Write a note on the fool character in the Merchant of Venice. (Word limit 500).
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Answer:
Portia is the heroine in the story The Merchant of Venice authored by William Shakespeare. She is a rich heiress who is also beautiful and intelligent at the same time. These traits are portrayed at several instances throughout the story. She is bound by her father’s will to marry the person who chooses the right casket from three of them made of gold, silver and lead.
The readers get an idea of her beauty from Bassanio who cannot stop talking enough about it. One instance where she shows her intelligence is when Bassanio comes to try his luck in choosing the right casket. Unknown to him, she has also fallen in love with him like he has for her. However, she is not allowed to reveal this to him. Instead, she suggests that he take a day or two to think over which the right casket is. This is because he has only one chance, and if he fails in this, they will lose each other forever.
Portia’s graciousness is shown through her tact and sympathy. She talks ladylike and gives all due respect to her earlier prospective suitors – the Princes of Morocco and Arragon. But, once they leave, she does not hesitate to immediately voice her opinions about them to her trusted servant Nerissa. She calls them fools and considers them to be greedy and self-centered who are more interested in the fortune that her father has left her. She understands this from the way they choose the gold and silver caskets without even caring about their plain lead counterpart.
She is also depicted as a person who is very generous. Within a few days of their marriage, Bassanio receives the news of Antonio’s downfall and Shylock taking him to court. Although she finds it difficult to let her husband go, Portia knows that it is more important for Bassanio to be by his friend’s side at that point of time. Not only does she ask him to leave immediately, but she also asks him to take some of her fortune with him to bail Antonio out.
Another example to show that Portia is quick witted is her performance in the courtroom where she appears as a lawyer for Antonio, Bassanio’s good friend. Antonio had pledged his life to the moneylender Shylock to raise money for Bassanio to go and try his luck in winning Portia’s hand. Even Bassanio did not recognize his wife in court. While Portia talks about mercy to the moneylender, she also agreed that it was only fair that Shylock took a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body as his payment per the agreement. However, she challenged him to do so without shedding a single drop of blood as the agreement did not allow for Antonio to lose blood. Portia easily wins the case using the exact law terms without having any legal training or prior experience as a lawyer.
All the above instances indicate that Portia is a woman of noble character with multiple virtues.
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His name is Launcelot Gobbo, a fact of which he is somewhat proud. He has a crude philosophy and a rude kind of wit. He uses big words and misapplies them most ingenuously. He is good-natured, full of fun, and rejoices in a practical jest.
Launcelot is the servant to Shylock, a wealthy Jewish merchant and money lender of Venice, with whom he lives and of whom he stands in wholesome awe. His fun-loving nature, however, has served to brighten the dull and dreary home of that stern and revengeful gentleman, a fact that Jessica, the Jew's daughter, frankly acknowledges in her first interview with the boy.
Our house is hell, and thou a merry devil
Did'st rob it of some taste of tediousness.
Launcelot does not appear until the second scene of the second act of the comedy, when we find him stealthily leaving his master's house. We learn that he feels aggrieved at some apparent wrong at the hands of his employer, and is debating whether to remain in his service, or to run away. His soliloquy or self-argument on the point is most entertaining. He would be just, but being both plaintiff and defendant, as well as advocate and judge of the question at issue, he can scarcely be credited with impartiality.
However, the motives that he frankly acknowledges, and the reasons he advances are most delightfully human, and most humorously expressed. The entire passage is a quaint, and by no means unnatural, self-contention between duty and inclination; the conclusion, as a matter of course, being in favor of inclination.
Certainly, my conscience will serve me to run from this Jew, my master: the fiend is at mine elbow, and tempts me, saying to me, "Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot, or good Gobbo, or good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away." My conscience says - "No; take heed, honest Launcelot; take heed, honest Gobbo; or," as aforesaid, "honest Launcelot Gobbo; do not run; scorn running with thy heels." - Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack; via! says the fiend; away, says the fiend; for the heavens rouse up a brave mind, says the fiend, and run. Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me - "my honest friend Launcelot, being an honest man's son" - or rather an honest woman's son; - for, indeed, my father did something smack, something grow to, - he had a kind of taste; - well, my conscience says - Launcelot, budge not;" "budge," says the fiend; budge not," says my conscience. Conscience, say I, you counsel well; fiend, say I, you counsel well; to be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew, my master, who, Heaven bless the mark! is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself: certainly, the Jew is the very devil incarnation, and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew : the fiend gives the more friendly counsel! I will run; fiend, my heels are at your commandment, I will run.