 Studying the Merchant of Venice? Here's how you can analyse Act 2, Scene 7. The scene starts in Portia's house in Belmont, the Prince of Morocco wants to try his luck at marrying her and he uses language belonging to the semantic field of metal to show the different caskets he has to choose from. These declarative sentences show that each casket bears a really cryptic message. He first examines the lead casket and he uses this metaphor to say that Portia is too good to be associated with the lead. He then considers the message of the silver casket and he states that he definitely deserves Portia because he is of royal birth. He knows one of the caskets contains Portia's picture. However, he asks this rhetorical question to show that he's not going to go for silver because silver is not good enough for Portia. When he unlocks the golden casket, he is dismayed to find that he has chosen wrong. Shakespeare uses rhyme within the casket's message to teach the Prince that he should not make decisions based on the outward appearance of things. Portia is really pleased that he made the wrong decision.