ABSTRACT
The Merchant of Venice is listed from the First Folio onwards as a comedy, although there is scarcely much to laugh at in it, except perhaps in the portrayal of the first two men to woo Portia's hand: under Jonathan Miller's direction, they do provide some welcome light relief. In many of Shakespeare's other comedies there are subsidiary plots and scenes that are light and amusing, but apart from the casket scene there are no such devices in The Merchant of Venice. The merchant Antonio has ships coming from all over the world, full of money-making goods, although, since they have not yet reached port, at present he has nothing. Freud relates how Shakespeare took this idea from a collection of medieval tales, although there it is a girl who makes the same choice in order to win the emperor's son.
