Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". An influential, powerful and wealthy nobleman of Venice, he is a middle-aged man and a merchant by trade who has his financial interests tied up in overseas shipments when the play begins. He is kind, generous, honest and confident, and is loved and revered by all the Christians who know him. His willingness to die for Bassanio is a manifestation of his character. Antonio manifests anti-semitism by cursing and spitting at Shylock (anti-semitism was common in Europe in Shakespeare's days). He is a structural
Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) the 1955 Arden Shakespeare second series edition of the play: "… nowhere in the play does Shylock show any tenderness towards his daughter …. … as a Jewess, loved by a Christian, Jessica stood in a fair way for the audience's sympathy …." In Munday's "Zelauto", Brisana (Jessica) opposes her father, Trinculo (Shylock), and eventually elopes with Rodolpho (Lorenzo); all presented sympathetically for the audience. Similarly, in Salernitano's 14th "novella", the daughter makes off with her father's money, to the same effect. "In both these examples, the father is avaricious …. It ranks him with the miserly fathers in Elizabethan