Portia

• 1. How does Portia reflect love & friendship in the play?

  • A3S2 - “This ring… when you part from, lose or give away…ruin…“
  • Giving a ring to Bassanio, in which she tells him that he cannot part from it (token of my love) -> you have to make sure you look after it
• A3S2 - “This ring… when you part from, lose or give away…ruin…” - Word-level analysis

  • Tricolon - structural technique - “part from, lose or give away”
  • Increases the impact of a writer’s statement by creating a clear rhythm to a sentence
  • Bond w/ B -> ring represents their love -> shows how she is not willing to let him have full authority over her as she is commanding him, telling him what to do & threatening him
• How does Portia reflect wealth, power & prejudice?

  • “My little body is aweary of this great world” - A1S2
  • Opening of play when we meet her
  • Fed up of father’s will & constant groups of men trying win her hand in marriage -> she has massive inheritance -> contextually, at the time, women were counted as the property of husband, anybody who married her inherited everything she owned including her as a person
  • Really exasperated with the will her father has left behind; she can’t marry who she wants, she’s still waiting for the right person to come along who’s going to pick the right casket
• “My little body is aweary of this great world” - A1S2 - Word-level analysis

  • “Little” & “great” -> oxymoron -> draws attention of the reader, in this case her anger & annoyance at how her father is still controlling her beyond his grave; the element of confusion oxymorons create causes readers to stop & ponder the meaning of the phrase
• How does Portia reflect prejudice & intolerance?

  • Hoping Prince of Morocco picks wrong casket, P states  “He have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil” - A1S2
  • While play is ‘comedy’, are prejudices during time: anti-Semitism from A & characters viewing S as villain
  • However, it is Prince of Morocco: from Africa & not dark-skinned, tanned complexion; P shows she utterly dislikes him bc he is dark skinned -> even if Prince of Morocco was the best person ever, he has complexion of darker skinned person
  • Shakespeare’s time, more darker skinned, more “devil” you were
• “He have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil” - A1S2 - Word-level analysis

  • Oxymoron of “saint” & “devil” -> draws readers attention; element of confusion they create causes readers to stop & ponder the meaning of the phrase
  • “Saint” -> referring to a holy, good person
  • Skin shade of a “devil”
• 1.How does Portia present power & love?

  • “Myself and what is mine to you and yours” A3S2
  • Portia pledging that everything that is mine is now yours because she has married Bassanio
  • Contextually shows that she has accepted to be Bassanio’s property because when women married men during this time they were considered to be the man’s property
• “Myself and what is mine to you and yours” A3S2 - Word-level analysis

  • Women as the man’s property emphasised in the pronouns “myself” & “mine”; Portia is saying I will be your property and emphasises this further by saying the pronouns “you” & “yours”
  • Her complete gift of self underlies the famous speech on mercy in the courtroom scene, but it is withheld at the end of the scene, when she puts mercy aside to render judgment.
• 2. How does Portia reflect power & love?

  • When Portia reveals that the ring trick was a joke, Bassanio angrily questions why Portia is taking the fool out of him, and she says “Speak not so grossly; you are all amaz’d” A5S1
  • She is asking Bassanio to stop speaking so badly because it was a joke, expressing why they aren’t amazed that she was able to not only fool the men as a man (Balthazar) but she was also able to (disguised as a man) save Antonio’s life by interpreting the contract
  • Shows that Portia is very intelligent & witty
• “Speak not so grossly; you are all amaz’d” - A5S1 - Word-level analysis

  • Sibilance in “speak”,” so”, & “grossly”-> draws attention to Portia, used to create a negative atmosphere
  • Caesura in “;” -> gives choppy & dysfunctional tone, simultaneously increases reading pace -> increasing pace builds tension, therefore helps to relay feelings of frustration or confusion to a reader
  • Assonance in “are all amaz’d” -> creates rhythm in text, allows readers to interpret a sentence the way to author intended to by making clear which vowel sound should be stressed