![]() The most difficult task thus falls to the share of the fortunate third suitor what he finds to say in glorification of lead, as against gold and silver is little and has a forced ring. Each of the suitors gives reasons for his choice in a speech in which he praises the metal he prefers and depreciates the other two. Bassanio, the third, decides in favor of lead he thereby wins the bride, whose affection was already his before the trial of fortune. Two suitors have already departed unsuccessful: they have chosen gold and silver. The three caskets are of gold, silver, and lead the right casket is the one that contains her portrait. The fair and wise Portia is bound at her father's bidding to take as her husband only that one of her suitors who chooses the right casket from among the three before him. Here is Freud's summary of the choices presented in that play, which we will compare afterward to three wishes. ![]() In his 1913 essay, "The Theme of the Three Caskets," the sort of essay readers today find Jungian because of its emphasis on myth rather than an individual case analysis, Freud shows how the choice among three caskets (boxes) in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is a mythic remnant that appears in creative works and in the mind of man more generally in continual retransformations. Jacobs' famous story is a sophisticated tale in a lengthy tradition of wish fulfillment stories, such as genie-in-a-bottle fables, and other reality principle vs. We will open the casket only a crack, just now. Other attributes of humanity, some not so bouncy as that impulse of optimism, abide also in that ribbed chamber, Pandora's box. Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
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