Welcome to my shakespeare, Merchant of Venice assessment piece

This website is dedicated to the merchant of venice as an end of assessment piece. I'll outline the premise of the play, break down different aspects of it such as a breif overview, the main conflicts, the relationships within the play, explaining the beginning and ending along with a few character analysis like pages. This website also includes some of the original elizabethian language used in the play, shown through quotes which I'll explain those too.

I hope you have a pleasant time reading through my website, I'm also including some further information so you can fully understand the world inside of the play, things like social constructs of the elizabethian era, the religious stances of people at the time and how that affects the play.

Here is a quick summary of the full play, The Merchant of Venice just in case you need to refresh your memory on the main events and characters of the story

In short the play begins in Venice, Two close friends- Antonio, a christian merchant and Bassanio, a noble shrouded in some debt from his bad spending habits who needs money to woo Portia, a beautiful heiress with a good amount of wealth. They turn to a jewish moneylender, Shylock. Shylock agrees to lend three thousand ducats, giving Antonio three months to pay back the ducats,and if this agreement is met with failure Shylock gets to carve out an equal pound of Antonios flesh. With Antonio’s merchant endeavours he has money placed into cargo travelling via ships to Venice, and he’s confident that they’ll arrive back safely with the money he needs to repay Shylock. Bassanio secures the ducats and travels to Belmont, arriving where Portia lives. He’s faced with the option of three caskets, Gold, silver and lead, one of them containing the rights to Portia’s hand, a way of testing suitors to choose correctly. Bassanio chooses the lead coffin, which ends up being the correct choice, and he secures the hand of Portia. The ships Antonio had out at sea end up being reported as lost, which means that the wealth he had placed in them is also lost, so he’s at a loss for ducats to repay Shylock with. Shylock, having seen the date of repayment has arrived, he takes the case to court, where Bassanio’s mentioned wife- Portia, arrives with her lady in waiting Nerissa and the both of them are disguised as men to appear in court as lawyer and clerk.

Using her intellectually superior skill, Portia finds a rule in the law which would prevent Shylock from getting his pound of flesh without punishment. The case is settled and Shylock loses half of his wealth along with being forced to convert to christianity, Bassanio and Portia get married even after he fails a test of loyalty through a ring, which he gave to Portia disguised as a lawyer, thankful and not knowing it was her. Alongside the main couple’s marriage, Nerissa and Gratiano who’s a friend of Bassanio and Antonio’s. It turns out that Antonio’s ships arrived safely too with all of his thought to be lost wealth inside.

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