William Shakespeare's comic story of the Merchant of Venice depicts a strange juxtaposition of love in the romantic sense with wealth in the monetary sense. The characters in the text recognize both senses as valuable virtues, but comparatively, said virtues are measured against each other to determine (or at least address the question) which is more valuable. Probably the most significant quagmire in comparing these virtues to one another is the credibility of the depictions of love in the text, and as it specifically concerns Antonio, a merchant of Venice, and Bassanio, his closest friend, nature of their kinship to that of Bassanio. interactions with the heiress, Portia, detract from the sustainability of what the characters claim love to be. The following ultimately argues that Shakespeare deliberately or inadvertently depicted a common aspect of male characters that, in his time, was completely insensitive to contemporary ideas of sexual orientation but which would currently be seen as homosocial behavior; consequently, relationships between a man and a woman in Shakespeare's time are depicted as mere tradition and irrelevant to homosocial intimacy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe element of Bassanio and Antonio's relationship that affects the credibility of Bassanio's supposed love for Portia is the level of intimacy that Bassanio shares with Antonio. The text provides ample examples of this intimacy, and it is often depicted as a closeness that surpasses the intimacy of any other relationship in the work. These examples begin already in the first scene of the first act in which Antonio, Solanio and Salerio converse with each other. Antonio admits that he is sad without knowing the cause of his sadness, and his two friends assure him that his sadness comes from the great risk of his current investments and that this is a natural propensity for every trader to risk as much as Antonio is risking; however, Antonio explains that their assumptions are inaccurate. In response, they assume that the only other logical conclusion is love. When Antonio says that his goods at sea are not the cause of his sadness, Solanio suggests, "Then you are in love"; to which Antonio vaguely replies: “Fie, fie,” too abstruse to be interpreted concretely for any single emotion (1.1.46-7). It can be argued, based on the connotation of the archaic interjection, fie, that Antony is completely disgusted by the perhaps insipid idea that love is the cause of his sadness, but Shakespeare's punctuation does not necessarily support such an interpretation. The comma after the first statement and the period after the second almost suggest that Antonio's joke could just as easily be interpreted as indifference towards the idea. This is the first line to exemplify the ambiguity of the depiction of love in the text, and the rest of the play informs this first conversation in a way that suggests that Antonio protests too much, so to speak, and is, in fact, in love. Bassanio, Lorenzo and Graziano join the conversation, entering the scene, and Solanio says: “Here are Bassanio, your most noble relative, / Graziano, and Lorenzo. Goodbye. / Now we leave you with better company” (1.1.57-9). On the one hand, Solanio seems to simply be cordially apathetic towards Antonio's sadness because, although they are friends, he is only willing to invest so much in Antonio's distress at the moment. On the other hand, Solanio's words are not entirely to be taken lightly because he singles out Bassanio and quickly establishes that between Antonio and Bassanio there must be an intimacy that is missingin the other relationships represented in the scene. Later in the same scene, Antonio and Bassanio are left alone, and Antonio chooses this time to say: "Well, tell me now which lady is the same / To whom you have sworn secret pilgrimage, / Which today you promised to tell me about", indicating that Antonio he knew from before this scene that Bassanio is pursuing a woman, which qualifies this (while proving nothing in itself) as a possible cause of the aforementioned sadness (1.1.119-21). Bassanio's response is loaded with suggestive implications for myriad reasons. First, it is important to note that Antonio has only asked Bassanio to identify the woman he is courting, and the significance of this is that Bassanio begins his response by explaining why he is courting the woman in question rather than answering the question. . This type of response suggests that Bassanio feels the need to justify his search to Antonio as if it is not simply enough that Bassanio is a man who has found a woman worthy of courting. Responding to the aforementioned question, Bassanio reminds Antonio that he has accumulated a significant debt. living beyond his means, and also admits that debt has not affected his inclination to live exuberantly. “But my chief concern,” he says, “is to free myself fairly from the great debts / in which my time, something too prodigal, / has left me chained” (1.1.127-30). Bassanio's main concern is escaping his debt. So, curiously, Bassanio seems to be concerned with reassuring Antonio of their own love, even in his initial response to Antonio's question about the as yet unnamed lady whom Bassanio wishes to woo. “To you, Antonio, / I owe much in money and love,” says Bassanio, maintaining the connection between money and love (1.1.130-1). In the context of the woman Bassanio intends to pursue, he finds it pertinent to