Elements of the play merchants of venice

This contributes to aesthetics in literary texts hence appealing to readers. Just as everybody has a walking style and haircut style playwrights have unique ways which they use to pass their message to shakespear does this in his play “Merchants of the Venice”. In this play there are number of elements that Shakespeare uses to qualify his writing as a play. These are as enumerated below. CHARACTERS Characters are major elements of a play. Shylock is a Jewish money lender, so much disappointed due to ill treatment he receives in favor of Christians. He is a villain because he brings out his vengeance by asking for a pound of Antonia’s flesh. His natural great deal of fine detailed features brings to honor his memory in this play.

Other characters in the play are: Bassonio is a heartfelt ally of Antonio a very loving man who has affectionate feeling towards a very rich heiress Portia of Belmont. Portia, pretty, full of wit and intelligence she saves the life of Antonia while inaction as a lawyer in pretense. Venice is a city of traders whereas Belmont is peaceful environment and full of romance. In Venice the activities take place from the street of Venice to the house of shylock towards the court of law where shylock exercises his authority. Belmont we are introduced in a room, then a farm, and later to Venice in the court where Portia gets in action as a lawyer in pretense, where she saves the life of Antonia.

After the final judgment the play ends up in Portia’s house in Belmont, where there comes in unity and there is a happy climax. THEMES These are the main ideas from the play. Portia and Jessica’s father possessed their daughters such that they could never disconnect from this enslavement. (Callaghan) Patriarchy and anti-Semitism are very essential main ideas in this play. The two themes are well brought out in the play. Firstly we are introduced to the social system in which the father is the head of household, having authority over women and children; this is made clear in scene two where Portia and Narissa's conversation concentrates mainly on the patriarchal system. There is clarity on what the system is all about and attitude of characters towards the system.

There are materialistic act of seeing things evident in characters viewed as having good character traits. Despite of the fact that Bassanio and Portia grew in love for each other, it could not be termed as true love at first. Bassanio was mainly motivated in asking for a hand in marriage to Portia by large amount of money he owed. Therefore his main intention was to get Portia’s money to pay his debt. When he took money from Antonia he claimed emphatically that his participation in giving out money was an act of investing. In real sense they are leaving for Venice in masked as men. Metaphor. This is invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described.