratiano; Nerissa is also disguised as a man (Portia’s clerk).

After trying, unsuccessfully, to appeal to Shylock’s ‘quality of mercy’ (a famous speech which we have analysed here ), Portia changes tack, and saves Antonio on a legal technicality: whilst his agreement with Shylock allows the Jewish moneylender a pound of Antonio’s flesh, it does not entitle him to a drop of the merchant’s blood – and if he tries to remove a pound of his flesh and makes him bleed, he will be liable. Shylock is defeated, and Antonio saved.

And Shylock is well and truly defeated: he has to pay ‘damages’ to Antonio – half of his entire wealth – and is also forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity. However, Antonio gives the money he gets from Shylock immediately to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, who had earlier eloped with Lorenzo, against her father’s wishes.

There is one last, romantic, twist to the plot: before the trial, Portia and Nerissa had made gifts of rings to their betrotheds, Antonio and Gratiano. After the trial is over, to express their gratitude to the lawyer and clerk for saving Antonio’s skin (literally), they both give their rings to the lawyer and ‘his’ clerk as tokens of thanks.

To test (and have a bit of fun with) the two men, Portia and Nerissa, back in Belmont and out of their male disguises, ask the returning Antonio and Gratiano where the rings are which they gave them. The two men say they have lost them, and the two women produce new ones – which are really, of course, the originals. As a final piece of good luck, Antonio learns that not all of his ships were lost at sea, and the two couples celebrate their upcoming wedding.

Venice has a long-standing association with trade, commerce, and money. The materialistic world of this city-state regards people only in terms of their financial worth, and Shylock embodies this cold materialism in the extreme. To him, Antonio is only a debtor, so much flesh, from whom he can extract his pound if Antonio is unable to repay his loan. The great clash in The Merchant of Venice is between money and love, as both Shylock’s trial and Portia’s very different ‘trial’ – the test of the three caskets – demonstrate.

Against this heartlessly materialistic worldview is set the world of mercy and compassion, expressed in the two most famous speeches from The Merchant of Venice : Portia’s ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ and Shylock’s own ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? If you prick us, do we not bleed?’

The valorisation of wealth and gold above all else is also famously rejected and criticised in Portia’s three caskets: gold and silver seem to promise the suitor wealth (in the form of Portia’s inheritance), but it is only by rejecting these in favour of the relatively worthless lead that Bassanio proves his worth as a potential husband to her.

However, the plot of The Merchant of Venice doesn’t entirely reject the world of money: Antonio borrows money from Shylock in an act of friendship (to help his relatively poor friend Bassanio travel to Belmont to undertake Portia’s three caskets test), but it’s also a financial reality that money is needed to be in the ‘race’.

And it’s worth noting that mercy doesn’t triumph over materialism at the trial: Shylock is deaf to Portia’s appeals, and his contract with Antonio can only be defeated on a technicality which speaks the only kind of language Shylock recognises.

And Shylock is the key to the whole play, as the confusion over him being mistaken for its title character demonstrates. For Harold Bloom, in a persuasive analysis of The Merchant of Venice in his book Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human , The Merchant of Venice presents a number of difficult problems.

First, there’s no denying it is an anti-Semitic play; second, for Bloom, Shylock should be played as a comic villain and not a sympathetic character for the play to have ‘coherence’ and make full sense; third, to play Shylock this way would no doubt exacerbate the play’s anti-Semitic properties.

Many recent productions of The Merchant of Venice have certainly depicted Shylock more sympathetically than he was probably played when the play was first staged, in the 1590s which gave London not only Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (whose title character, Barabbas, is a cartoon villain too exaggerated to be taken with complete seriousness) but also the execution of the Portuguese Jewish immigrant Roderigo Lopez, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, who was accused of plotting to kill the Queen (he was, almost certainly, innocent).

If the casual anti-Semitism that was widely tolerated as recently as the early twentieth century is anything to go by, Shakespeare’s original audience would probably have viewed Shylock as a money-grubbing villain.

But as is so often with Shakespeare’s characterisation, the character can be interpreted more sympathetically (his famous ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ speech is one example of where we can find evidence for this interpretation), and this is the line most modern productions of the play have taken. And it must be a hard-hearted reader or spectator who can watch Shylock being forced to convert to Christianity (by Antonio) and not feel a twinge of uneasiness.

