Why Bassanio Deserves To Win The Casket

Essay, Research Paper

Why Bassanio Deserves to Win the Casket Test

does he love her for herself or for the opportunity she offers him to

renew his wasted estate. The other main characters are tried by

events; Bassanio only passes a multiple-choice test. Nerissa, making the best of Portia’s predicament, observes that the right casket “will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one you shall rightly

love.” And as Bassanio hastens to his choice, Portia remarks,

“If you do love me, you will find me out.” We may assume the

test’s validity as given.

But for hostile critics some extratextual evidence of

Bassanio’s worthiness may be necessary. First let us admit that

in the fairy-tale world to which Belmont is often said to belong,

the fair lady’s fortune is always a given, having no other

signification than a reward for virtue. Let us further

acknowledge that in the real world of Elizabeth, an impecunious

young lord had no choice but to choose his partner from the

available heiresses. We will entirely miss the point if we

approach this marriage with our post-Romantic notions of

individual free choice and true love; these are not the ways of

this world. Among availabe heiresses, Portia is obviously a

precious treasure: high mettled like “Brutus’s Portia,” virtu-

ous, beautiful, _and_ rich. Bassanio is no mean catch either:

he is a peer of the realm (some thirty times he is “Lord

Bassanio,” “my lord,” “your lordship,” “your worship,” and “your

honor”). But he requires wealth to do justice to his title.

Magnificence

At a time when relationships were everything and money

nothing, Bassanio’s reckless expenditures, so painful to modern

sensibilities, would have been seen as a virtue. He is what

Aristotle calls a “Great Soul,” one who has no attachment to

worldly goods, who is fond of conferring benefits on others, for

whom spending money is an art (”Magnificence”), and who spends

“gladly and lavishly, since nice calculation is shabby.” _De

Officiis_ declares that “There is nothing more honorable and

noble than to be indifferent to money.” For him, money is a

non-thing, a drudge for moving goods from one person to another,

but never an end in itself. It has no more value than the water

that carries the merchant’s cargo, and we should “deny no one the

water that flows by.”

Bassanio is introduced as one who has “disabled [his]

estate/By something showing a more swelling port/Than [his] faint

means would grant continuance.” In dire financial straits, he

expensively feasts his friends and plans to entertain them with a

masque. He undertakes to “hold a rival” place with Portia’s

other suitors, both princes, and he therefore brings “gifts of

rich value” to Belmont. He does not apologize for the “noble

rate” of his expenditures; he trusts his luck.

Later on, in another part of _The Merchant_, Jessica echoes

Bassanio’s prodigality, when she wastes away her little casket of

gold and jewels at a rate of fourscore ducats a night and trades

her father’s wedding ring for a monkey, just to celebrate her

marriage.

And Portia knows precisely what kind of a man she is

getting. Bassanio “freely” told her, on his first visit to

Belmont, that all the wealth he had “ran in [his] veins,” that

his “state was nothing,” but that didn’t stop her from issuing a

second invitation. She knows that he is “a scholar and a

soldier.” He has had a good education. His military service is

an even better recommendation, for, according to the leading

authority on the subject, “the principal and true profession of a

Courtier ought to be in feats of arms.” And he is well-

connected, too, for he first came to Belmont “in the company of

the Marquis of Montferrat.” The Marquisate of Montferrat

belonged to the illustrious princely house of Gonzaga. Three

Gonzagas participated in the dialogue of which _The Courtier_

consisted, The Lady Elizabeth Gonzaga in the chair. Thus Nerissa

can say without reservation, “He, of all men that ever my foolish

eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.” On this

topic Cicero quotes Themistocles’ wishes for his daughter: “For

my part, I prefer a man without money to money without a man.”

When wealth is subject to fortune, a good man is a better bet.

Portia has plenty of money; what she lacks is a man. In truth,

if Bassanio passes her father’s test, he is as big a catch for

her as she is for him.

Fortune

To understand the casket test one must imagine some of the

consequences of a living in a highly entropic world. In the

first line of the play, Antonio says, “I know not why I am so

sad.” The second scene shifts us to Belmont, and Portia says,

“By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great

world.” In the beginning,

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