Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) intends to collect on the "pound of flesh". Jessica informs them that she has heard her father speaking with his fellows, saying he "would rather have Antonio's flesh / Than twenty times the value of the sum / That he did owe him." Portia dispatches Bassanio to Venice to assist his friend, pausing only long enough for them to be married. Then announces that she and Nerissa, her maid, will stay in a nearby convent while their husbands are away. In her absence she asks Lorenzo and Jessica to manage her estate. In Act 3, Scene 5, Jessica and Gobbo
The Shakespeare Project involving the five guests from the Royal Shakespeare Company...a unique venture." Stasio added, "Everybody at the opening night party, including such members of the theatrical community as Milo O'Shea, Barnard Hughes and Gloria Foster, seemed to want to a regular event of the unprecedented project." In the evenings, the five actor also performed a "five-hander" version of Shakespeare "The Merchant of Venice", Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", and the New York premiere of D. H. Lawrence's "The Tarnished Phoenix". The week-long residency drew sell-out crowds at its two venues, the All Angels Episcopal Church at Lincoln Center, and The Shakespeare