Act 4 scene 1

• A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch


  Duke – metaphor for Shylock
• and am armed

  To suffer with a quietness of spirit


  Antonio – assonance shows loss of hope
• Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too


  Duke – hyperbole
• We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.


  Duke
• This is no answer, thou unfeeling man


  Bassanio - alliteration
• As seek to soften that – than which what’s harder? -

  His Jewish heart.


  Antonio – sibilance, juxtaposition
• How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?


  Duke – foreshadowing
• O be thou damned, inexecrable dog


  Gratiano - prejudice, metaphor
• thy desires

  Are wolfish, blood, starved, and ravenous.

  Gratiano - listing
• The quality of mercy is not strained,

  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven


  Portia - simile
• It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.


  Portia - personification of mercy
• It is an attribute to God himself


  Portia - mercy
• A Daniel… yea a Daniel!


  Shylock - repetition
• You must prepare your bosom for his knife.


  Portia - imperative, suspense
• Commend me to your honourable wife…

  Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death


  Antonio – iambic pentameter, imperatives
• But life itself, my wife, and all the world,

  Are not with me esteemed above thy life.


  Bassanio - triplication, irony
• Tarry a little, there is something else. 


  Portia - caesura
• no jot of blood.

  Portia - assonance, monosyllabic
• a Daniel, Jew!

  Gratiano – mimics Shylock, repetition
• He shall have merely justice


  Portia
• Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.


  Portia - imperative
• A halter gratis – nothing else, for God’s sake


  Gratiano - the ‘mercy’ Shylock deserves, biblical language
• I pray you give me leave to go from hence


  Shylock - begging
• Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?

  No, not for Venice.


  Shylock - hypophora