What’s more, the parallels between Antonio and Shylock arguably don’t end with that popular misconception over who the title character is. Antonio is just as money-driven as Shylock, and – as his insistence that Shylock be made to convert to Christianity shows – not exactly overflowing with Christian charity. This is the mentality that Venice seems to engender: a world of financial interests, account books, and hatred and mistrust of others.

The Merchant of Venice has become Shylock’s play, eclipsing all else, and whilst there may not be much else besides him that makes the play interesting, the one exception here is Portia, who is one of Shakespeare’s finest female roles from the 1590s.

4 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice”

Definitely one of Shakespeare’s problematic plays. I view it more as a tragi-comedy and believe Shakespeare provided ambiguity towards Shylock in that he did not lampoon him but gave him full characterization. Perhaps Shakespeare wanted the audience to see beyond the culture and see a person.

Problematic indeed! Thank you for your most interesting exploration of the issues.

VERY CLEAR SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS. THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING ME TO READ IT AS ONE PART OF MY READINGS

Wouldn’t thou allow such mercy to Shylock if he show an ounce of pennant thought, or would it rather be rendered he suffer the harsh justice he demanded upon Antonio that you, in your fraudulent identity, chastised him for. You ask that Shylock grant mercy, but you refuse him such the like. Surely, you present him the harshest of consequences. Perhaps, opportune his chance of recompense and change of heart. Allow the man his beliefs and as well an example to present to his like minded. Allow him at least the the humane existence, some mere portion of fortune. There must be thoughts and consistency of mercy , although through consequential reasoning, placed upon both arguments.

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Merchant of Venice

By william shakespeare, merchant of venice essay questions.

In what ways does The Merchant of Venice defy the comedic genre?

While The Merchant of Venice is firmly placed in the genre of comedy, it is a unique comedy in that it features many tropes of early modern tragedy – namely, the gruesome predilections and rhetorical skill of its central antagonist, the long-winded soliloquies interrogating major philosophical concepts, and the bleak, anxious tone that characterizes most of the play before its "twist" of a conclusion. As such, many interpret the play as an ambiguous take on the nature of prejudice and the tragic consequences it can have (though they do materialize in this play in particular).

To what extent is Shylock a true antagonist?

A major contributing factor to the play's ambiguous tone is its antagonist, Shylock. Shylock is both a selfish, money-hungry, vengeful schemer and a victim of prejudice at the hands of the Christian characters. As such, the play encourages its audience to question wether Shylock can be considered a pure villain or pure victim throughout. While he is inarguably the play's central antagonist, his character development over the course of the play asks the audience to reflect on where that antagonism may have been generated.

What, or who, triumphs at the end of the play?

Generally speaking, it is the Christian characters who triumph at the end of the play, specifically Antonio as he is freed from his contract with Shylock. However, Portia's speech during the trial (when she is disguised as Balthazar) suggests that the real victor in the play is mercy, or qualities of the righteous Christian soul. Mercy was and continues to be associated with Jesus Christ, and in speaking about the importance of mercy between Shylock and Antonio, Portia suggests that the teachings of Christianity will triumph in the end.

Why does Shylock demand a pound of Antonio's flesh instead of money?

During the trial, Shylock refuses to accept 6,000 ducats from Antonio (double the amount of the original loan). While Shylock is portrayed as a money-hungry miser throughout the play, he rejects this offer and continues to demand the pound of flesh from the original contract. This moment suggests that Shylock is not motivated entirely by money or financial gain. On the contrary, it seems his dedication to receiving the pound of flesh stems from his deep desire for revenge on a member of the Christian community, after he has suffered years of abuse at their hands for being Jewish.

How does the play comment on gender?

In one of the play's more lighthearted plots, Portia and Nerissa disguise themselves as male officials of the Venetian court in order to intervene on Antonio's behalf. While cross-dressing was always entertaining on the early modern stage, Portia's confidence that she can sway the court serves as commentary on the relationship between gender and power. Portia suggests that masculinity – and the power associated with it – is itself performative, and that it only takes a male disguise for a woman to be taken seriously among men.

Merchant of Venice Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Merchant of Venice is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Explain Portias tactics. Why does she appear to support Shylock at first?

When Portia arrives in court, she asks, "Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?" (4.1.169). Indeed, given the confusion so many people have with the title, it is often this very question which is asked. Scholars have tried to attribute her...

