Portia and Bassanio in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

“The Merchant of Venice” is a Shakespearean play based on the themes of friendship, racial prejudice, deceptive appearances and love, of which the most romantic is the love between Portia and Bassanio.

In contrast, the other two couples - Lorenzo and Jessica, Gratiano and Nerissa – exhibit playful or down-to-earth love.

Portia is as faultless as one could imagine.

She is blessed with beauty, heavenly qualities surpassing all other women on Earth and moreover “richly left”.

Portia’s image is consistent as a goddess, an angel.

However, she is by no means the “unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised” which she claims to be.

Although Bassanio is not wealthy, it does not diminish his social aspiration.

To marry Portia, Bassanio must first challenge the casket test and choose one out of three caskets correctly.

Portia’s love for Bassanio is obvious and she makes little attempt at neutrality.

She intelligently commands that music be played whilst Bassanio makes his choice.

Fortunately, Bassanio is smart enough to interpret the message of the song -- not to look on the surface, but what lie beneath, and chooses the correct casket containing Portia’s picture.

His choice is not based on ego or self-delusion but a combination of intuition and practical wisdom.

His reaction to his success is not arrogant and domineering but modest and respectful.

This proves that he is a deeper, more thoughtful and sensitive character rather than a shallow, mercenary socialite which we are led to believe at the beginning of the play.

Portia’s wit is again shown in the trial scene, where she cleverly got Shylock to reject in open court both the idea of mercy and the idea of money as alternatives to the pound of flesh.

I've come to believe that it's better to have such a woman who manipulates you to nobility, than one who manipulates you to a base and unthinking life.

Francis Bacon - some suspect he was Shakespeare - has an essay in which he says the family is safe if the man is wise.

The dilemma in our contemporary life is that not even men wish to be wise. The existing clamor for mpangos, conspicuous expenditure and the like are attempts to resolve the tension between man and woman, with the game being played under base conditions.

Sons of heaven loving daughters of earth, giving birth to giants only leading to a catastrophe.

Moses of the bronze snake must have Miriam punished. Must find another woman...

What you're asking is the existential question. Almost impossible to answer.

The Ring
When Portia and Bassanio marry, she gives him a ring and makes him swear he will never remove it.

But Portia puts his word to the test when, disguised as Balthasar, she asks Bassanio for the ring as payment for saving Antonio's life.

At first, Bassanio resists, but after Balthasar continues to plead, he relents.

When Portia returns home with the ring, she confronts Bassanio, saying:

'You were to blame, I must be plain with you,

To part so slightly with your wife's first gift:

A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger

And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.

I gave my love a ring and made him swear

Never to part with it; and here he stands'

For "Dionysus is the god of wine and dance, of irrationality and chaos, and appeals to emotions and instincts." I can but only think from the world that I live in.

Not the middle ages, Biblical, nor the Renaissance.

I think of a modern heiress, Anerlisa Muigai and the tabulations she currently goes through from her "suitors"

Or what my current screen writer has to say about John Snow and the Dragon Queen.