What are the comic elements of the Merchant of Venice?

Answer 1

Bassanio wants to marry Portia, and so needs money.

Bassanio has no credit and so his friend Antonio borrows the money from Shylock.

Shylock dislikes Antonio so agrees to lend him the money interest-free on the security of a pound of flesh from anywhere on Antonio's body (he chooses the spot nearest Antonio's heart). Basically if Antonio doesn't pay up, Shylock can kill him.

Bassanio, with the aid of the money, goes to woo Portia. She loves him alright but, according to her father's will, must marry the man who can guess which of the three boxes her picture is in. Bassanio guesses the right box--Hooray! They get married.

But watch out! Antonio is unexpectedly broke and cannot pay Shylock. Shylock takes him to court and starts sharpening his knife.

Portia disguises herself as a lawyer, and gets Antonio off on a technicality. What's more, she convinces the court to order Shylock to give all his money to his daughter and her goyim husband and to stop being Jewish. This you call justice?

But there's more. Portia asks Bassanio for a fee for her services and insists on taking his wedding ring, which he swore to her he would never get away. Antonio persuades him to do this, and of course there's a tongue-lashing waiting for him when he gets home to his brand-new wife without his wedding ring.

But all is explained and it's yuks all round except for poor Shylock.

Answer 2

There are two connected plots in the play. Plot 1 centres around Portia and Bassanio, first, around his taking the test of the caskets and guessing correctly, and second, by agreeing never to remove his wedding ring and then by paying it as a lawyer's fee almost immediately thereafter.

Plot 2 centres around Shylock's loan to Antonio on the security of a pound of flesh, Antonio's default and Shylock's attempt to use the default as a legal justification for killing Antonio, followed by Portia's defence of Antonio and humiliation of Shylock.

Answer 3

There are essentially two main plots in Merchant of Venice: Bassanio's successful courtship of Portia, and Antonio's default on his loan from Shylock. Off to the side there is Jessica's elopement with Lorenzo, Launcelot Gobbo's change of employment and his relationship with his father.

Answer 4

Launcelot Gobbo is the part designed for the clown or comedian in the company, who was probably William Kempe. His interchanges with his father and with Jessica are typical of comic writing in Shakespeare's earlier plays, where the comic parts were meant for Kempe. The part of Shylock may have been originally intended to be a comic one, in much the same way as Malvolio is in Twelfth Night, but both his intentions and the catastrophe which envelops him at the end are much more serious than those of Malvolio, and have led to his being played both as a villain as a victim, and not as a comic part at all.

Answer 5

The Merchant of Venice is a play, not a novel.