Portia (The Merchant of Venice) Portia (The Merchant of Venice) Portia is the protagonist of William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". A rich, beautiful, and intelligent heiress of Belmont, she is bound by the lottery set forth in her father's will, which gives potential suitors the chance to choose among three caskets. If he chooses the right casket, he wins Portia's hand in marriage. If he chooses the incorrect casket, he must leave and never seek another woman in marriage. She is said to be blonde and has curly hair. As Bassanio says to Antonio in (Act I scene I), she is more beautiful than
The Jew of Malta often compared, Shylock and Barabas, are themselves profoundly different. Regardless of whether or not The Merchant of Venice was a direct influence, or merely a product of the contemporaneous society that they both were written in, it is noteworthy that Marlowe and Shakespeare were the only two British playwrights of their time to include a Jewish principal character in one of their plays. At the end of the play, Barabas attempts to murder his erstwhile Turkish allies by tricking them into falling through a trap door into a hot cauldron in a pit. In the end, it is Barabas who