Likenings: Rhetorical Husbandries and Portia's "True Conceit" of Friendship

Shannon offers a philology by which to chart the breaks between early modern relational terms ("marriage," "husbandry," and "friendship") and the narrower forms of their contemporary standardization. The early modern multivalence of these terms helps to specify the grounds of Portia's much-debated invention of agency in William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." In the comedy, Portia deploys the discourses of friendship, affectively and effectively, to rewrite her marriage contract.