Gratiano

Play

The Merchant of Venice

Summary

Gratiano is Bassanio's garrulous, boisterous friend — a talker of such relentless energy that even his own friends joke he speaks "an infinite deal of nothing." He accompanies Bassanio to Belmont and, while Bassanio wins Portia, Gratiano woos and wins Nerissa. At the trial he is the most vocally savage toward Shylock. The ring-plot at the end catches him too, giving the comedy its final symmetry.

Notable Quotations

"Silence is only commendable / In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible." *(I.i)*

"O, be thou damned, inexecrable dog!" *(IV.i)*

Cross-references

• The Merchant of Venice — the play
• Comedies — genre
• character_bassanio — his friend, with whom he travels to Belmont
• character_portia — whose lady Nerissa he marries
• character_shylock — at whom he directs his sharpest venom in the trial scene