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Summary of Merchant of Venice Act 1, Scene 3 ICSE Class 10, 9 English

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Summary Act 1 Scene 3

Bassanio seeks out Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, for a loan of three thousand ducats on the strength of Antonio’s credit. Shylock is hesitant about lending Bassanio the money. He knows for a fact that Antonio is a rich man, but he also knows that all of Antonio’s money is invested in his merchant fleet. At the present time, Antonio’s ships are bound for distant places, and therefore vulnerable to many perils at sea. Yet he says finally. “I think I may take his bond.” He refuses Bassanio’s invitation to dinner, however; he will do business with Christians, but it is against his principles to eat with them.

When Antonio suddenly appears, Shylock (in an aside) expresses contempt for him, saying that he hates Antonio because he is a Christian, but more important,he hates Antonio because Antonio lends money to people without charging interest; moreover, Antonio publicly condemns Shylock for charging excessive interest in his money lending business. Finally, though, Shylock agrees to lend Bassanio the three thousand ducats. Antonio then says that he — as a rule — never lends nor borrows money by taking or giving interest. Yet because of his friend Bassanio’s pressing need, Antonio is willing to break this rule. The term of the loan will be for three months, and Antonio will give his bond as security.

While Bassanio and Antonio are waiting to learn the rate of interest which Shylock will charge for the loan, Shylock digresses. He tells them about the biblical story of how Jacob increased his herd of sheep. He calculates the interest which he will charge and announces: “Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate.” Shylock then accuses Antonio of having repeatedly spit upon him and called him a dog. And now Antonio and Bassanio come asking him for money. Yet they pride themselves that

Antonio is a virtuous man because he lends money to friends, with no interest involved. Is this loan, Shylock inquires, a loan to be arranged among “friends”? On the contrary; this is not to be regarded as a loan between friends, Antonio asserts. In fact, Antonio says. Shylock may regard it as a loan to an enemy if he wishes. Then, surprisingly. Shylock says that he wants Antonio’s friendship, and to prove it, he will advance the loan without charging a penny of interest. But in order to make this transaction “a merry sport,” Shylock wants a penally clause providing that if Antonio fails to repay the loan within the specified time, Shylock will have the right to cut a “pound of flesh” from any part of Antonio’s body. Bassanio objects to his friend’s placing himself in such danger for his sake, but Antonio assures him that long before the loan is due that some of his ships will return from abroad and that he will be able to repay the loan three times over. Shylock insists, at this point, that the penalty is merely a jest. He could gain nothing by exacting the forfeit of a pound of human flesh, which is not even as valuable as mutton or beef. The contract is agreed to, and despite Bassanio’s misgivings, Antonio consents to Shylock’s terms.

Analysis Act I Scene 3

This scene has two important functions. First, it completes the exposition of the two major plot lines of the play; Antonio agrees to Shylock’s bond — three thousand ducats for a pound of flesh; and second, and more important dramatically, this scene introduces Shylock himself. In this scene, Shakespeare makes it clear at once why Shylock is the most powerful dramatic figure in the play and why so many great actors have regarded this part as one of the most rewarding roles in all Shakespearean dramas.

Shylock enters first; Bassanio is following him, trying to get an answer to his request for a loan. Shylock’s repetitions (“Well . . . three months . . . well”) evade a direct answer to Bassanio’s pleas, driving Bassanio to his desperately impatient triple questioning in lines 7 and 8; the effect here is similar to an impatient, pleading child badgering an adult. Throughout the whole scene, both Bassanio and Antonio often seem naive in contrast to Shylock. Shylock has something they want — money — and both Antonio and Bassanio think that they should get the loan of the money, but neither one of them really understands Shylock’s nature.

