Love played a very important part in the play with six of the main characters in the play eventually paring off with each other. First of all Bassanio went off in pursuit of a “wealthy heiress” in Belmont called Portia, and he wasn’t the first. Portia’s father (who was deceased at this point) must have seen this coming for in his will he had left Portia tied-up in a lottery in which the winner would receive her hand in marriage. In this lottery there were three caskets to choose from, one of gold, one of silver and the other of dull lead. However the choice of the caskets presented a horrifying risk for all of the participants, because if you chose the wrong casket you had to swear never to propose marriage to another woman after that. The Prince of Morocco firstly choose the gold casket and got a death skull. The Prince of Aragon then choose silver and received a picture of an idiot. And finally Bassanio made his choice. But not without controversy. First Portia begged of Bassanio to spend time with her before he made his choice, and when he refused she played music for him with each of the rhymes of the song rhyming with lead, hence providing a small hint.
Grationo’s fate was also on the line of the lead casket for if Bassanio choose correctly Grationo got to marry Portia’s maid Nerrisa. Bassanio finally choose correctly and married Portia. Grationo and Nerrisa soon followed suit and so eventually “Both Jason’s won their fleece”
Lorenzo and Jessica also got together, but in order for them to be with each other Jessica had to escape from her father Shylock. Jessica did not just simply want to run away, but insists on stealing large amounts of her father’s money, gold and jewels in the process. This escape of Jessica’s marked the turning point in Shylock’s fortunes, which led to his eventual destruction. Another key point in Jessica’s escape is that she isn’t dressed as herself, but as a man. In fact, there is not one scene that contains a woman (who is also dressed as a woman) in Venice. Portia also pretends to be doctor Balthasar and dresses as a man before entering Venice. Lorenzo and Jessica do finally slip away and go on a spending spree all over Italy before finally winding up in Belmont.
The multiple marriages in the play seemed important because they signified a happy solution to the many problems the character had already faced, i.e. Bassanio was cleared of all his debts, Jessica escaped from her father and Portia was freed from her fathers will. But the others who stayed unmarried became isolated like Antonio and Shylock.
Friendship lays the foundations for the main scene/plot in the play: the trial. Antonio, the Merchant of Venice, was due to have an even pound of his flesh removed from him after his “merry bond” with Shylock had gone forfeit and he found himself in substantial debts to him, after he had borrowed three thousand ducats for Bassanio. Before the trial Antonio’s desire was not to keep his life but “Pray God Bassanio come to see me pay his debt, and then I care not.” The relationship between Antonio and Bassanio really becomes clear in this section. Antonio literally loves Bassanio and is willing to die for him. This starts to create a conflict between Portia and Antonio. So Portia tests this so called relationship by demanding that he gives her back the ring that he swore he would never part with until he died. But the fact that Bassanio parts with the ring for Antonio’s sake suggests that he chose Antonio over Portia. Since this cannot be allowed in the following scene Portia uses the ring trick to force Bassanio to give up Antonio by making him feel untrustworthy and guilty for giving her ring away for a man’s sake.
The Merchant of Venice would have had a happy ending if it were not for Antonio and Shylock who both remained outsiders. Antonio’s final defeat is when Portia hands him his money and his ships at the end, basically telling him to return to Venice and forget about Bassanio and leave them both to live happily ever after.
