1. The Merchant of Venice
ACT 2 NOTES

2. ACT 2 - Summary
SCENE 1: Portia meets the Prince of Morocco. He is a “moor”, which means that he has dark skin. He comments on how cold the north is. He demands to be taken to the lottery to compete for Portia’s hand in marriage. We come to find out that if you choose wrong, you can never marry.
SCENE 2: We get introduced to the clown of the play, Lancelot Gobbo. Lancelot is a servant to Shylock. He jokes around with his blind father, Gobbo. Lancelot acts like he is faminished because Shylock doesn’t feed him. He makes his father feel his “ribs,” but actually just gives him his fingers. Bassanio shows up and talks to Lancelot. Lancelot wants to leave Shylock’s service and work for Bassanio, even though Bassanio is poor. Bassanio agrees and tells him to prepare for his feast later that night.
Gratiano wants to go with Bassanio to Belmont. Bassanio is worried because Gratiano is “too wild and too rude.” However, Gratiano says that he will not act that way on Belmont and Bassanio agrees to take him along.
SCENE 3: We are introduced to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter. Jessica says goodbye to Lancelot, who is leaving her father’s service to work for Bassanio.
SCENE 4: Lorenzo, Gratiano, Solonio, and Salarino are discussing Bassanio’s feast. Lorenzo is in love with Jessica and wants her to run away with him. Jessica is planning on stealing gold and jewels from her father, disguising herself in a page’s suit, and being Lorenzo’s torch bearer at the masque feast. She is going to run away with Lorenzo.

3. ACT 2 - Summary
Lancelot invites Shylock to attend Bassanio’s masque (feast). Shylock agrees to go. Lancelot then tells Jessica to be prepared for Lorenzo’s arrival. Shylock puts Jessica in charge of looking over his house while he is gone. Jessica knows that she is running away. “I have a father, you a daughter, lost.”
SCENE 6: Gratiano, Salerino, and Lorenzo go to Shylock’s house to pick-up the disguised Jessica. Lorenzo says he is Jessica’s lover and she recognizes him. Jessica is disguised as a page and will carry Lorenzo’s torch. They leave together for the feast. Antonio enters the scene and talks to Gratiano. He tells him that since the winds are strong, Bassanio is planning on setting sail tonight. Gratiano is delighted because he is going with Bassanio.
SCENE 7: The Prince of Morocco reads the inscriptions on each one of Portia’s chests. Inside one of the chests is her picture. If he chooses the one with her picture, then he gets to marry Portia. After debating which one to choose, the Prince of Morocco gets cocky and chooses the gold chest. Inside is a skull to represent death. The Prince of Morocco must leave and can never marry.
SCENE 8: Soloanio and Salarino discuss Bassanio and Gratiano’s departure for Belmont. They also talk about how, when Shylock got back home, he ran into the streets and was more upset that his money and jewels were missing rather than his daughter, Jessica, who ran away with Lorenzo.
There are rumors circulating that a ship has recently sunk on the Narrow Seas. Salarino is worred that it is Antonio’s ship.

4. ACT 2 - Summary
SCENE 9: Another suitor, the Prince of Arragon, is competing in the chest lottery in order to marry Portia. Arragon reads the inscriptions and decides to choose the silver casket. Inside is a picture of a winking joker (a clown). Arragon must leave immediately and can never marry.
At the end of the scene, Portia gets word that Bassanio has showed up on Belmont. Nerissa is secretly hoping that Bassanio chooses the right casket.

5. SCENE 1 “the Prince of Morocco, a tawny Moor all in white”
1. What is a “Moor?” Why would Shakespeare dress a “Moor” in all white to see Portia?

6. SCENE 2
“‘Conscience’, say I, ‘you counsel well.’ ‘Fiend’, say I, ‘you counsel well’. To be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master who – God bless the mark! – is a kind of devil; and to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend who – saving your reverence – is the devil himself.”

7. SCENE 2
“To leave a rich Jew’s service to become the follower of so poor a gentleman.”
Speaker:
Situation:

8. SCENE 2
“Father, come, I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling.”
Speaker:
Situation:

9. SCENE 2 “Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice” Speaker:
Situation:

10. SCENE 3
“I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so. Our house is hell, and thou a merry devil didst rob it of some taste of tediousness.”
Speaker:
Situation:

11. SCENE 4
“I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed how I shall take her from her father’s house, what gold and jewels she is furnish’d with, what page’s suit she hath in readiness if e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, it will be for his gentle daughter’s sake”
Speaker:
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12. “Women” Actors in Shakespeare’s Time
During Shakespeare’s time of the late 1500s and early 1600s, women were not permitted to perform on the stage. Women were seen as less intelligent than men and acting was a job reserved for only male Englishmen.
The “women” characters in plays were played by teenage boys. These boys would dress in women’s clothing and speak in high-pitched voices.
If a woman character were to disguise herself as a man, the boy would simply take off the women clothes and dress as a boy. EXAMPLE – Jessica disguising herself as a male page.

13. SCENE 5
“Do as I bid you, shut doors after you. Fast bind, fast find: a proverb never stale in thrift mind.”
Speaker:
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14. SCENE 6
“No masque tonight: the wind is come about, Bassanio presently will go aboard. I have sent twenty out to seek for you.
Speaker:
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15. SCENE 7
“Never so rich a gem was set in worse than gold. They have in England a coin that bears the figure of an angel stamped in gold; but that’s insculp’d upon: But here an angel in a golden bed lies all within. Deliver me the key: Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may.
Speaker:
Situation:

16. SCENE 8
“Marry, well remember’d: I reason’d with a Frenchman yesterday who told me, in the Narrow Seas that part the French and English, there miscarried a vessel of our country richly fraught. I thought upon Antonio when he told me, And wish’d in silence that tit were not his.
Speaker:
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17. SCENE 9 “The portrait of a blinking idiot presenting me a schedule!”
Speaker:
Situation:
“ Bassanio, Lord Love, if they will it be!”