When Bassanio is in need of money to court his lady love, Portia, he approaches his friend Antonio, a prominent Venetian merchant. Unable to help him financially, Antonio offers to become a guarantor to Bassanio’s moneylender.
Together they go to Shylock, a miserly Jewish moneylender, who agrees to lend him the sum of money on one condition:
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, sum sum or sums as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of of you body pleaseth me.
What happens when Antonio is unable to repay Shylock?