The Venice versus Belmont motif was a key to this play. It put an imaginary division between the two so as to make them have two distinct personas. One way that the imaginary divider was put in place was in the physical separation of the two. They were not exactly close enough to commute to work everyday. The second way in which the two were separated was that Belmont was an island with a beautiful mountain on it. This isolated it so that the only way to get there was by a sea voyage. This required a lot of planning and money. From this separation we also lose one of Aristotle?s unities. He argued that a tragedy must take place in one location. If there had been unity of place Portia would have lived just around the corner and been easily accessible. This contributes to one of my previous questions for why I do not think that this play is a tragedy.
One way that the two cities are different is in their reality. Venice is a very realistic place. The people living and working in the town have real problems. Such as debt to Shylock who will take everything that they own if they fail to make their payments. This can be seen in our modern world. Many people borrow money from a bank but miss their payments and have their assets seized. This happened to one of my neighbors. While Venice has this reality to it Belmont is a city that one would see in a fairytale. Everything is happy and nobody has any real problems. Sure Portia did not like the method in which her husband was going to be picked but that may not have mattered. Depending on how you read the play, Portia may have ?rigged? the process by telling Bassanio which casket to pick.
Another difference in the Belmont versus Venice motif has to do with money. In Venice money was continually topic of conversation. They were worried about it, borrowing it, lending it, or touching it. Shylock was a character in Venice that dealt directly with money. He did not just have others touch his money for him. He actually touched it and paid for the things that he bought by himself. Whereas in Belmont none of the characters had anything to do with money. It was never a concern to them. It was just magically there. They also never physically touched the money. The had it and were rich but they did not go and reach into their chest to grab a handful of gold. The debts were simply taken care of, by someone else.
Another difference between the two cities was what the people were like. In describing the people of Venice one would discover that they are very much like us. They are not infallible, and have normal problems. Belmont is not so. They are god-like. I say this because there is not one thing that they can not do. Whatever they set out to do is accomplished with ease, no matter how big the task is. An example of this was when Portia and Nerissa disguised themselves as men and masqueraded as a lawyer and his clerk. I pose a question. Could two woman really go undetected as men? I think not. Another thing is that they accomplished what they had wanted to do with so much ease. They just showed up with some law that happened to save Antonio and doom Shylock. Why would the judge not know about this law? This is simply because Portia is like a god. She can seemingly ?pull a rabbit out of her hat? whenever it is convenient. More evidence that Belmont is god-like is that in the en!
d of the play the characters are talking about the Greek gods. This is just a little hint as to what Shakespeare intended.
I think that this motif was very interesting. I did not notice it very much until we were asked about it. Then I ?saw the light?. I saw what Shakespeare had done. This also made me understand why Portia was able to save the day. I had found it a little hard to believe that she was such a great lawyer with no training. I also wondered where that mysterious law had come from.
#14
In The Merchant of Venice one is able to see many different motifs. These motifs are literary devices that Shakespeare used intentionally. They make the play deeper and provide a sort of continuity. This makes the play flow from one scene to another with little difficulty and one does not really notice the breaks between scenes. The motifs also recur throughout the play which gives the reader a sense of knowing what will happen. It could be argued that Shakespeare used the motifs in a way that can be considered as foreshadowing. This is possible because a reader knows what happened in the situation of one motif and therefore if that motif is seen again they will have a sense of the outcome. One motif in this play that is always present is the bond motif. There are many different kinds of bonds in this play. They may be different on the surface, but they are actually very similar.
One Bond in this play is that between Shylock and Antonio. This money bond is the most visible bond in the entire play. Antonio was forced into this bond by his friendship. His friendship to Bassanio could be argued to be his flaw. After all, it is what got him in trouble in the first place and caused him to accept death at Shylock?s hand. This bond was weird from the very first moment that Shylock and Antonio began to discuss it. At first Shylock was very angry at Antonio. He gave him a big lecture about how he had been mistreated and then started to think about how much interest he should get. After a little deliberation he decided that he would lend the money, not for interest, but rather for a pound of flesh. Antonio thought that this was a silly thing and signed the bond despite Bassanio?s objections. A little side note about this bond is that it appeared to be just a joke but in reality it turned out to be a potentially lethal situation.
