One of the key plotlines in the play revolves around Antonio's borrowing of money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, using a pound of his own flesh as collateral.

Antonio's character is emblematic of the themes present in the play, including the complexities of friendship, the consequences of prejudice, and the interplay between love and sacrifice.

His interactions with other characters, particularly Shylock and Portia, contribute to the multifaceted layers of the narrative, making Antonio a significant and thought-provoking figure in The Merchant of Venice.

Lorenzo cannot get in a word for the boisterous Gratiano who makes sport of Antonio's melancholy telling him that he is too serious and that he himself would rather go through life acting foolish.

(The Merchant of Venice 1.1/126–128) Bassanio then proceeds to tell Antonio of his depleted financial state due to his own excesses, making sure to note that he is aware he already owes him money.

He laments his ill-fortune but cheers at the thought of solving his problems by marrying Portia, a woman who has come into a sizeable inheritance from her father and whom he thinks is predisposed to choose him.

Antonio has belittled and harassed Shylock in public, and he loathes him because when Christian friends of his owed money to the Jews he paid off the debts, thus depriving them of their interest.

The Duke pleads with Shylock to give "a gentle answer", a double entendre on the word Gentile, which meant anyone except a Jew.

Since Shylock is so insistent on absolute adherence to the law he is made to lose his bond and since he as a foreigner attempted to harm the life of a Venetian he is himself subject to punishment.

Shylock leaves without his revenge with the added pain of having lost a portion of his wealth and his identity as a Jew through forced conversion.

Not realizing the doctor is Portia in disguise Bassanio refuses to part with it but later after Antonio convinces him that surely his wife would understand that he did it for the person who saved his friend.

Antonio plays the benefactor again, this time to Jessica when he gives her legal documentation to show that she is to inherit Shylock's property at his death.

The play ends with Portia bearing good news that Antonio's much-anticipated ships have arrived safely in port.

Homosexuality [as understood in 16th-century England] was a sin 'to which men's natural corruption and viciousness [were] prone' " (16–17, Rainolds quoted in Bray 1995, 17).