Merchant of Venice Essay

Within society, both past and present, we can discern a myriad of façades which present a deceptive outer appearance. William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Willy Russell’s Educating Rita and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover are works of literature which diversely consider a vast array of characters and situations which demonstrate such façades within society. These façades may be actively used by a character or be surrounding an abstract concept or institution, such as wealth or…

TITLE In The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and in A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Portia’s intelligence and the Beneatha’s strong empowerment being suppressed (or attempted to be) are examples of discrimination within their own societies. In The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare Portia disguises herself to be able to hold any power in the Venetian court, showing the discrimination against women. Since she was disguised as a man everybody within the court held her…

The view of justice that William Shakespeare presents in Macbeth differs from the one he presents in The Merchant of Venice. In Macbeth Shakespeare unfolds justice through Macduff in using his hands to revenge Macbeth’s killing his wife and children, leaving him without his beloveds. While in The Merchant of Venice, Shylock, seeks justice from the Duke of Venice in requests that he enforces Shylock’s contract with Antonio. Shylock, in contrast to Macduff, seeks justice through the superior power…

Sometimes it’s planting false information into someone’s mind like Iago in Othello, who manipulated the title character to kill his wife. Even so, there are times when the rhetoric fails and so did the characters that gave them. In the plays The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Part One, and Julius Caesar, as each rhetoric tries to convince characters in the play to do things, Shakespeare shows how words used in rhetorics can change a person or thing entirely. In As You Like It, the play is…

The main female characters of Christopher Marlow’s The Jew of Malta and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice serve the same purpose in their respective plays. Despite their power differences, Abigail and Portia fulfill the same function of humiliating the Jewish main character. These women also perform comparable actions which feed into the execution of their implicit main purpose. These actions and consequences include the following: going in disguise to protect financial statuses when…

This quote is shylock talking to tubal about Jessica leaving “I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and/ the jewels in her ears: would she were hearsed at my foot, /and the ducats in her coffin!.(III.i.79-81). Shylock is mad that his daughter left him with his money and would want her to be dead in front of him to get his money and have all her ducats from her coffin. This shows that Shylock is a villain since he would go to the extent to wanting her dead for his…

Press. In this book Rabkin looks at several Shakespeare plays including The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, and The Tempest as well as many others. Rabkin uses these to support his argument that the plays do mean something more than can be conveyed by description alone. He shows that there are many complex paradoxical elements present in Shakespeare’s work. The first chapter is entitled “Meaning and The Merchant of Venice”. In this chapter Rabkin begins by explaining his perception of the changing…

In To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee the character Atticus is similar to William Shakespeare's play the Merchant of Venice's character Portia as they both proved to be intelligent. Portia had chosen to represent Antonio, Bassanio’s closest friend, in court. Antonio was in great debt to Shylock and owed him a pound of flesh. Portia tells Shylock Why, this bond is forfeit, /And lawfully by the jew may claim a pound of flesh, to be by him cut off nearest to the merchant's heart (Shakespeare…

In the first two acts of the play, Merchant of Venice, Shylock, a Jewish money lender, is a villain in which we should be aware of. The first example we see this is in 1: 3 when Shylock reveals his hatred for Antonio for his religion, Christianity. However most of all Shylock despise Antonio for lending money without any interest. This shows that Shylock hates Antonio for no legitimate reasons. Being a Christian is not something that is to be hated upon. Lending money without gaining profit is a…

By the end of the novel scout had matured slightly and while she wasn’t going to go completely for the southern womanhood role she was much more at peace with the fact she was a girl. by the end of the book she had found positive role models in Miss Maudie and Calpurnia who had both put being a woman into perspective and an admirable light when she looked at how they lived their lives, and she had stopped being so bothered when Jem called her a girl because she was no longer spending all her…