'Sea-bank' occurs only in The Merchant of Venice and in Othello. On both occasions, it shows a strong context restriction to a woman's pursuit of the lover who has abandoned her. In Lorenzo's and Jessica's moonlight catalog of unhappy love Dido makes an appearance:
9 In such a night
10 Stood Dido with a willow in her
hand
11 Upon the wild sea-banks, and
waft her love
12 To come again to Carthage.
From that perspective, a mythological shadow falls on the unhappy Bianca, who plays Dido to the callow Cassio-Aeneas.
Cas.
132 She was here even now;. she haunts me in
133
every place. I was the other day talking on the sea-bank
134
with certain Venetians, and thither comes the
135
bauble, and [by this hand,] falls me thus about my
136
neck --
Oth.
137 Crying, "O dear Cassio!" as it
were; his
138
gesture imports it.
Cas.
139
So hangs, and lolls, and weeps upon me; so
140
[hales] and pulls me. Ha, ha, ha!