The Merchant of Venice: Characters

There are quite a number of characters in The Merchant of Venice, each of them significant to the play in one way or another. After all, if Shakespeare started creating plays with useless characters in them, included only to drag out the play, then he would not be considered as a great playwright and his plays would not be studied. Thus, in the first section of this blog post, I shall be discussing on the significance of characters in The Merchant of Venice.

Certain characters may represent certain people in Great Britain at that time, or else, certain characters may be significant to the play in order to provide a stronger image of the main characters. For example, Launcelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo. They do not contribute to the progress of the play, however, they create a stronger image about the cruelty and stinginess of Shylock. Firstly, Old Gobbo's scene with Launcelot Gobbo is meant to establish that Launcelot is a good person at heart, and not some greedy and complaining person. At the same time, the conversation also shows how Shylock treats his servants, and the bad treatment of Launcelot by Shylock, as well as Shylock's unwillingness to give his servant anything but the bare minimal, contributes to Shylock's negative image, making the audience dislike Shylock more. Jessica's significance in the play is also similar to that of Launcelot - to show that Shylock must be really bad, for his own daughter to run away from him. The fact that he seems to care more about his stolen possessions than his daughter also contributes to his stingy, miserly and greedy image.

Salerio and Solanio are not just two Venetians, they actually represent the Venetian Christian community as a whole, which is why their characteristics and attributes, even their name, is extremely similar. They are just ordinary Christian Venetians, and their purpose is to show how the society and community at Venice support Antonio, showing Antonio's influence, while at the same time, their insults towards Shylock show how the entire Christian community at Venice are against Shylock, which can serve two purposes - one, to show how pitiful he is, which results in his hate building up, and two, to show how bad Shylock must be in order to for the Venetian society to cast him out.

Portia, also my favourite character, is meant to represent the Queen of England at that time. They are both women with power in a man's world, and due to her many desirable qualities, was in a way meant to praise Queen Elizabeth I, the Queen of England then. The reason why Portia is my favourite character is due to her intelligence and nobility. She was intelligent enough to find a flaw in Shylock's claim to Antonio's pound of flesh, and had even laid down traps beforehand in order to not only protect Antonio, but also reduce Shylock to a state where he would be powerless to try something similar again. The cunning of her makes people feel a sense of delight as they watch the antagonist get tricked and finally defeated. Also, she is rather noble, from the fact that she is willing to protect Antonio's life even though she did not know who he was, only that he was a good friend of Bassanio. It was dangerous for women to travel alone in those days, yet she did so in order to help a stranger. Although some people say that she is a hypocrite, preaching about mercy but in the end reducing Shylock to be absolutely powerless and have almost everything stripped from him, I disagree. For an attempted murder, Shylock actually got of quite lightly, still having the freedom to do whatever he wants, instead of, for example, life imprisonment. Furthermore, Portia had also prompted the Duke and Antonio to show Shylock some mercy, as they were the ones making the decision, therefore, it can be seen that Portia is not a hypocrite.

The character I dislike most (unfortunately, I cannot offer some other character with various arguments, as Shakespeare's portrayal of this character makes him rather disliked), is Shylock. Why Shylock? Well, obviously, Shylock is the has the most negative traits, due to the fact that his image must be so for the audience to know where to audience should invest their emotions in, including that he is stingy, domineering, unmerciful and cruel. His stinginess and domineering attitude is probably the lightest of these negative traits, and can be evident from how he treats both his jester, Launcelot, and his daughter, Jessica. His unmerciful and cruel side is extremely evident towards the end, where he seeks the life of Antonio, without wanting to show any mercy. Although this hate of Antonio and the other Christians was borne of the treatment that they had been showing him, however, it is still unjustified for him to try to seek Antonio's life. Shylock is also portrayed as a victim in the play, where he is abused by the Christians which lead him down the path of revenge. Another group of characters I rather dislike is the Venetians in general, comprising of not just Solanio and Salerio, but also Lorenzo, Gratiano and a side of Antonio. The reason is that they are extremely cruel in their treatment of Shylock, abusing him at every opportunity. Even at the end, they are unrepentant, as can be seen by the insults Antonio throws at Shylock even when he was about to die. This unjustified bullying of a person with a minority race may have appealed to an audience in the past, when their society accepted the racial prejudices as a social norm, but to a modern audience, it leaves one with distaste.