It is common to pontificate about matters of love and money, and how one comes to effect the other. At best, the true connection of love and money is undefined, and at worst, it is unknowable. In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, love and money are core themes which dictate not only the relationships of characters but the motivations of characters as well. Love and money become so interlaced in this play, that the independent existence of one without the other becomes an impossibility. Through Jessica and Lorenzo, Antonio and Bassanio, and Portia and Bassanio, money comes to play an integral part of every relationship and action of each major player. This relationship becomes clearly defined in the very beginning of the play in Act I Scene
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This effect is most obvious in the phrase, “I had a mind presages me such thrift/ That I should be questionless less fortunate,” (1.1.177-178). In essence, Bassanio is saying that if he had enough wealth he could compare to the other suitors then he could get Portia. This statement is just another way of saying that Bassanio believes if he has enough money he could get the girl, which can be more succinctly viewed as Bassanio purchasing Portia’s love. The idea that one needs to be wealthy in order to garner the affections of Portia, not only makes Portia seem as if she is a commodity that can be bought but again shows how in The Merchant of Venice love and money come to be effects of one another. For Bassanio, love leads to money from both Antonio and Portia, and in much the same way his love comes from the wealth both of those characters own. Again, when Bassanio says, “…many Jasons come in quest of her,” (1.1.174) he shows how Portia is sought out much like a valuable object. As Bassanio reduces Portia to commodity he is also belittling his own claims of love, for the love of an object is not as pure or true as the love of the person. If Portia is an object to be had and owned, then his love for her is no more than his love for his other belongings, and such a relationship is not like the connections of Romeo and Juliet, or even of Benedict and
This effect is most obvious in the phrase, “I had a mind presages me such thrift/ That I should be questionless less fortunate,” (1.1.177-178). In essence, Bassanio is saying that if he had enough wealth he could compare to the other suitors then he could get Portia. This statement is just another way of saying that Bassanio believes if he has enough money he could get the girl, which can be more succinctly viewed as Bassanio purchasing Portia’s love. The idea that one needs to be wealthy in order to garner the affections of Portia, not only makes Portia seem as if she is a commodity that can be bought but again shows how in The Merchant of Venice love and money come to be effects of one another. For Bassanio, love leads to money from both Antonio and Portia, and in much the same way his love comes from the wealth both of those characters own. Again, when Bassanio says, “…many Jasons come in quest of her,” (1.1.174) he shows how Portia is sought out much like a valuable object. As Bassanio reduces Portia to commodity he is also belittling his own claims of love, for the love of an object is not as pure or true as the love of the person. If Portia is an object to be had and owned, then his love for her is no more than his love for his other belongings, and such a relationship is not like the connections of Romeo and Juliet, or even of Benedict and