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Literally, there is no connection between Venetian carnival and Shakespeare's play. The masking celebrations planned in anticipation of Bassanio's venture to woo Portia, as well as Lorenzo's abduction of Jessica, could be thought to allude to it. Word of Bassanio's feast is insisted upon throughout the second act of the play: Launcelot, for example, tells his father to redirect the dish of doves he has brought for Shylock to Bassanio, 'who indeed gives rare new liveries' (Shakespeare, 1955, 2.2.104-105), as is confirmed immediately when Bassanio orders supper, commands letters be delivered, liveries made (2.2.109-112). Bassanio plans to 'feast' his 'best-esteem'd acquaintance' (2.2.164-165), including the newly acquired Launcelot, who expects a fuller stomach than was his lot with Shylock. In its extravagant haste and wild expenditure, this impending feast is carnivalesque. Bassanio has yet to use his - that is to say Antonio's, that is, Shylock's - fortune to win Portia, and he is spending recklessly. He contrasts this to the behavior he plans when he comes to woo Portia, for which he enjoins upon Gratiano 'the observance of civility/Like one well studied in a sad ostent/To please his grandam' (2.2.186-188); for the coming feast, on the other hand, he encourages Gratiano 'to put on/Your boldest suit of mirth' (2.2.192-193). In a play that oscillates between inexplicable sadness and precariously founded joy, carnival and its lenten sequel seem involved.
Bassanio's feast is connected to Jessica's abduction when the 'suit of mirth' Bassanio urges Gratiano to don is literalized in a fashion when Jessica is 'transformed to a boy.' 'Cupid himself would blush,' she insists, 'To see me thus transformed' (2.6.38-39). But not Lorenzo; taken with her 'lovely garnish of a boy' (2.6.45), he seizes her with relish, urging her to accompany him to 'Bassanio's feast' (2.6.48). Jessica comes down from her window, but not before she adds to her cover the gilding of additional ducats. Then, suddenly, the feast, so insistently forecast, is canceled: 'no masque tonight' (2.6.64), Antonio announces: it is time for Bassanio to sail. Antonio's announcement, abrupt as it seems, nonetheless is in line with the deflationary hints that accompany the carnival moments we have been charting, the implication in Bassanio's remarks to Gratiano, for example, that wooing and winning Portia might mark...