Just as the merchant is a middleman in buying wholesale and selling retail, so too this merchant Antonio is a romantic intermediary, in the curiously triangulated relationship he has with Bassanio and Portia. Antonio’s unexplained sadness at the beginning of the play has seemed to many critics and theatre directors all too explicable: he cannot speak his love for his beloved Bassanio (see the chapter on Twelfth Night for more on male homosexuality and same-sex desire in the plays, particularly related to characters called Antonio).