In reply to Bassanio’s demand for a direct answer, Shylock still avoids answering straightforwardly. Shylock knows what he is doing, and he uses the time to elaborate on his meaning of “good” when applied to Antonio. Only after sufficient “haggling” does he finally reveal his intentions: “I think I may take his bond.” At Antonio’s entrance, Shylock is given a lengthy aside in which he addresses himself directly to the audience. Shakespeare often uses the devices of asides and soliloquies to allow his heroes and, in this case, his “Villain,” a chance to immediately make clear his intentions and motivations to the audience — as Shylock does here.

Shylock’s declaration of his hatred for Antonio immediately intensifies the drama of the scene; the audience now waits to see in what way he will be able to catch Antonio “upon the hip” and “feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.” Then Shylock is called back from the front of the stage by Bassanio, and he pretends to notice Antonio for the first time. Their greeting has ironic overtones for the audience, which has just heard Shylock’s opinion of Antonio. There then follows a debate between Antonio and Shylock on the subject of usury, or the taking of interest on a loan — permissible for Shylock but not for Antonio, according to Antonio’s moral code.

In making Shylock avoid committing himself immediately to lending Antonio the money, Shakespeare is building a dramatic crisis. For example, Antonio’s mounting-impatience leads to increased arrogance; he compares the moneylender to the “apple rotten at the heart.” Still, however, Shylock does not respond; he pretends to muse on the details of the loan, producing from Antonio the curt and insolent remark, “Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?” Only then does Shylock begin to answer directly, and he does so with calculated calm, “Signior Antonio,” he says, “many a time and oft / In the Rialto you have rated me,” His words are controlled but carry a cold menace that silences Antonio at once. At the phrase “You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog,” Shylock reveals to us that Antonio did “void your rheum upon my beard / And foot me as you spurn stranger cur / Over your threshold!” This is a vivid dramatic change, climaxing in his taunting lines: “Hath a dog money? Is it possible / A cur can lend three thousand ducats?”

In Shylock’s earlier aside (“I’ll hate him [Antonio] for he is a Christian”), the audience was inclined to pigeonhole Shylock as the “villain” of this drama; anyone who hates a man simply because he is a Christian must logically be a villain. Yet now, in this speech, there is much more depth and complexity; we are given a most revealing glimpse of a man who has been a victim, whose imposition of suffering on others is directly related to his own suffering. Shakespeare is manipulating us emotionally; we have to reconsider Shylock’s character.

After Shylock regains control of himself and skillfully leads Antonio toward the sealing of the bond, he says that he “would like to be friends” with Antonio. This gives him the excuse to make light of the bond, but a bond sealed “in merry sport” — a bond where a pound of flesh can “be cut off and taken / In what part of your body pleaseth me.” Here, Shakespeare has the difficult problem of making us believe that Antonio is actually innocent enough to accept such a condition; after all, Antonio is probably fifty years old and a wealthy merchant; he is no schoolboy, and this “merry sport” of a bond is absurd. Clearly, to us, Shylock’s interest is not only in money in this case, but Antonio does not realize this, nor does he realize or fully understand the depth of Shylock’s hatred of him. He is therefore unable to be persuaded that this bond is dangerous. To him, the bond is merely a “merry bond.” And thus Shylock is able to rhetorically ask Bassanio: “Pray you tell me this: / If he should break his day, what should I gain / By the exaction of the forfeiture?”

Shakespeare has set up a situation in which a man has put his life in the hands of a moral enemy and the outcome depends on fortune — that is, whether or not Antonio’s merchant ships survive pirates and the high seas. Antonio and Shylock are diametrical opposites. Shylock is cunning, cautious, and crafty; he belongs to a race which has been persecuted since its beginnings. As a Christian, Antonio is easy going, trusting, slightly melancholy, romantic, and naive. Shylock trusts only in the tangible — that is, in the bond. Antonio trusts in the intangible — that is, in luck. Here, Shylock seems almost paranoid and vengeful, but on the other hand, Antonio seems ignorantly over-confident — rather stupid because he is so lacking in common sense.

