Francesco Argentina
Ms. Harrison
ELA
February, 13
Blog post 16
Towards the end of the play, Portia disguised as a doctor, makes a very interesting speech on Antonio's behalf towards Shylock. She talks about the quality of mercy in contrast to justice. All this is just to save her husbands best friend from having a chunk of flesh carved out of him. She uses this speech to try and persuade Shylock to be merciful and spare Antonio. In this speech she stresses the importance of mercy, and explains how mercy is a blessing from the gods, and how it is the holy spirits way of making you do the right thing. She says that anyone can choose justice, but it takes a real courageous man to choose the act of mercy. I found some of this speech to be kind of ironic as Shylock, being jewish doesn't even believe in the god which she talks about in the speech which might be some of the reason as to why her attempt to persuade him did not even work. Overall however, I do believe what she is saying about how showing mercy might not be the easiest option and how it does take a lot of courage to show an act of mercy especially when someone that you hate is sitting right in front of you waiting for you to cut into him.
You did a good job of explaining what Portia was saying. You did not, however, explain why this speech/concept is important in the play, which was the second part of the prompt. Also, just a factoid, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim god is the same god.
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