Shylock builds up all the tension as well as Portia however Portia and her loyal serving girl Nerissa, use a great amount of dramatic irony. Even though the audience knows that both these characters are actually Balthazaar and his apprentice, Bassanio, Antonio and Shylock don't. This creates a brilliant effect and also helps to build up tension. Portia may be worried that somebody may see through her disguise and she could suffer a terrible punishment. Shylock is a fantastic character to build up the impact for many reasons. He is hated. The only character to not have any friends and what
How does Shakespeare present racial and religious tension in the "Merchant of Venice? The Merchant of Venice is set in a time of racial and religious strife. Venice was an important Mediterranean centre for goods from the Far East. It would have been a very exotic location for an Elizabethan audience; Shakespeare chose to set the play in Venice, because people in Elizabethan England would not have visited Venice and were more likely to believe things they were told about it. It could have also been set in Venice to reflect England's state of racial and religious tension, without being too obvious. The two central characters in the play are Shylock, a wealthy Jew; and Antonio a rich merchant. At the time the play was written, Christians were not allowed to charge interest on lending money, but Jews did. Shylock and Antonio are enemies by religion.
In the trial scene (act 4 scene 1), Shakespeare uses many different dramatic techniques to make the tension in the court room rise and build. He also uses dramatic irony and many other techniques to engage an audience in this particular scene in the play. These techniques would have worked on an Elizabethan audience or a modern day audience. Although, these two eras do not share the same views on some of the things Shakespeare wrote about, the same mood and ideas are given across through Shakespeare's use of dramatic techniques....