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Summary of Merchant of Venice Act 1, Scene 2 ICSE Class 10, 9 English

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Summary Act 1 Scene 2

At Belmont, Portia discusses the terms of her father’s will with her confidante, Nerissa. According to the will of her late father, Portia cannot marry a man of her own choosing. Instead, she must make herself available to all suitors and accept the one who chooses “rightly” from among “three chests of gold, silver and lead.” Nerissa tries to comfort Portia and tells her that surely her father knew what he was doing; whoever the man might be who finally chooses “rightly,” surely he will be “one who shall rightly love.” Portia is not so certain. None of her current suitors is the kind of man whom she would choose for herself;/she could choose. She cannot, however, for she gave her word that she would be obedient to her father’s last wishes.

Nerissa asks her to reconsider the gentlemen who have courted her, and she names the suitors who have come to Belmont — a Neapolitan prince; the County Palatine; a French lord, Monsieur Le Bon; a young English baron, Falcon bridge; a Scottish lord; and a young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew. Portia caustically comments on their individual faults, finding each one of them undesirable as a husband. Fortunately, all of them have decided to return home, unwilling to risk the penalty for choosing the wrong casket — which is, remaining a bachelor for the rest of their lives.

Nerissa then reminds her mistress of a gentleman who came to Belmont while Portia’s father was living — his name was Bassanio, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier. Portia recalls him and praises him highly: “He, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving of a fair lady.” A servant interrupts the conversation and announces that a new suitor, the Prince of Morocco, will arrive that evening.

Analysis Act 1 Scene 2

First off, the opening of this scene is deliberately reminiscent of the opening of Scene 1. Like Antonio, Portia announces her sadness, but unlike Antonio’s, Portia’s sadness is clearly due to the conditions imposed on her by her dead father’s will: in the matter of her marriage, she must abide by the test of the choice of the three caskets; she can “neither choose who I would nor refuse who dislike [as a husband].”

We had been led to expect that Portia would be a woman who was very beautiful and very rich, but what we have now before us is a woman who is not only fair but quite impressive for her wit, for her agility of mind and for her sharp, satiric intelligence. It is, in fact, Portia’s satiric flair that provides this comedy with most of its sparkle; here, it is displayed brilliantly when Nerissa urges Portia to reconsider her various suitors thus far, and Portia offers her wry and droll comments on each one.

It is at this point that Shakespeare is giving his audience the conventional Elizabethan satiric view pf the other European nations. Portia’s dismissal of each of her suitors corresponds to her age’s caricatures of the typical Italian, Frenchman. German, and so on. The Neapolitan prince “does nothing but talk of his horse,” a characteristic of only the southern Italian; the “County Palatine” (from the Rhineland) is a pure, unadulterated dullard; he is unable to laugh at anything; “Monsieur Le Bon” is “every man in no man” — that is to say, he has many superficial and changeable characters but no single, substantial one. (To marry him, as Portia says, would be “to marry twenty husbands.”) The English suitor, on the other hand, affects European fashions in clothing but gets all of the various national fads — in clothes, music, literature, etc. — completely confused, and refuses to speak any language except his own. And then there is the Scot — defined by his anger at the English; and finally, there is the German who does nothing but drink. Portia sensibly refuses to be married to a “sponge.”

Basically, we can say that this scene has three major purposes. First, it outlines the device of the caskets for us, which will provide the dramatic basis for the scenes in which the various suitors “hazard” their choice of the proper casket for Portia’s hand in marriage. Second, it introduces us to Portia — not simply as the “fair” object of Bassanio’s love, but as a woman of powerful character and wit, perceptive about the people around her and quite able to hold her own in verbal combat with anyone in the play. This is a very important quality, given Portia’s subsequent importance in the development of the plot. Her brilliance much later in the play, as a result, will not come as a surprise to the audience, especially when she superbly outwits the crafty Shylock. Finally, there is a minor but significant touch toward the end of the scene, when Nerissa asks Portia whether or not she remembers a certain ‘“Venetian, a scholar and a soldier” who had earlier visited Belmont. First, we hear Portia’s immediate recall of Bassanio, indicating her vivid memory of him and implying an interest in him. This scene reminds us that, despite the obstructions to come, this is a comedy, and that because of Bassanio’s attempt to win Portia and her affection for him, both of them will be finally rewarded.

