Family and life experience

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Portia, an only child, has recently lost her wealthy father, a citizen of Belmont. He has doted on her and, unusually for the time, educated her to the point where she has become a legal scholar. She is also beautiful, and knowing that because of her beauty and because of her wealth, she will be pursued by the good and the bad, many of them fortune hunters, he devised a scheme to try and ensure that she would end up with a worthy husband. He has stipulated that wooers would have to choose one of three caskets –  gold, silver and lead. One of them would contain her portrait and the first to choose that would be a suitable husband.

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reference: https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/characters/portia-merchant-venice/