Trail scene in The Merchant of Venice
The Trail scene in The Merchant of Venice is one of the greatest
scenes in the whole range of Shakespearean drama. Here Shylock who first seems to have succeeded in his
revengeful desire for a pound of Antonio’s flesh to be cut off from his bosom,
is subsequently thwarted in his purpose
by the sagacity of Portia’s who is a woman disguised as a man.
The Merchant of Venice is a Comedy of Incidents
The plot of The Merchant of Venice is a highly elaborate one.
The play does not have a single plot. The main plot of the play is the Bond
story and the sub plots here are the story of the caskets and the Lorenzo
Jessica love affair; here we have also an under plot namely the story of the
rings. With a great skill Shakespeare has woven together these various stories
into a coherent whole.
Shakespeare's Characterization of Shylock
Shylock is one of the
notorious characters in the entire range of Shakespearean drama. He represents
a mixture of several traits of character who arouses different feelings in us
at different times. He cannot simply be classified as tragic figure or as a
villain or as a comic character.
The Merchant of Venice as a Tragi-Comedy
The Merchant of Venice has
generally been classified as a romantic comedy which means a play containing a
number of romantic elements and a number of comic elements, skillfully and
artistically mixed together. But almost every romantic comedy of Shakespeare
has a number of serious elements too, and some of these serious elements come
very close to becoming tragic which makes the play a tragi comedy.