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Summary of Merchant of Venice Act 1, Scene 1 ICSE Class 10, 9 English

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Summary Act 1 Scene 1

Walking along a street in Venice, Antonio (the “merchant” of the title) confesses to his friends Salarino and Salanio that lately he has felt unaccountably sad. They have noticed it, and they suggest that Antonio is probably worried about the safety of his merchant ships, which are exposed to stonns at sea and attacks by pirates. Antonio denies this and also denies that he is in love, a possibility that both of his friends think might explain Antonio’s pensiveness. Salarino concludes that Antonio’s moodiness must be due simply to the fact that Antonio is of a naturally melancholy disposition. At this point, their friends Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Gratiano join them, and after an exchange of courtesies, Salarino and Salanio excuse themselves. Gratiano takes a long look at his old friend Antonio and playfully chides him for being so solemn and so unduly silent. Gratiano says that he himself never has “moods”; in contrast to Antonio, Gratiano is determined to always “play the fool. Lorenzo intimates that sometimes Gratiano is too much the fool — that is, he is too loquacious. He and Gratiano depart, promising to meet the others at dinner.

Left alone with Antonio, Bassanio assures him that he should not worry about Gratiano’s critical remarks. Antonio then changes the subject abruptly; he asks Bassanio for more information, as promised, about the certain lady to whom Bassanio has sworn “a secret pilgrimage.” Bassanio does not answer Antonio directly; he begins a new subject, and he rambles on about his “plots and purposes” and about the fact that he has become so prodigal about his debts that he feels “gag’d.”

Antonio tells his friend to get to the point; he promises to help him if he can. Bassanio then reveals his love for the beautiful and virtuous Portia, an extremely wealthy young lady who lives in Belmont. He says that her beauty and her fortune are so well known, in fact, that she is being courted by “renowned suitors” from all parts of the world. Bassanio, however, is confident that if he could spend as much money as is necessary, he could be successful in his courtship. Antonio understands Bassanio’s predicament, but Antonio has a problem of his own. Since all the capital which Antonio possesses has been invested in his ships, his cash flow is insufficient for any major investments at this time. As a – solution, however, Antonio authorizes Bassanio to try to raise a loan using Antonio’s good name as collateral for credit. Together, they will do their utmost and help Bassanio to go to Belmont in proper style.

Analysis Act 1 Scene 1

The first task confronting any playwright in his opening scene is his “exposition” of that play — that is, he must identify the characters and explain their situation to the audience. Shakespeare accomplishes this task of informative exposition very subtly in the opening fifty-six lines of dialogue between Antonio, Salarino, and Salanio. We learn that Antonio is a wealthy merchant; that he is worried for some obscure reason which makes him melancholy; that he is a member of a group of friends who arrive later — Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Gratiano — who represent the lively, convivial life of Venice. And perhaps most important for the purposes of the plot, we are told that Antonio has many shipping “ventures” — mercantile risks — and although he is not worried about them now, the idea is subtly suggested to us that his business ventures on the high seas may miscarry. We should recall this matter when Antonio finally decides to indebt himself to Shylock on Bassanio’s behalf.