explain that his love for Antonio is superior to any other. Antonio responds that, if Bassanio's plan to relieve his debt is feasible, “be assured / My purse, my purse person, my extreme means / Lie all open to your opportunities” (1.1.138-9). Antonio's denotations simply state that he will do whatever Bassanio needs him to do for Bassanio's sake, but formally, the syntax creates an almost homoerotic connotation, particularly in the choice of the following words: person, extreme, lie, and unlocked. The term person is most likely chosen for its meaning, body, especially since this also foreshadows the reality that, later in the play, a pound of Antonio's own flesh is owed to Shylock for a loan that Antonio acquired on behalf of Bassanio. In other words, Antonio in fact spends his money (purse), his body (persona), and his life (extreme means) for Bassanio. The idea of ​​Antonio's body being opened to Bassanio, however, is easily interpreted as a sexual double entendre, especially given Shakespeare's affinity for wordplay. Much later in the same conversation, Bassanio finally answers Antonio's question until line 161. It begins: "In Belmont there is a lady richly left, / And she is fair, and, fairer than that word, / Of marvelous virtues " (1.1 .161-3). Bassanio confirms his discursive preamble about his financial situation and the need to live extravagantly by finally answering Antonio's question with the solution to his problem. The first and presumably most important characteristic of Portia, whose name finally comes three lines later, is that she is a wealthy heiress, and Bassanio has maneuvered this conversation in such a way as to suggest that he believes Antonio needs and will see the pragmatism of his plan . Indeed, his speechit favors money over everything and, in terms of sequence, complexion, virtue and hair follow respectively. Bassanio and Antonio have such an intimate love that to the modern reader it seems romantic as Bassanio feels obligated to explain his reasoning for becoming romantically involved with someone else, and it is significant that a simple attraction to a woman is not enough to explain his actions . In the second scene of the third act, Portia is verbose in expressing her hopes that, in essence, the love between her and Bassanio is real. About allowing Bassanio to choose between the three chests, she says she wishes he wouldn't choose again because she's afraid of the idea that he might choose wrong and be without her forever, but then, she says, "There's something that he tells me, but it's like this" not love— / I wouldn't want to lose you; and thou knowest thyself / Hatred counsels not in that capacity” (3.2.4-6). She wants to give Bassanio clues, unfairly favoring him, but she resists so as not to be less virtuous. Portia continues: “Your eyes are wrong, / They have looked at me and divided. / One half of me is yours, the other half yours...” (3.2.14-6). Here, Portia's syntax is also loaded with meaning because it is undoubtedly the greatest evidence that Shakespeare, in writing this play, drew on an incredible insight into a social constructivist perspective of gender, as well as a comparison between homosocial interactions and heterosocial interactions. She uses the word, overlooked, which Stephen Greenblatt equates with the word, bewitched, in this context, and in this sense, Portia is saying that Bassanio's eyes enchanted or delighted her, perhaps even going so far as to say that they cast a 'impression metaphorical spell on her. This introduces a concept that contemporary theory calls the male gaze and suggests that, if Shakespeare had been perceptive enough to depict the male gaze (albeit without contemporary terminology), his intuition could just as easily have identified in the men of his reality this then l 'unquantifiable aspect of male personality that binds men together so closely that they prefer their heterosocial bonds to any relationship they might form with a woman; furthermore, without modern concepts of sexual orientation, Shakespeare would not have considered this behavior deviant or unnatural. Portia's words take on greater meaning when the metaphorical incantation is examined more closely for what it could be, compared to contemporary literary theories that, of course, were not even talked about in the 16th century, when Shakespeare was writing. It would seem unfounded to suggest that Shakespeare drew on this insight of his own accord long before the theories were officially published if it were not for the consistency throughout the play that validates the idea that Shakespeare may, in fact, just lack modern terminology to describe contemporary concepts that he contemplated on his own. For Portia to say that Bassanio's eyes cast this spell on her and, in turn, divided her strongly alludes to the theoretical concept in feminist studies of experience (the Lacanian variant of feminist literary criticism) called the male gaze, which was first introduced in Laura Mulvey's essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in 1975. Mulvey argues: The pleasure of looking has been divided between active/masculine and passive/feminine. