Answer the following questions in brief-
1. What kind of attitude towards life does Portia exhibit in this scene?
2. What is Nerissa's attitude towards Portia's plight? Is she sympathetic? Illustrate your answer.
3. What traits of Portia's character stand out in her speeches in the scene? Is she wise? For example
does she have a sense of humour? Illustrate your answer citing examples from the text.
Answers
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1...William Shakespeare
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Explain Portia's attitude in The Merchant of Venice.
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NOELLE MATTESON eNotes educator | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR
Portia’s first line in the play is, “By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.” Though she is very wealthy and is described as beautiful and virtuous, she seems to be depressed. Nerissa comments, “they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.” Portia knows that she should be happy, but somehow she is not. She expresses frustration about her lack of agency in selecting a husband: “I may neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.” Her father has set up a test that will decide on Portia’s husband, giving her no say in the matter and setting her up as a prize rather than a person.
3....Portia is a protagonist of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. A rich, beautiful, intelligent heiress of Belmont, she is bound by the lottery set forth in her father's will, which gives potential suitors the chance to choose among three caskets. If he chooses the right casket, he wins Portia's hand in marriage. If he chooses the incorrect casket, he must leave and never seek another woman in marriage. She is shown to think little of various foreign noblemen of similar rank who are most likely to seek her hand in marriage and still less of two suitors who seem to attempt her father's assigned task. Instead she favours a young but impoverished Venetian noble, Bassanio, who is also a soldier and a scholar. Bassanio goes on to choose the right casket.