In this opening scene, Shakespeare begins to sketch in some of the characters and some of the atmosphere of the play. Antonio, for example, is presented as being “sad,” afflicted with a melancholy which he himself does not appear to understand. Critics have puzzled over this: is Antonio to be viewed as a normally melancholy character? Is his sadness caused by his knowledge that he may shortly lose the companionship of his old friend Bassanio, who has told him of embarking on a “secret pilgrimage” to woo a beautiful and wealthy woman in Belmont? Or is his mood to be put down simply to an ominous foreboding which he has of some approaching disaster? For all dramatic purposes, in this scene Antonio’s gravity serves, foremost, as a contrast to the lightheartedness of his friends.

Despite its dark and threatening moments, one should always remember that The Merchant of Venice is a romantic comedy and, like most of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, it has a group of dashing, if not very profound, young men. For example, Salanio and Salarino are not terribly important. Their lines are interchangeable, and they are not really distinguishable from one another. They represent an element of youthful whimsy. Salarino begins, typically, with a flight of fancy in which Antonio’s ships are described as being like “rich burghers on the flood” and like birds, flying “with their woven wings.” He continues into a delightfully fantastic series of imaginings; on the stage, of course, all this would be accompanied with exaggerated gestures, intended to bring Antonio out of his depression.

Thus, through the presentation on the stage of the sober, withdrawn Antonio, surrounded by the’’ frolicsome language and whimsy of the two young gallants, Shakespeare suggests in compressed form two of the elements of the play — the real dangers that the merchant of Venice will face and the world of youth and laughter which will be the background to the love stories of Bassanio and Portia, Lorenzo and Jessica, and Gratiano and Nerissa.
This same note of gentle raillery is carried on when we see the entrance of three more young courtiers — Bassanio, Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Again, Antonio’s mood is remarked on. Here again, Shakespeare is using Antonio as a foil for the spirited byplay of the others. Gratiano, especially, is ebullient and talkative, yet he is quite aware of his effervescence; he announces that he will “play the fool”; Gratiano talks, Bassanio tells Antonio, “of nothing, more than any man in all Venice,” and his willing accomplice is Lorenzo; significantly, both of these characters are more distinctly drawn than Salanio or Salarino, and they will play more major roles in the development of the romantic plot and subplot of the play — Gratiano with Nerissa, and Lorenzo with Jessica.

One of the major purposes of this opening scene is to introduce Bassanio and his courtship of Portia, which will constitute the major romantic plot’and also set the “bond story” in motion. Antonio’s question concerning Bassanio’s courtship of Portia is turned aside by Bassanio; he goes directly to the question of money, in order that the basis for the bond story can be laid. Some critics have seen in Bassanio’s speeches some evidence of a character who is extremely careless of his money and very casual about his obligations; he seems, further more, to have no scruples about making more requisitions of a friend who has already done much for him. Yet clearly Shakespeare does not intend us to level any harsh moral judgments at Bassanio. According to the Venetian (and Elizabethan) view, Bassanio is behaving as any young man of his station might be expected to behave; he is young, he is in love, and he is broke. The matter is that simple. Antonio’s immediate reassurance to his old friend reminds us of the strong bond of friendship between the two men. Interestingly, neither of them seems to be unduly concerned about money at this point; one is a wealthy merchant and the other, a carefree young lover.

This is a quality which we shall notice throughout the play in connection with both Bassanio and Portia; both of them recognize the necessity of money, but neither of them considers money to be of any value in itself. In their world of romantic love and civilized cultivation, they feel that they don’t need to be unduly concerned with money. Shakespeare is setting up this point of view to contrast later with Shylock’s diametrical point of view. For Shylock the moneylender, money constitutes his only defense against his oppressors.

Considering again Bassanio’s problem with money and Antonio’s reaction to it, note that Bassanio is straightforward in this scene with Antonio. His request is made “in pure innocence,” and we take it at its face value. Those critics who decry Bassanio read more into his frank confession of poverty and his attempt to borrow money than is really there. We must recall that when Shakespeare wants to make us aware of some defect in one of his characters, he is always able to do so. The absolute and unconditional friendship between Antonio and Bassanio is one of the assumptions of the play, and we must never question it.

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