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is stylized accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote being looked at. (Mulvey 808-9). ThereMulvey's theory states that Bassanio's eyes do not simply see Portia but also superimpose on her appearance a "being looked at" in the sense that she is passive and devoid of desire, as well as an objectification in the sense that she is only a signifier of male desire. Portia is (women are) divided into these two incredibly narrow patriarchal representations, and as Portia keeps saying, both halves are for Bassanio (men). Shakespeare even incorporates Mulvey's active/passive male/female binaries, using them to characterize Portia. as only men are active in the game. “An active/passive heterosexual division of labor has a similarly controlled narrative structure. […] The man is reluctant to look at her exhibitionist gaze. Therefore the split between spectacle and narrative supports the role of man as the active one of transmitting history, of making things happen” (Mulvey 810). Portia stays at home for most of the show and her suitors come to her; furthermore, everyone recognizes the rules established by her father to win her, including Portia herself, despite being dead and unable to enforce these rules, suggesting that, even in death, men are at the center of every action, and a paternal law it is infallible. She shows trust in the heteronormative social codes that her father taught her regarding how her hand should be given, which represents her adherence to Lacan's concept of the Law of the Father "because it is the father who imposes the cultural norms and laws" (Dobie 71 ). At this point, Shakespeare is employing the multifaceted concept of the male gaze while maintaining consistency with contemporary psychoanalytic literary criticism, and his adherence to these concepts confirms the theories themselves and indicates a level of insight on Shakespeare's part that simply brought an in - deep understanding of people, further supported by the popularity of his works. It is obvious that Shakespeare could only have written so affectively if he had a genuinely anomalous gift for understanding people. In an alternative articulation of this concept of the male perspective that divides women against their will and, therefore, halves their perceived value in both sexuality and sexuality. humanity, Mulvey draws conclusions on the previous sections of her article, explaining how women in cinema are subject to this division of the self. He characterizes it in terms of cinema and uses a Freudian approach (in contrast to the Lacanian approach of the previous quote), but most of the aspects of cinema he refers to also concern any artistic rendering of the man or woman being referred to they relate. his world: Sections II. A and B exposed two contradictory aspects of the pleasant structures of vision in the conventional cinema situation. The first, scopophilic, arises from the pleasure of using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, derives from identification with the image seen. Therefore, in cinematographic terms, one implies the separation of the erotic identity of the subject from the object on the screen (active scopophilia), the other requires the identification of the Ego with the object on the screen through the fascination of sexual instincts on the part of the spectator, the second of the ego's libido. This dichotomy was crucial for Freud. […] Both are formative structures, not mechanisms of meaning. In themselves they have no meaning, they must be attached to an idealization [sic]. (Mulvey 808) The Freudian meaning of this is that, on the one hand, the male perspective in general (not just that of Bassanio) objectifies Portia as a mere element of aesthetic value to be seen and stimulatedlibido, "the source of our psychic energy." and our psychosexual desires” (Dobie 58). On the other hand, both the male and female contingents of the audience watching Shakespeare's play identify with Bassanio, idealizing his interaction with Portia while criticizing how worthy he is of possessing her (on the merits of his masculinity or, more appropriately , to her adherence to the male role) and how worthy she is of being owned. This means that the character, Bassanio, takes on the role of the audience's ideal self (ego), while the female character, Portia, takes on the role of the ideal object of “displacement – ​​moving one's feelings for a particular person towards an object to she related. or she, just as metonymy uses the name of one object to replace another with which it is closely related or of which it is a part” (Dobie 60). In none of this does Portia represent a “self.” It doesn't serve the audience's ego; rather, the male gaze sees her as a sexual object and simultaneously a part of Lacan's Other – “those remaining elements that exist outside the self” (Dobie71).Bassanio finally says: “Let me choose, / For as I am, I live on the wheel,” which refers to an instrument used to torture traitors; he compares the delay to such torture (3.2.24-5). Portia takes the metaphor further, asking Bassanio to “confess / What treachery there is mingled with [her] love” (3.2.26-7). The conversation becomes increasingly ambiguous, as does the nature of Bassanio's love, as he responds: “Nothing but that ugly betrayal of mistrust / That makes me fear to enjoy my love” (3.2.28-9). Greenblatt qualifies the word, distrust, comparing it to the word, uncertainty, so Bassanio's uncertainty could be about which casket to choose, fearing or doubting the truth of his love as Portia suggests that, if his love is true, he will choose correctly; however, he could just as easily allude to Antonio as his deepest love and, therefore, to the betrayal of the love he professed