Essay on Romantics and Merchants in The Merchant of Venice :: Merchant Venice Essays

Romantics and Merchants in The Merchant of Venice Shakespeares comedies usually follow a clearly define pattern. He presents a conflict, and the characters eventually resolve the conflict in a relatively happy ending, which involves marrying come to the hero and his entourage to the heroine and her companions, leaving the baddie outside the magic circle of protagonists. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio is presented as the hero, and usurer the villain, but neither is within the circle of marriages at the end of fleck V. In fact, Antonios depression exposed at the beginning of the play seems opened at the end, and he goes on his melancholy way, as he supposes he essential. Can The Merchant of Venice, then, be considered a true comedy? The strongest rivalry discounting Merchant as a true comedy is that though Antonio appears to be the major protagonist in the story, he is also as remote outside the magic circle as his villain, Shylock. While Bassanio, Portia, and their assoc iated parties marry off at the end of Act V, Antonio is left to his ships and his money, tacit going somewhat his depressed way. At the beginning of the play, Antonio expresses his dissatisfaction with his situation to his friends. I hold the demesne but as the world, Gratiano, a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one (I.i.81-83). passim the play, and Shylocks relentless pursuit of his macabre repayment, Antonio remains in this dreary, defeated state. He seems almost too eager to end his suffering at the hands of his debtors and his apparently lost business. Grieve not that I am falln to this for you, he tells Bassanio in court, for herein Fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom it is still her use to let the wretched man outlive his wealth, to view...an age of poverty, from which lingring penance of such misery doth she cut me off (IV.i.278-284). He begs the court to cook no more attempts to save his life, comparing such futile endeavors to all ay the flood waters or question the wolfs killing of sheep (IV.i.71-84). Completely resigned to his down in the mouth fate, he announces, I am a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death. The weakest kind of harvest-tide drops earliest to the ground, and so let me (IV.i.116-118). Even in Act V, later the dispute with Shylock is decided in Antonios favor, the melancholy merchant plays no role in the resolution of the play.