COMPARISON OF
FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN SEBASTIAN AND ANTONIO
AND BETWEEN
BASSANIO AND ANTONIO
First of all,
we are going to place the characters of Sebastian and Antonio in the play Twelfth Night. Sebastian is Viola’s twin
brother, he was lost in a shipwreck and he was found by Antonio. Both arrive to
In the Merchant of Venice, Bassanio
is in love with Portia, but he needs money to go to Belmont, where Portia is,
and chooses the right casket which will able him to marry her. Although he has
not much money, Antonio loans Bassanio money but he
borrows it from Shylock, a moneylender. If Antonio does not return the money in
three months, Shylock will cut out him a pound of flesh. After these three
months, Antonio can not return the money, so Bassanio
returns from
Sebastian and Antonio are
close friends the same as Bassanio and Antonio. The
first common feature that draws our attention from these two couples is that
the name Antonio is used in both. In Twelfth
Night Antonio is the one who is fond of Sebastian (and he will marry
Olivia), and in the Merchant of Venice
Antonio is fond of Bassanio (who marries Portia). As
we can observe and we will see, in these relationships there is not only friendship,
there is something more beyond it.
In the Merchant of Venice we know more about
the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio than we
do in Twelfth Night about Antonio and
Sebastian. This probably happens because their relationship is important for
the plot of the play and because both are important characters too. Even there
are experts who think that the main action is focused on the fight between
Portia and Antonio for Bassanio’s love. In Twelfth Night the relationship between
Antonio and Sebastian is also important, but the plot focuses more on the
relationship between Viola, Olivia and Orsino. On the
other hand, in this play we could say that all the characters are important,
there are not secondary ones. Probably this is the reason why the plot focuses
more on the confusion between Viola (disguised as Cesario)
and Sebastian and the consequences this has on the other characters.
Now, we could pay
attention to the first words of Antonio in the Merchant of Venice, which are very interesting:
In
sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
It
wearies me, you say it wearies you;
But
how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What
stuff ‘tis made of, whereof it is born,
I
am to learn;
And
such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That
I have much ado to know myself.
(MV Act I.i,
1-7)
As we can see, Antonio is
sad, he does not know the cause, even he thinks that he does not know himself.
But while we are reading the play, we will deduce that this sadness is due to Bassanio’s love to Portia. In my opinion, starting the play
with Antonio’s feeling of pain indicates us that that is something important.
So we start to know that this is more than a relationship of friendship.
On the other hand, in Twelfth Night we can not find a statement
of pain because of love. But what we find is disappointment, especially when
Antonio defends Sebastian since he has risked his life defending him, and after
this he is taken by Orsino’s officers and Sebastian
does not do anything, even he acts as if he did not know Antonio. In fact it is
true because it is Viola, dressed as her brother, who is there and not
Sebastian.
Thou
hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.
In
nature there’s no blemish but the mind:
None
can be called deformed but the unkind.
Virtue
is beauty, but the beauteous-evil
Are
empty trunks, o’er-flourished by the devil.
(TN Act III.ii,
317-321)
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