The merchnat of venice

                                                             Themes and ideas

• Does the poem deal with issues that affect society or the personal issues that affect individuals? How does the writer explore and present these?

In this poem Shakespeare deals with both the issue that affect the society and the issues that affect individuals and which are still common in today’s world.

To begin with, the poem tells us that a lot of people would do anything for money because they thinks that it’s the most important values in life and that they judge the values of something by how much it cost and how beautiful it is. This could be seen as a critic of how the society was in the sixteenth century where people were forced to make alliances or to marry someone depending on the person wealth and beauty and not about how the person was on the inside. This idea is clearly stated in the verses “Many a man his life hath sold but my outside to behold” line 67-68. Shakespeare explore this issue through the idea of deceiving appearances and the quote that is now an aphorism “all that glisters is not gold” line 65 and present this as if the human desire for money and beauty  stopped them from thinking intelligently and from being  able to make the right decisions.

In addition, the poem also talks about the individual’s issue that is hubris “had you been as wise as bold” line 70. The pattern in which a person with excessive pride end up being  punish for it ,is a recurrent theme in Shakespeare work for example “ Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet (whom actions caused the death of two young lovers)” . To express the fact that people with too much confidence should always pay the consequences of their actions Shakespeare exaggerate the self-confidence of the Prince of Morocco so that is failure in the casket test as even more impact and seems absolutely obvious after the reading of the poem which is an open criticism about people with hubris “guided tombs do worms enfold” line 69    “Young in limbs, in judgment old” line 71.

The issues that Shakespeare is denouncing at his time still are existent nowadays and still are a big problem in the world in which the values of things are no longer important. “When money rules, we remember the price of things and forget the value of things, and that is dangerous.” Jonathan Sacks. This clearly show that Shakespeare was ahead of his time and knew the down side of the society and how to subtly place warning messages about them in his plays.

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