...Robert Hapgood Copyright © 1967 by Duke University Press 1967 PORTIA AND THE MERCHANT OF VENICE THE GENTLE BOND By ROBERTHAPGOOD In a passage which sums up the main point of his provocative article...

... to his proposing a very different answer to Portia’s crucial question-“What mercy can you render him, Antonio?” (IV.i.376)-from the one the Merchant himself supplies. I Yet in Act V all this is forgotten: Gratiano relapses into his original role, or roles. One of these is to be a kind...

... and Juliet’s wedding night, as well as passages from Julius Caesar (Portia and Brutus, 2.1), King Lear (Lear and the Fool, 3.2), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The translations are for the most part quite literal, but they use alexandrine couplets, a form consistent with ancien régime dramatic tradition...

.... W. Lever, “Shylock, Portia and the Values of Shakespearian Comedy,” SQ, 3 (1952). 383-86, antl Barbara K. Lewalski, “Biblical Allusion antl Allegory in The Merchant of Venice,” SQ, 13 (1962), 327-43. pursuit of Antonio’s pound of flesh by appealing to “Christian ex- ample.” According...

... of the bond’s law can be transformed into the ring of love” (p. 210). If we see the Jessica-Lorenzo affair “as it is,” it provides a meaningful contrast to that of Portia and Bassanio by being “lawless,” an “inversion of true, bonded love” (pp. 223, 224). In a continuation of the word-play which always...

... for is that of a sub-Bassanio. Bassanio Kunin  Characters Lounge 295 sees, loves, and receives a ring from Portia, and Graziano does the same with Nerissa; Bassanio gives his ring to Balthasar, and Graziano gives his to the clerk. Significantly, Graziano insists that he...

.... But is there any real evidence in the plays to support the notion that Shakespeare was tempted by Marlovian dreams of power or by self-indulgent poetic fantasizing? One might as well infer from the sympathetic portrayals of Romeo and Juliet and Brutus and Portia that Shakespeare came to terms with his...

... is kept in reserve. Her first project to win Bertram operates on the romantic, folk-tale level. She will win him as Bassanio wins Portia, by fulfilling a task, a task with a certain aura of magic-the curing of the King. Taken realistically, her skill as a physician would be an irrele- vant claim...

... of interesting parallels between the plays and Henry Smith’s sermons. The comparison between the theater and life (“Every man hath a part the description of a perfect woman, the contrast between appearance and reality, the comparison between mercy and rain, as used by Portia, the comparison of life...

... of the problems that rack Hamlet are filtered through a different mode and mood. For instance, Shakespeare’s comic heroines are often, like Hamlet, fatherless: Viola and Portia have lost their fathers to death, Rosalind has seen hers banished, and Beatrice and Helena are conspicuously fatherless...

... Truculento with arguments very similar to those used by Portia to frustrate Shylock. Judgment is given, and, as in The Mer- chant of Venice, the usurer makes his son-in-law his heir, though in this case Truculento is not compelled to do so; his decision is volun- tary and contributes...

... give place to accidental evils” (IV.iii.145-46). But Brutus’ answer and Cassius’ repentance show the injustice of the reproach and certify Brutus’ Stoicism : BRU. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead. CASS. Ha! Portia? BRU. She is dead...

... father’s consent, and so wins himself a wife and the inheritance of a duchy, with less effort and even more by chance, than Bassanio wins Portia.* In fact, aside from the initial wrestling match, Orlando’s own designs and labors have little to do with all this happy outcome: Adam and Adam’s...

... directly to mind include Richard’s elo- quence to the Lady Anne in Richard III, Portia’s in The Merchant of Venice, Mark Antony’s to the mob in Julius Caesar, and Isabella’s to Angelo in Measure for Measure. An exhaustive list would doubtless include several examples from each play. As we...

... League, it gave innumerable matinees of plays and pageants, some to pay trib- ute to Shakespeare for portraying the varied qualities of women. In Shakespeare’s Dreams, an arrangement by the best-selling author and playwright Beatrice Harraden and Bessie Hatton, Portia, Viola, Perdita, Lady...

... was the first to find distasteful. It has been variously read. Mark Van Doren was the first recent critic (1939) to help establish the modern trend. This long speech, he says, “would be painful to us were she a person as Portia and Imogen are person That is, she is less a human being than...

... of Shakespeare’s plays have female characters who can be considered representatives of the noble love associated with the heavenly Venus. Portia, Cordelia, and Hermi- one fulfill, in their different ways, this role. Troilus and Cressida has no such character; love in this play is completely under...

... sexual identity in some sense frees them‘ from their initial rigidity and pre- pares them to accept heterosexual mates? It is interesting that the hero- See, for example, the speeches of Portia (TheMerchant of Venice III.iv.60-78)and Rosalind (As You Like It 1.i.1 10-18). Act, scene...

.... If deceit in Measure for Measure must be taken as a serious moral issue, it is much to Isabella’s credit that, along with Portia in the Merchant of Venice, she of all the heroines in the plays practices decep- tion for a purely unselfish motive. And Isabella is acting under clerical suggestion...

... Shakespeare has Portia appear before Brutus, asking, “Is Brutus sick? . . . No, my Brutus; / You have some sick offence within your mind, / FYhich, by the right and vir- tue of my place, / I ought to know of’ vulius Caesar II.i.261-70), he gives us to understand that Brutus’s direction of thought...