Bassanio: Young man who wants to marry Portia and must first pass the test of the caskets to do so If he does not, he can never marry Portia or any other woman.

"Most of his vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are no longer in use, and many of his words have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth century," (xv).

Shylock: A Jewish moneylender who faces much prejudice and Anti-Semitism. He is the villain of the Merchant of Venice; however, some see him as the story's hero due to this expressions and reactions to the unjust Anti-Semitism he faces.

"Because English places such importance in the placement of words in sentences,on the way words are arranged, unusual arrangements can puzzle the reader," (xvii)

"Often, Shakespeare expresses the negative in what may strike us as odd ways (e.g., instead of "He does not go," we find "He goes not")," (xvii)

Puns - " In many of Shakespeare's plays, puns are used more frequently either for comedic effect ... or for a wide variety of effects," (xxi)

"The dialogue is written to be spoken by actors who, at the same time are moving, gesturing, picking up objects, weeping, shaking their fists," (xxii).

Metaphors - A play on words in which one object is expressed as something else, something with which it share common feature," (xxii).

Malapropisms - "Play on words that sound the same but that have different meanings (or on a single word that has more than one meaning)" (xxi). They are often used rather seriously in Merchant of Venice.

"We should always remember that the words we are reading is a performance script," (xvii).