Describe merchant of venice as romantic comedy

While the story hits upon the tragic element of despair, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, is a comedy because lovers are separated, characters are in disguise, and the story has a happy ending.

ACT III SCENE 3: What do you think Shylock means when he says, “it is my humour”?

This could be defined as "this is what I feel like doing".

Study Guide for Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Essays for Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Merchant of Venice.

• The Victorious Woman in Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice
• Father-Daughter Relationships in The Merchant of Venice
• Mercy and the Masquerade: Trial and Performance in The Merchant of Venice
• Christianity and Judaism in The Merchant of Venice: Imperfect Faith
• The Anti-Semitic Question in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

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The Merchant of Venice

William shakespeare, everything you need for every book you read..

In connection with mercy and generosity, The Merchant of Venice also explores love and friendship between its characters. The central romantic relationship of the play is that between Bassanio and Portia . Their marriage is paralleled by several others: the elopement of Shylock's daughter, Jessica , with the Christian, Lorenzo ; and the marriage of Portia's servant, Nerissa , to Bassanio's companion, Gratiano . In addition, numerous critics have suggested that the strongest friendship in the play—between Antonio and Bassanio—also approaches romantic love. In addition, the play shows how strong the amicable ties are that connect all the various Venetian characters.

Given the generosity that they motivate between characters, love and friendship might seem to offer alternatives to the ugly emotions of prejudice, greed, and revenge on display in The Merchant of Venice . However, beginning with Bassanio's borrowing money from his friend Antonio in order to woo Portia, the play also demonstrates that the apparent purity of love and friendship can be tainted by selfish economic concerns. In addition, love and friendship are also at the mercy of the law, as seen in Portia's being subject to the terms of her father's riddle of the caskets .

Love and Friendship ThemeTracker

Love and Friendship Quotes in The Merchant of Venice

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Related Topics

• Romeo And Juliet
• As You Like It
• Measure for Measure
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• Taming of The Shrew
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Taming of The Shrew
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The Main Themes in “The Merchant of Venice”

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“To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge”… is one of many key lines from “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare. It is one of the memorable lines as it is the first line from Shylock’s pivotal speech based on revenge. I will be going into depth in this critical response about what are the main themes which will include the conflict between justice and mercy and the contrast of love and hate. Collectively, they help us to understand in detail about the characters, Also, I will be describing many other features from the play such as the key speeches by Portia and Shylock, setting and characterisation.

The Merchant of Venice’ is a play which focuses on two main plots. First of all there is Shylock’s plot, were he is on a quest for a pound of flesh from Antonio. However, Portia comes and saves the day. Also there is another plot surrounding Portia which involves three caskets and her marriage. In Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” he explores many themes but the main one in my opinion is the conflict between justice and mercy. As in Shylock’s key speech where he is putting a lot of emphasis on revenge by using rhetorical questions aimed at him being a Jew.

Shylock expresses his hatred and resentment of Antonio in his speech as all of his feelings which he had to suppress over the years now have burst to the surface. As the speech goes on he gets more passionate and tries to gain the sympathy of the audience and appeals to common humanity, Shylock does this by the use of rhetorical questions, such as: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands”, “If you poison us, do we not die. ” However, Shylock’s sympathetic side does not last long as he quickly turns into his usual self by saying, “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge.

He is saying here, because Antonio has done something wrong, Shylock has a right to take the pound of flesh and not show any mercy. Although, if you look at Portia’s key speech, in “The Merchant of Venice” you will find that her feelings and attitude differ from Shylock’s. Portia emphasises the value of mercy and how Shylock should show mercy to Antonio. The opening line of her speech is: “The quality of mercy is not strain’d… ” Portia is saying here that you cannot force mercy on anyone; mercy has to come deep down from the person’s heart.

Then, in the second line, Portia describes rain as “a natural occurrence” However, in Shylock’s case, mercy does not come naturally to him and cannot be “forced” on him as Shylock’s hatred and his will for revenge are very much the paramount of who he is as a person. Portia then goes on to show there is a connection between being a King or an important leader and the quality of mercy. She says that having a sceptre symbolizes earthly power, but it is far more important to show the quality of mercy which earns respect, which is the proper characteristic of true royalty.

