ANTONIO

the Venetian merchant of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Antonio, the hero of the play, is wealthy, charming, and surrounded by loving friends, and yet he is also inexplicably restless and worrisome. Not without blame in his own near-demise at the hands of Shylock, he serves as a foil to one of Shakespeare's best-known and most discussed characters. the usurping duke of Milan and Prospero's brother in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Antonio, who is proud of his lack of conscience, shows his nature in his contempt for those about him (For all the rest, / They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk); but he is no match for Prospero's magic.