Act 5 & Resolution
Act 5: Return to Belmont
After the intensity of the trial scene, Act 5 shifts the action entirely to Belmont. Shylock has left the stage and will not return. The tone changes dramatically — moonlight, music, and the language of love replace the courtroom’s legal rhetoric. Lorenzo and Jessica sit together, trading romantic references to classical lovers: “In such a night as this, / When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees.” The scene is designed to feel like a resolution, a return to harmony after conflict.
But is it harmonious? The classical lovers Lorenzo and Jessica name — Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido and Aeneas — are all stories of betrayal, tragedy, and abandonment. Shakespeare’s audience would have recognised these references immediately. The surface mood is romantic, but the allusions beneath it are deeply unsettling. This is characteristic of the play: appearances deceive.
Lorenzo and Jessica reference Troilus and Cressida (betrayal), Pyramus and Thisbe (tragic miscommunication), and Dido and Aeneas (abandonment). All are stories of love gone wrong. Shakespeare uses these allusions to undercut the romantic surface of Act 5, suggesting that the play’s “happy ending” is not as happy as it seems.
The Ring Trick
The main business of Act 5 is the ring trick. After the trial, Portia (still disguised as Balthazar) and Nerissa (disguised as a law clerk) asked Bassanio and Gratiano for their rings as payment for legal services. Both men gave them up, breaking their promises. Now, back in Belmont, Portia and Nerissa pretend to be furious about the missing rings, accusing their husbands of giving them to other women.
Portia stretches the joke cruelly. She tells Bassanio she will sleep with the lawyer who now has the ring: “I will become as liberal as you; / I’ll not deny him anything I have.” Bassanio is horrified, and the tension escalates until Portia reveals the truth — she was Balthazar. The rings are returned, and order is apparently restored.
The ring trick is more than a comic device. It demonstrates that Portia holds the real power in the relationship. She gave the ring, she retrieved it, and she decides when to reveal the truth. Bassanio broke his oath within hours of making it — he chose loyalty to Antonio over fidelity to Portia. The ring trick forces him to confront this, and Portia’s willingness to humiliate him publicly suggests she will not be a passive, obedient wife. In an Elizabethan context, this is subversive: Portia manipulates a patriarchal system by working within it rather than openly challenging it.
Good News and Loose Threads
Portia delivers more good news: Antonio’s ships have “richly come to harbour” — his wealth is restored. She also reveals that Lorenzo and Jessica will inherit all of Shylock’s wealth upon his death. The comic plot is resolved: couples are united, money is returned, and the threat of the bond is gone.
But Shakespeare leaves significant loose threads. Antonio stands alone at the end — unmarried, restored to wealth, but isolated. The man who opened the play with unexplained melancholy ends it in the same state. Shylock is absent, his suffering unresolved. Jessica has gained wealth and a Christian husband, but has she found happiness? Gratiano’s crude final line — about keeping safe “Nerissa’s ring” (a sexual double entendre) — undermines the romance and suggests that appearances of harmony are exactly that: appearances.
The ending resolves the plot (ships safe, couples united, Shylock defeated) but not the play’s moral tensions. Antonio remains alone, Shylock is absent and destroyed, Jessica’s happiness is uncertain, and the classical allusions suggest love is fragile. The “comedy” ending masks unresolved tragedy.
Music and Harmony in Act 5
Lorenzo’s speech about music is one of the play’s most lyrical passages: “The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.” Music in Belmont represents harmony, love, and civilisation. But Shylock, notably, dislikes music — “Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter / My sober house” (Act 2, Scene 5). Lorenzo’s speech implicitly condemns anyone without an appreciation of music as untrustworthy. This links to the broader Christian characterisation of Shylock as outside the harmonious community.
However, the speech is also exclusionary. If music equals civilisation, then those who are excluded from the music — Shylock, forced out of Belmont’s world — are defined as uncivilised. Shakespeare may be endorsing this view, or he may be exposing it as another form of prejudice dressed in beautiful language.
Jessica’s response to the music is striking: “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” In a scene designed to celebrate harmony, Jessica feels no joy. This line is often interpreted as homesickness or guilt — she has abandoned her father, her religion, and her community. She exists between two worlds: no longer Jewish, not truly accepted as Christian. Her unease suggests that her conversion has not brought the happiness the Christian characters promised. It is one of the play’s most quietly devastating moments.
Is This a Comedy?
Shakespeare’s First Folio classifies The Merchant of Venice as a comedy, and Act 5 follows comic conventions: misunderstandings are cleared up, marriages are celebrated, wealth is restored. But the play resists easy classification. The trial scene is tragic in its treatment of Shylock. The ring trick reveals fractures in the marriages. Antonio’s isolation is unresolved. Jessica’s sadness lingers. The strongest exam answers will acknowledge this tension rather than simplifying the ending into “happy” or “sad.”