to Portia. Shakespeare writes Portia's part in the play in such a way as to seem aware of the concept of the male gaze, which makes it much more believable that he, in fact, simply wrote with a unique understanding of the human psyche. This is not to say that Shakespeare deliberately depicts gay lovers torn apart by circumstance; rather, he described an aspect of homosocial behavior and interaction that he recognized in his time - a time when people were not particularly aware of what modern socialites call homosexuality - as a level of intimacy between men that could not be compared to the relatively lower level of intimacy between men. intimacy that a man has with a woman; therefore, what homosexuality means in the twenty-first century was not in the sixteenth and may have long been considered natural in the minds of men who saw homosexuality as something so unnatural that they assumed their intimate feelings for male friends were little more how great. friendship. The nature of Antonio's inexplicable sadness juxtaposed with Bassanio's search for a woman as well as the suggestive uncertainties of Bassanio's words to Portia also imply that there may have been, at some point, a closeness between Bassanio and Antonio that was of such intimacies that saw no reason for female company. They privilege their own relationship over everything else, which suggests that the discourse of Shakespeare's time was almost devoid of the concept of homosexuality, to some extent, including the idea that women were merely functional as property, serving only sexual and aesthetic needs. After all, if a man does not perceive women as his equals intellectually, then someonesomething else must satiate his desire for a kindred spirit of equal worth. With all these statements in mind, it is logical to consider that Shakespeare, having such an ingenious understanding of human personalities, was able to recognise, capture and perhaps exaggerate in The Merchant of Venice this aspect of the male perspective which privileged men's homosocial relationships over to any other relationship. If only the second scene of Act III showed some characteristic of the male gaze, then perhaps it could be said that this was an isolated event in the text, not indicative of any special insight on Shakespeare's part; however, Portia's character is fluidly portrayed under this lens throughout the play. After Bassanio chooses correctly and wins his hand, Portia says in complete agreement with the conclusions drawn earlier from Mulvey's assessment of the male gaze: You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, as I am. Even if for myself alone I would not be ambitious in the desire to wish myself much better, yet for you I would be tripled twenty times myself, a thousand times more beautiful, ten thousand times richer, than only to stand high in your account I the power in virtue, beauties, life, friends, it tops the bill. (3.2.149-57) Portia's desires, whatever they may be, are not acknowledged in the text except for the one desire relevant to Bassanio, and this is precisely how the male gaze operates. All that matters about Portia in the minds of Shakespeare's audience are the attributes that concern Bassanio: her "being looked at," her stagnant (inanimate) quality as a possession, and furthermore, for Bassanio's unique circumstance, her inherited quality fortune. Demonstrating Shakespeare's adherence to the concept of the male gaze serves to demonstrate that such insight could also understand people so deeply as to be aware of that homosocial element of male relationships that, for some, would appear to be in the 1920s. first century to invade their perceived heterosexuality. Shakespeare highlights this extent of homosocial relationships achieved by some men that was admirable in the depth of its love and intimacy and profoundly progressive in that it was not criticizable for influencing the public perception of a man's gender. The nature of the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio was common knowledge, as Solanio and Salerio indicate, and neither Antonio nor Bassanio were considered less masculine in the eyes of any of the characters in the text, including Portia, which is significant in the final acts of the play. . Therefore, for the same purpose of showing Shakespeare's insight, it is pertinent to examine Portia's brief speech at the end of Act III, scene four, in which she explains a plan to Nerissa. He explains that they will sneak up on their husbands, and Nerissa asks if they will allow themselves to be seen. In response, Portia: They will, Nerissa, but with such habit That they will think we have accomplished what we lack. I will keep any bet, when we are both dressed like young men, I will prove myself the prettier of the two, and I will wear my dagger with the bravest grace, and I will speak between the change of man and boy with a faint voice, and I will turn two steps coy in a manly step, and talk of quarrels like a boasting youth, and tell picturesque lies, as honorable ladies sought my love, which I deny, fell ill and died. I couldn't help it. Then I will repent, and wish for all that I had not killed them; and I will tell twenty of these mean lies, that men may swear that I have stopped school for a year. I have in my mind a thousand crude tricks of these Vanti that I will put into practice [sic]. (3.4.60-78) The only time Portia betrays the active/passive binary is when she also betrays the.