In the opening scene of the play, Bassanio visits his close friend Antonio to petition him for money in order to finance his expensive journey to Belmont, where he hopes to win the heart of the wealthy heiress Portia and restore his finances. Before Bassanio asks Antonio for money, he briefly explains his recent financial troubles. Bassanio tells Antonio that he has squandered and spent all of his money by living well beyond his means.
As a young Venetian nobleman, Bassanio must live up to society's expectations by maintaining appearances and engaging in rather expensive social events. Unfortunately, Bassanio cannot afford to live such a lavish lifestyle and has acquired significant debt by doing so. Essentially, Bassanio became poor by living well beyond his means in order to impress his fellow noblemen and maintain society's superficial standards.
Bassanio is a young nobleman, who despite his aristocratic background is perennially short of money. Constantly in debt and desperately in need of cash to woo the high-born, super-rich Portia, he goes cap in hand once more to his good friend Antonio, looking for yet another hand-out.
Like a lot of young men of his class, Bassanio is hopeless with money. The problem is that he just doesn't respect it. As soon as he has any, it's gone, frittered away on maintaining a lavish lifestyle that's way beyond his means. To be fair to Bassanio, he's largely the victim of society's expectations. A young nobleman such as himself would've been expected to spend large sums of money on keeping up appearances, especially if they wanted to marry well. If an aristocrat couldn't be rich, he at least had to give the impression that he was, otherwise he would lose his place in society, which to someone like Bassanio would've been catastrophic. Hence Bassanio's need to borrow large sums of money from Antonio, and hence also his constant poverty.
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