Does Shylock so preponderate the Play as to destroy its balance, and outweighing all other characters make them insignificant?

Are Actors justified in acting the Play so as to dwarf the Love plot and cut out Act V as needless?

Is Portia the proper counterpart in consummate character creation to Shylock?  To whom does, if properly played, the ultimate interest of the Play belong?

Why does this position belong to no other character’s part?

ACT V

THE RINGS

What is the business of Act V?

How is it linked to the preceding Act?  Since reunion and rejoicing are not alone the business of the plot; since recognition and declaration to the two husbands, and to Anthonio, especially, are needed, as well as to the others, of the part played by the wives in solving the difficulties of the plot, the Ring scenes constitute the due dramatic conclusion of the Play.  Note that the threat of quarrel over the reluctant but requisite giving away of the rings in the preceding Act makes a deceptively serious difficulty.  It is happily to be solved as a result of the wives’ preceding action.  This difficulty and this solution at this final stage of the plot constitute a little character play that is an epitome of the action.  The whole is the more happily and amusingly solved that the Audience is wise and the characters still in the dark are really perplexed.

Point out the value of the exchange of Rings as made clear in these two ways, by bringing out the characters of Gratiano, Bassanio, and especially of Anthonio as peace-maker; and by bringing out to them the fact that to the wives’ love and skill the victory over the difficulties they suffered is due.

Are the rings the sole test of this?

What other news adds to the general denouement of all difficulties?

Is the summing up of the Play a victory of love and intelligence over hate and narrow-mindedness?

Show how the rings symbolize this, and music and moonlight provide the proper atmosphere for its operation.  The appropriateness of the moonlight for a calm out of strife, brought about by women, is matched by the fitness of music and the reference to the harmony of the spheres to suggest that earth-harmony to which Portia was presiding Angel.

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Is any incident of Act V without relevance to the plot?

Is the Play the nobler or the weaker dramatically for the poetic and symbolic influence shed upon it by Act V?

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

If this Comedy was written, as tradition reports at the bidding of Queen Elizabeth in order to show Falstaffe in love, it is interesting to see that Shakespeare confines his love-making to mercenary motives, and by causing him to make love to two at once renders him as a lover merely a cheat.