SOURCE: "The Cuckoo's Note: Male Friendship and Cuckoldry in The Merchant of Venice," in Shakespeare's "Rough Magic, " edited by Peter Erickson and Coppella Kahn, University of Delaware Press, 1985, pp. 104-12.

In the following essay, Kahn focuses on the ring plot and how it strengthens the main courtship plot of the play. Additionally, Kahn maintains that the ring plot demonstrates both the bonds between men which precede and interfere with marriage, and the male fear of being cuckolded, a fear which follows and threatens marriage.

Shakespeare's romantic comedies center on courtship, a holiday of jokes, disguisings, songs, word play, and merriment of many kinds, which culminates in marriage, the everyday institution which both inspires holiday and sets the boundaries of it. Shakespeare doesn't portray the quotidian realities of marriage in these comedies, of course. He simply lets marriage symbolize the ideal accommodation of eros with society, and the continuation...