Mercy shows the real integrity of the royal leader not a crown which is superficial. Basically, she is asking Shylock to consider showing mercy to Antonio by even allowing a doctor to be present when the pound of flesh is cut. As well as the conflict between justice and mercy there is the juxtaposition of the two main settings in the play, Venice and Belmont. First of all the juxtaposition of Venice and Belmont is highlighted as, throughout the plot it keeps going back and forth between the two so their contrasts become highlighted. In Venice, the characters are greedy and they all have to work hard to earn their money.

This leads to the characters in Venice not taking money for granted and they value money as they keep it all to themselves. However this can be compared to Belmont, which is very much the upper-class city. We see that, the characters in live in Belmont, the characters do not have to work as hard as they are already rich so their need ‘to work hard’ for money is not as great as in Venice. So overall, Venice is the city where the hard working who does not take money for granted and Belmont is the city of the upper-class who is all rich. Also Belmont is full of peace and harmony compared to the tense business world of Venice.

Antonio who is ‘The Merchant of Venice’ himself comes from Venice. He is often generous to his friends, especially Bassanio when he helps him out with a loan. Antonio is often sad and depressed; the cause of the sadness is not known but it is often said it is because he the two so their contrasts become highlighted. In Venice, the characters are greedy and they all have to work hard to earn their money. This leads to the characters in Venice not taking money for granted and they value money as they keep it all to themselves. However, this can be compared to Belmont, which is very much the upper-class city.

We see that, the characters that live in Belmont, they do no have to work as hard as they are already rich so their need ‘to work hard’ for money is not as great as in Venice. So overall, Venice is the city where the hard working, were people do not take money for granted and Belmont is the city of the upper-class who is all rich. Also, Belmont is full of peace and harmony compared to the tense business world of Venice. Antonio who is ‘The Merchant of Venice’ himself comes from Venice. He is often generous to his friends, especially Bassanio when he helps him out with a loan of ducats.

Antonio is often sad and depressed; the cause of this sadness is not known but it is often said it is because he is an isolated character. In a conversation with Gratiano, Antonio expresses his feelings metaphorically describing the world as: “A stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one. ” He feels his part is to play the role of a depressed character. We also learn at the start of the play when Antonio lends Bassanio the money, he breaks his own rules. He breaks his rules as Antonio disapproves morally of the lending of money for interest; however as a mark of affection to Bassanio he is willing to do this just for him.

Throughout the plot Antonio is still lonely after the climax he is the only one who has not found true love or even a relationship. Antonio has an enemy in the play, this is Shylock. Shylock is the one who suggests the unusual bond of a pound of flesh if Antonio does not repay the money Shylock lent to him. Shylock is a money-lending Jew, and for these two reasons he is very much disliked and hated by most in the plot. Throughout the plot Shylock is often associated with devil or animal imagery.

“An inhuman wretch, incapable of pity, void and empty from any dram of mercy. This is when the Duke is describing Shylock as being un-human and will only show a small measure of mercy. Also, in Shylock’s key speech – the Duke is correct – as he shows no mercy what so ever to Antonio as he thinks that revenge is more important than being merciful. However, at the end of the plot Shylock neither gets his pound of flesh or his three thousand ducats back. As a matter of fact he has to sign all of which he owns over to Jessica and Lorenzo, and he also must promise to become a Christian. By this point Shylock has lost everything and is totally defeated.

Then there is Portia who is another important character in ‘The Merchant of Venice. ’ Portia is a very intelligent and beautiful woman who falls in love with Bassanio, However, her father has planned a test with three caskets and whoever chooses the correct casket is allowed to marry Portia. Later she dresses up as a lawyer in the courtroom scene and saves Antonio’s life. At the end of the play Portia is happy as she and Bassanio ‘live happily ever after. ’ One of the central themes in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is the contrast between love and hate. There is not just one type of love explored in the play; there are many.

Such as the love of a friend which is explored through Antonio and Bassanio, These two friends are extremely close and Antonio would just about give his live or do anything for Bassanio. In return Bassanio would do the same and would even give up his wife for Antonio. Another type explored is the love shared between father and child. Firstly, you have Portia who still respects her father’s wishes regarding the terms of the caskets left in his will. Then there is Jessica and her father Shylock; their relationship is not as strong as Jessica welcomes the chance to run away from home.

Also there is Lancelot whose father does not even recognise him when the accidently meet. However, he finally recognises him for his blessing. Also there is the romantic love explored by Shakespeare. Here it is explored through Portia and Bassanio as they have fell in love with one another, but Bassanio’s true motives for him marrying Portia was for her money. Then there is Nerissa who marries Gratiano but they hardly know each other. Also there is a love between characters and possessions, for example you could say Shylock loves his money.

