MERCHANT OF VENICE – ACT I SCENE 2

Important points to remember:-

 Location of the scene: A room in Portia’s house which is located
in Belmont.
 This scene has the conversations of Portia and Nerissa only.
 Portia is in a sad and depressed mood as she can’t choose her
own husband because of her father’s will.
 Her father’s will stated that the person who chooses the right
casket would only get to marry her.
 Till the end of the scene Bassanio is the only suitor whom she
finds attracted towards.
 Nerissa helps Portia bring out her feelings about all the suitors
so that she could help her in choosing whom she wanted to
marry.
Suitors that came to woo Portia:-
1. NEAPOLITAN PRINCE-
 Only speaks about horses the whole time
 He thinks that shoeing away his own horse is a great talent that he has.
2. COUNTY PALATINE-
 Does nothing but frowning
 Compares him to a weeping philosopher
 He listens to funny stories but doesn’t smile at all
 Unpleasant sadness
3. FRENCH LORD, MONSIEUR LE BON-
 Counted as a man as god created him
 Imitates everyone
 No personality of his own
 Frowns more that County Palatine
 Has better horses than the Neapolitan
 Shows off his fencing moves against his own shadows
4. FALCONBRIDGE (young baron of England)
 Both of them can’t understand each other
 Both of them don’t have a common language that they can
communicate in
 Strange clothing – jacket from Italy, socks from France, hat from
Germany and his behaviour from everywhere
 He spoke in fluent English which Portia didn’t understand and Portia
spoke Latin, French and Italian and he knew none of them.
5. SCOTTISH LORD (neighbour of Falconbridge)
 Sense of neighbourly charity
 Didn’t have a good personality to stand by himself
 Always took support of the French

6. DUKE OF SAXONY’S NEPHEW (young German)

 Drunkard
 Most vilely in the afternoon
 Very vilely in the morning(sober)
 When he is the best he is little worse than a man and a little better than
a beast.
 Portia doesn’t want to marry him at all
 Just in case he decides to choose from the caskets to marry Portia, she
asks Nerissa to place a glass of wine on the wrong casket as he would go
for it and choose that particular casket
 Portia refers him to a sponge as he sucks away all the liquid which is
wine in this case
7. BASSANIO
 Bassanio is referred to as a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier by Nerissa.
Bassanio is actually none of the above. Nerissa only calls him all of this as
she wants to tell Portia only what she wanted to listen to.
 Nerissa also states that Bassanio is the only one whom she thinks
deserves the beautiful lady which is Portia.
 Portia remembers Bassanio really well and also remembers him being
worthy of Nerissa’s praise (First hint that Portia loved Bassanio)