The Merchant Of Venice

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The Merchant of Venice

The playgoers of Shakespeare's times, a successful drama was one that combined a variety of action, along with a mixture of verse and prose in the language used. This variety was achieved, and character and atmosphere was summarized. Modern playwrights tend to describe their characters in detail in the stage directions, leaving very little for the reader to discover. However, Shakespeare's describing of a character is scarce. Usually, when reading Shakespeare's work, the audience has to detect the personality of the character by the character's action in the play, relationship towards other characters in the play , and most of all the character's manner of speech. Most of the times, the passages are of great poetic beauty discussing love, dramatic speeches filled with bombast, humorous speeches, and mischievous wordplays.

Passages of great poetic beauty discussing love are very common in all of Shakespeare's texts. For example in The Merchant of Venice, before Bassanio is about to select the correct casket, he is urged by Portia to delay his selection in case he fails. However Bassanio wishes to continue.

Portia:
I pray you tarry, pause a day or two
Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong
I lose your company. Therefore forbear awhile.
There's something tells me (but it is not love)
I would not lose you, and you know yourself
Hate consels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand my well-
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought-
I would detatin you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you
How to choose right, but then I am forsworn.
So will I never be; so may you miss me;
But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin-
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes!
They have o'erlooked me and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours-
Mine own, I would say, but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours! O, these naughty times
Put bars between the owners and their rights!
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,
Let Fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long, but 'tis to piece the time,
To eke it, and to draw it out in length,
To stay you from election.

Bassanio:

Let me choose,
For as I am , I live upon the rack.

This love dialogue between Bassanio and Portia before he chooses is filled with elegant connotation. They are both respective and responsive to one anothe, and they understand each other instantly.

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