ABSTRACT
Shakespeare saw the play as a musical harmony of contrasting characters and tones. Bassanio enters in talk with Shylock. At this point Shakespeare held up the story of Bassanio to allow the intrigue between Lorenzo and Jessica to move forward. To point the increasing bitterness in Shylock's heart, Shakespeare wrote this speech in unrestrained prose; in the former outburst there was the restraint of verse speech. The successful wooing of Portia had yet to come, but Shakespeare wished also to show that destruction was blowing up towards Antonio. The play could not end here, for the love of Bassanio and Portia needed its proper fulfilment. Everyone was suddenly beginning to take an interest in humours, and to label and analyse the vagaries of human aberration. Shakespeare was thus making his own contribution to the gallery of contemporary humours though most satirists were more concerned with types from a higher stratum of society.
