Girl Talk in Merchant

    

     An introduction to the characters of Portia and Nerissa occurs while they ensue in Shakespearean girl talk.  It is interesting that he opens scene II with such an intimate setting of two women speaking of marriage, lust, and love.  Automatically one understands the importance of marriage in The Merchant of Venice and especially in Portia’s life.  Shakespeare expresses her passion against her father’s law of the three chests through superb use of opposites, animal imagery, and word choice.  By beginning the scene with Portia stating “my little body is aweary of this great world,” Shakespeare alerts the reader that Portia is a passionate and rather upset woman (1.2.1-2).  Her weariness stems from her father’s “cold decree” and her “hot temper” clashing.  “The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree” (1.2.16-17).  Portia’s zealous personality makes her a young woman disenchanted with the idea of being controlled by an order.  She needs to love in her own way but is conflicted as she understands what is correct.  She craves her passion to be a guiding light, not her dead father’s decree.  Shakespeare places the words “cold decree” or wise ruling in Portia’s speech.  Her father is dead, so he essentially is “cold” like his law, whereas his daughter is full of life and vivaciousness.  The conflict between Portia’s warmth and her father’s cold wishes are brilliantly paired.  By utilizing opposites, the reader distinguishes the severity of Portia feelings.  Much like the sexes have confided in one another in regards to love in numerous Shakespearean dramas, Nerissa is notified of her lady’s feelings of impinged desires.  Shakespeare places animal imagery in Portia’s dialogue by inserting “hare” – an image connected to lust and romance; two things this lady desires.  The animalistic reference signifies human’s natural desire for sex.  “…such a hare is madness the youth to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple” (1.2.17-18).  Again, Portia understands what is right to do and knows she will get caught in “the meshes of good counsel” although she deeply wants to be that careless, frisky hare.  An implication of her father as the “the cripple”- one who is prudent, but not alive in the fullest is referenced.  Her father was on his deathbed, so he was not alive in the full when the rule of his daughter’s marriage was created.  As Portia begins to ponder her status, she appears angered by the word “choose.”  Choose has implications of freedom and one’s own will guiding them.  “Oh me the word ‘choose’!  I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike…” (1.2.21-22).  There is no choosing for Portia.  Her father essentially chose for her with his plan of the three chests.  She is bored and distressed by this and at scene’s end she states:  “Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the door” (1.2.110-111).  Portia is “aweary” of her father’s scheme that she knows is sensible, but still cannot seem to make her abandon her passionate desires.  She is done with the repetitiveness of lovers coming and going.  She wishes for a permanent love that she can “choose.”