ANTONIO
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

SALARINO
Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curtsy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.

SALANIO
Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;
And every object that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt
Would make me sad.

SALARINO
My wind cooling my broth
Would blow me to an ague, when I thought
What harm a wind too great at sea might do.
[…]
But tell not me; I know, Antonio
Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

ANTONIO
Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. (1.1.1-24; 39-45)

This passage opens Act 1. And we're already worried. Antonio's sad, and two of his buds are trying to help him out. Since Antonio's the merchant in The Merchant of Venice, it only makes sense that they assume he's concerned about his ships at sea.

The seas were pretty dangerous back then, Shmoopers—and it wasn't just the pirates you had to worry your pretty little heads about. You never knew what you'd find on that other side of that ocean, given that a lot of the world hadn't been mapped yet. Kind of crazy to think about, huh?

Antonio assures his crew that he's all set on the money front. But this passage still sets up some key concerns most people of the Renaissance had about wealth. Trust us, an opening like this would pique the interest of Shakespeare's audience immediately. Many of them were merchants or owed their livelihoods to merchants. So even if Antonio wasn't losing sleep over his ships, his audience members sure were.

This kind of opening is emblematic of the way Shakespeare does business. He's into

1. being contemporarily relevant—so there's that whole merchant class business, and

2. the old switcheroo—so while Antonio might not be sad about his ships now, Shakespeare's audience knows that Antonio probably will be before intermission.