Bassanio and Portia in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Bassanio and Portia in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

In this essay I will be writing about Bassanio and if I think he

deserves the beautiful, intelligent and skilled Portia.

Portia is obviously by far the most capable and intelligent person in

the whole play and she always out does the men in the play by a long

way. This is made very clear when she pretends to be the judge in act

5 and she gets Antonio out of a very big mess that he made for himself

when he was being stupid, like most of the other men are in this play

at some point.

I think Bassanio is the most obvious pair that you could make in the

play for Portia so in a way it is the best Portia could have asked for

but she might be brought down because of all men's incompetence in the

play. When Portia gets the chance to show her brilliant intelligence

in the last quarter of the play in the court scene she loves it and

you can tell that whatever else she does in her life does not compare

to the happiness she feels in that scene. Nobody knows that she is so

clever and in that scene she shows her true intelligence, but all of

the other men in the play do not know it is her even her own husband

is not told. She has to dress up as a man because of the prejudice

towards women at the time.

Portia should be working her brain but because of the prejudice

towards women at the time she cannot do this. Women of Portia's

capability are not meant to be at home, they should be working and

helping the world.

In some ways I think that the burden that was placed on Portia was

huge when her father gave her this really wacky will in which she is

obliged to keep to otherwise she is disrespecting her fathers last

wish, and that is a huge thing to do to someone you love even if your