However, all is not love and well as hate is also shown through certain characters and factors in ‘The Merchant of Venice. ’ First of all you see the hatred shown to Shylock as he is a Jew from all Christians. There is even more tense and hatred relationships between Antonio and Shylock. This hatred causes Shylocks to go in search of revenge rather than to be merciful to Antonio. In my opinion love is explored stronger than hate in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ as there are more ways in which he explores it compared to hate. Also the end scene shows that mostly everyone lives happily ever after and all is well.

Iambic pentameter is a language technique used by William Shakespeare in ‘The Merchant of Venice. ’ It is when the lines are unrhymed but all have ten syllables, they also have to be divided into five ‘feet. ’ Shakespeare uses it throughout this play. An example of it is, “My wind, cooling my broth, would blow me to ague when I thought what harm a wind too great might do at sea. ” This is an example of it as there are ten syllables which are unrhymed, this results in iambic pentameter. The effect of iambic pentameter is so that the lines flow well and they do not have to rhyme for this to happen.

Shakespeare uses this technique a lot in his plays. The key scene of the plot is act four which is also known as ‘the courtroom scene. ’ In the courtroom scene both the Duke – the judge – and Portia – who is dressed up as a lawyer – give speeches on the quality of mercy, Portia’s main objective for going to the trial is to saver her husband, Bassanio, as he is willing to give his life for Antonio. This is when the two plots converge as Shylock, with the pound of flesh, and Portia, with the three caskets, come head to head in the courtroom. When they come head to head, it gets very tense as Shylock still seeks revenge.

However, Shylock does not succeed in his wish as all of a sudden due to Portia he has lost everything he once owned. Furthermore, Portia who is the main character around the three casket theme shows how strong her bond with her father was as she still kept the terms in the will. However she complains about the restrictive terms in the will. The exact terms in her father’s will are that if anyone wants to marry Portia they must either choose gold, silver or a lead casket. The caskets all come with one rhyme for the suitors to think about and consider when they are making their choice.

Also for the suitors to know if they have made the correct choice there will be a small portrait with a painting of Portia on it. The first suitor to make his preferred choice is The Prince of Morocco. His choice is the gold casket and inside is a skill and a scroll with writing on it, results in him choosing the wrong casket and must never return to Portia and cannot tell anyone the casket in which he had chosen. The second suitor to choose a casket is ‘The Prince of Arragon. ’ This suitor also chooses the wrong casket in which he had chosen the silver casket.

This casket had a picture of a blinking idiot and also a scroll. So this meant the lead casket which the audience knew the was the correct casket but the final suitor did not know this, The third suitor is of course Bassanio, although Bassanio has already fell in love with Portia he still must make the correct choice to ‘win’ Portia as his wife. Bassanio chooses the lead casket and this reveals a picture so devine and life-like of Portia as Bassanio describes the portrait as, It also contains a scroll which at the end of it says, “And claim her with a kiss” to confirm the correct casket.

With the three caskets there is a certain element of superficiality around them. The superficiality is mostly around the appearance as the three caskets are gold, silver and lead. Now, most people would think Portia’s father would put her in the gold casket as gold represents wealth and something special. Also on the gold casket the inscription says, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. ” This would suggest that Portia’s father has an opinion that men do not deserve the love of Portia. However, he puts the picture of Portia in the least expected casket; this would be the lead casket.

The inscription on this casket reads, “who chooseth me must give and hazard all the hath. ” He is saying here that if you choose this casket you must go through and put up with what might ever come your way with Portia, this might put some men off picking it as it sounds negative and so does the fact it is in the lead casket. So overall, Portia’s father does not go for the obvious he went for the least obvious which is what superficiality is all about. In my opinion to conclude the question in which I chose the main theme is the conflict between justice and mercy for many reasons I will briefly state.

First of all Portia who is one of the main characters, her key speech was based around mercy. Then if you compare that to Shylock’s, another main character, his speech was based around revenge. So these two most famous speeches are based around the main theme. Also at the end of the play, in my opinion Shylock deserved what he got so justice was served. Justice and mercy is also relevant in today’s society as the quality of mercy is not dead. It is not dead as people still believe that showing mercy to others is still worthy of praise and should be respected.

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