Another motif in the play that I alluded to in the previous paragraph is the motif of friendship. The friendship between Bassanio and Antonio was absolute. No one could break it. This absoluteness appeared many times throughout the play. It was the main motivating factor in Antonio?s decision to enter into the money bond with Shylock. Another time that it surfaced was when a messenger gave a letter to Bassanio from Antonio. In this letter Antonio said that he forgave Bassanio and erased all of his debts to him. Then it also came to light that Antonio did not care if he died, as long as Bassanio was there to see him pay his debt.
A third bond motif in this play is the one of marriage. This is seen between Bassanio and Portia and Gratiano and Nerissa. Both sets of people are planning to get married but their plans are put on hold when Antonio?s letter calls the men away. Before they left though, their future wives gave them each a ring to keep with them forever. The rings were the only real bond between the two couples because they were not yet married when the men left for Antonio?s trial. These rings provided the kind of bond that their marriages would have given and gave Shakespeare a great opportunity to add some more comedy later on in the play.
The final bond motif that I would like to discuss is the bond between Portia and her father and Jessica and Shylock. These are both father to daughter bonds, although Portia?s father is dead. In both of the bonds the daughters try to abide by what their fathers wanted them to do. Portia tried to abide by her father?s casket idea and Jessica tried to obey Shylock?s wishes. However, in both of these bonds the daughters ended up betraying their father?s wishes. Jessica obviously did this when she ran away with a Christian, Lorenzo. In Portia?s case it was a little less obvious and could be interpreted many ways. I think that she did betray her father in the casket choosing business. One reason is because she would have put a bottle of wine on one of the caskets to make one of her suitors pick the wrong casket. The second reason is that I think she helped Bassanio pick the correct casket. When she had music played during his selection process it seemed to have a hidden mess!
age. It told him that the caskets were not what they appeared to be and that he should not judge them by their external appearance. This was clearly an attempt to pick her own husband and I think that she tried to fool herself into thinking that she had fulfilled her father?s wishes.
All of these bond motifs appear to be different. However, if you look deeper into the situations it is possible to see a common trend. In each case the bonds are broken in some sense. The rings were given away, the pound of flesh was not taken, and Antonio did not want Bassanio?s help in the court room. This fact was not visible to me until I had read the entire play but I am now glad that I have looked deeper into these bonds.
#19
In The Merchant of Venice there are many speeches from which great quotes can be taken. Many of these quotes bear an uncanny resemblance to reality. It is amazing that the lines of a play that was written so long ago could be so profound and applicable to modern day life. The quote for my question is, ?All that glisters is not gold; often have you heard that told. . .? In the final packet the word ?that? was ?it?. I found this error when I looked through the play and found the quote. Fortunately this did not take me a long time because I knew the approximate spot that it had been stated. This quote has central importance to the entire play. It most directly applies to the caskets but it also includes other things.
This quote has central importance to the play for many reasons. My first reason is because it is in the midst of one of the major conflicts in the play. The Prince of Morocco read this quote from the scroll inside the gold casket that he had chosen, which was incorrect. The caskets are really the cause of the whole play because they started the chain of events leading to the bond. If Bassanio had not needed the money to court Portia the bond would have never been made. The quote also holds great importance because it alludes to a theme in the play. This is that things are not necessarily what they appear to be. ?All that glisters is not gold? tells the reader that gold is not the only thing that matters or that it is the most desirable. It may seem to be the best choice on the outside, but on the inside it contains a person?s doom. The second part of the quote is, ?often have your heard that told? holds deep meaning also. It can tell the audience that in their culture m!
ost people did choose the thing that was desirable on the surface. This allows one to believe that the Prince would have chosen the wrong one and honestly thought that his reasoning was sound. This also applies to the Prince of Aragon that picked the silver casket thinking that he deserved Portia.
Another part of the play that this quote applies to is in the reality versus appearance motif other than that of the caskets. One example is about the bond between Shylock and Antonio. The quote could be seen as meaning that money is not the only thing that matters, though often it seems that it is the only thing that matters. This could easily describe Shylock and make a reader interpret the story in a certain way. It would make one think that Shylock knows that money is not the only thing that matters and that he is willing to sacrifice it for revenge. Another example of how the quote applies to the reality versus appearance motif is in the case of Jessica and Shylock. In this relationship the quote would mean that respect and obedience is always present, though it may at times