Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". An influential, powerful and wealthy nobleman of Venice, he is a middle-aged man and a merchant by trade who has his financial interests tied up in overseas shipments when the play begins. He is kind, generous, honest and confident, and is loved and revered by all the Christians who know him. His willingness to die for Bassanio is a manifestation of his character. Antonio manifests anti-semitism by cursing and spitting at Shylock (anti-semitism was common in Europe in Shakespeare's days). He is a structural
Lyman S. Ayres II (1913) Lyman II grew up in Indianapolis. At the age of twenty-one he replaced his middle name with the initial S. Lyman II graduated "cum laude" from Yale University. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific during World War II. Lyman's grandfather, Lyman S. Ayres, a dry goods merchant from Oswego, New York, founded the L. S. Ayres retail department store in Indianapolis in 1872. Lyman II's father, Fred, was president of the family's department store business from 1896 until 1940. On September 22, 1934, Ayres married Isabel Ferguson, the daughter of Eliza and