Rebecca Bach stresses Antonio's conscious love for Bassanio as the central relationship in Antonio's life. I focus on the unconscious relationship between Antonio and Shylock. This immediately raises the question of whether psychoanalysis can be applied to literature and, more particularly, whether psychoanalysis can demonstrate such a thing as the unconscious motivation of a literary character, especially one created in a pre-Freudian era. I'll address the latter point at the end of my discussion.