A note on comprehension

Look at previous post below for assignment. This post is to answer some classroom questions that were left hanging on Thursday and Friday. Some students asked if Portia knows which casket is the right one. These lines from III.2.9-10 reveal several things. One, she does know the correct box. Two, she is TRUE to her father and to her word. This constancy on her part makes her all the more valued as a wife. (Contrast her behavior with Jessica's behavior toward her father's will). Portia's lines to Bassanio:

Portia: I would detain you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you
How to choose right, but I am then forsworn.
So will I never be.

Further, she gets all a-flutter when Bassanio picks the lead box but has not yet opened it. She prays in an aside for love to lighten up a little because she is feeling overwhelmed by her passions:

O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy,
In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess.
I feel too much thy blessing. Make it less,
For fear I surfeit!

She clearly knows the right answer, and Bassanio is clearly the man she most prefers -- so her father was right, in this sense. Note that she gives him a ring with a deal attached to it, too.

Another question concerns the suitors that are present in the introduction to Portia in I.2. Remember the Neapolitan Prince, the County Palatine, Monsieur Le Bon, Falconbridge of England, the Scot, and the German Duke of Saxony? They did not choose a casket at all. Nerissa informs the worried Portia,

"You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords. They have acquainted me with their determinations, which is, indeed, to return to their home and to trouble you with no more suit unless you may be won by some other sort than your father's imposition, depending on the caskets" (I.2.109 approximately).

Some students were surprised to learn that the men are bound by the deal too. It is a CONTRACT, which is a thematic element and thus informs the subplots as well as the main plot. Here Portia speaks to the Prince of Morocco, the first man to risk the casket game:

You must take your chance,
And either not attempt to choose at all
Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong,
Never to speak to lady afterward
In way of marriage. Therefore be advised (II.1.38-42).

This contract appears voided for the Prince of Aragon (the idiot with the spit cup) by the note inside the casket, which reads, in the words of the "portrait of a blinking idiot," as follows:

Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head.
So be gone. You are sped.

I hope that makes some things a little more clear.