1. Merchant of Venice

2. Symbols And
Metaphors
Analyasis of Merchant of Venice,
Shakaspeare

3. Symbols
Symbols are using objects,
figures, characters to represent
ideas or concepts

4. Symbols of Merchant
of Venice
The Three Caskets
The Pound of Flesh
Leah’s Ring

5. The Three Caskets
Silver Casket Gold Casket Lead Casket

6. Golden Casket
Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire

7. Golden Casket
• All that glisters is not gold
• Often have you heard that told.
• Many a man his life hath sold
• Gilded tombs do worns infold.
• Had you been as wise as bold,
• Young in limbs, in judgement old,
• Your answer had not been inscrolled.
• Fare you well, your suit is cold.
»(2.7.65-73)

8. What Gold Represents
• Greedy people
• People fooled by flashy outward apprearances
• Materialistic people
• People who sell out for luxury
• People who take without giving

9. Silver Casket
Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves

10. Silver Casket
• Some there be that shadows kiss;
• Such have but a shadow’s bliss
• There be fools alive,iwis
• Silvered o’er and so was this
• Take what wife you will to bed
• I will ever be your head.
• So be gone; you are sped
2.9.66-72

11. What Silver Represents
• Cautious people
• People who try to be something they are
not.
• People who make compromises for comfort
• People who sacrifice spiritual health for
material wealth

12. Lead Casket
Who chooseth me must give and hazard all

13. Lead Casket
• You that choose not by the wiev,
• Chance as fair and choose as true!
• Since this fortune falls to you
• Be content and seek no new.
• If you be well pleased with this,
• And hold your fortune for your bliss,
• Turn you where your lady is
• And climb her with a loving kiss
3.2.132-38

14. What Lead Presents
• Risk-takers
• People not fooled by appearances
• Spiritual, intellectual people
• People not deceived by false values
• People who give more than they get

15. The Pound of Flesh
• Friendship
• Love
• Sacrifice
• Hate
• Law

16. Leah’s Ring
• Love
• Grieve
• Humanity

17. Metaphors
A metaphor is a literary figure of
speech that uses an image, story or
tangible object to represent a less
tangible object or some intangible
quality or idea

18. Metaphors of Merchant of
Venice
• Your mind is tossing on the ocean
• There where your argosies with portly sail,
• Like signors and rich burghers on the flood
• Or as it were the pageants of the sea
• Do overpeer the petty traffickers
• That curtsy to them do them reverence
• As they fly by them with their woven wings
Salerio 1.i.1-14

19. Metaphors of Merchant of
Venice
• If to do were as easy as to know what were good
to do, chapels, had been churches, and poor men’s
cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that
follows his own instructions. I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done than to be one
of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The
brain may divise laws for the blood, but a hot
temper leaps o’er a cold decree.
Portia 1. ii.12-26

20. Metaphors of Merchant of
Venice
• Well, Jessica, go in. Perhaps I will
return immediately. Shut doors after
you. Fast bind, fast find –A proverb
never stale in thifity mind.
Shylock II.v.45-54

21. Methaphors of Merchant
of Venice
• It is engendered in the eyes,
• with gazing fed; and fancy dies
• in the cradle where it lies
• Let us all ring fancy’s knell
• I will begin: ding dong,bell.