The Merchant of Venice shows the dynamics of love and how far humans will go to show love, use their wealth and even be ready to give up their lives for people who love. Both Antonio and Portia love Bassanio differently. Portia perceives Antonio's phileo in competition with her eros, (both forms of love will be defined later) and throughout the play she is seen trying to defeat Antonio's phileo and she does so by subjugating Antonio, primarily with her his wealth, offers to pay him his debt to Shylock three times greater than the amount he had obligated, then saves his life and finally teaches Bassanio that he can use her feminine powers to deny him the consuming power in marriage, through the saga of the ring. There are two reasons why this document rejects the notion of homosexuality between Antonio and Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. First of all, in the entire work there is no evidence that Antonio and Bassanio had a physical intimate relationship. The reason Bassanio wants to go to Belmont “for a richly leftist lady” is to have this physical intimate relationship with Portia, thus rejecting the idea that Bassanio has homoerotic feelings for Antonio. And secondly the word love can have a multiplicity of meanings which, if not understood correctly, can lead to the friendship between Bassanio and Antonio being seen as homoerotic. For the purposes of this discussion, we will define the word love in terms of two Greek words, both of which mean love, but in two different senses. The two themes relevant to this article are phileo and eros. Love –phileo “means to have affection (feeling or feeling) for. A tenderness founded in the heart. What the Greeks meant by Phileo love is what we normally think of when we say "brotherly love" (And...... middle of paper ......r eros leads us to betray our responsibilities and our relationships” and this is exactly what Bassanio does to Antonio, in order to achieve an erotic relationship with Portia he almost puts the lives of his friends at risk and at the same time does not offer his wife the commitment that she wants from him in their marriage this comedy describes also that marriage comes with a responsibility, that when one gets married he must realign his priorities by giving paramount importance to his partners And finally, furthermore, Shakespeare in this play has placed a woman above the patriarchy which exercises much of the power in the opera, compared to Bassanio or Antonio. Her wealth and stealth to force Bassanio to realign his commitment demonstrate that it is not only men who are capable of subjugating women, but women have the same ability to do it. Same.