dignity, and playfulness, which is found in Portia ; for the exquisite picture of friendship between Bassanio and Antonio; for the profusion of poetic beauties scattered over the play; and for the masterly delineation of that perfect type of Judaism in olden times, the character of Shylock himself. 66 In his treatment of the Jew, without doing such violence to the antipathies of his age as would have been fatal to the popularity of the play, Shakespeare has generously vindicated the claims of this despised race to the rights and privileges of the community in which they lived. If, in obedience to the story he followed, and to hereditary prejudice too deep-rooted and long cherished for his control, he has portrayed the Jew father as malignant and revengeful, he has represented the daughter as affectionate and loveable; and if the former is rendered an object of odium and contumely, the latter becomes the wife of a Venetian gentleman, and the companion of the nobles and merchant princes of the land. This was much. At the time when "The Merchant of Venice" was produced, as for ages before, the Jews were an abomination to the people. With the exception of such truly great men as Pope Gregory, Saint Bernard, Charlemagne, and a few others, no one had hardihood enough to venture a word in their defence. They were accounted Pariahs, born only to be reviled, and persecuted, and plundered. As a proof of the abhorrence with which they were regarded in Shakespeare's day, we need but refer to Marlowe's "Rich Jew of Malta." Shylock," says Charles Lamb, "in the midst of his savage purpose, is a man. His motives, feelings, resentments, have something human in them. If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' Barabas is a mere monster brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble. He kills in sport— poisons whole nunneries-invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as a century or two earlier might have been played before the Londoners, by the Royal Command, when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet." Few plays have been more successful on the stage than "The Merchant of Venice," few are better adapted for popular reading. Dramas of a loftier kind, moving deeper feeling and dealing with nobler passions, have proceeded from the same exhaustless source; but we question if any one more diversified and picturesque than this exists. It is full of incident, character, poetry, and humour. The friendship of Antonio and Bassanio, "strong even unto death ”. the love episode of Lorenzo and the fair Jewess-the quaint drolleries of Launcelot-the buoyant spirits and brusque wit of Gratiano-the beauty of the Casket scenes-the grandeur of the trial-and the tragic interest attached to the circumstances of the contract between the Merchant and his unrelenting creditor-combine to form a whole unapproached and unapproachable by any other dramatist. SCENE,-Partly at VENICE; and partly at BELMONT, the Seat of PORTIA, on the Continent. That I have much ado to know myself. SALAR. Your mind is tossing on the ocean; That curt'sy to them, do them reverence, The better part of my affections would b Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still SALAR. And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, But tell not me; I know, Antonio Is sad to think upon his merchandise. ANT. Believe me, no; I thank my fortune for it, My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, ANT. SALAR. Good morrow, my good lords. BASS. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when? You grow exceeding strange: must it be so? We two will leave you; but at dinner-time, GRA. You look not well, signior Antonio; ANT. I hold the world but as the world, A stage, where every man must play a part, GRA. Let me play the Fool: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; And let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,I love thee, and it is my love that speaks ;There are a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond; And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; the wind, is a very primitive kind of weather vane. Sailors, with whom grass is usually harder to come by than even to Venetians, adopt one equally simple and always at hand: they moisten a finger in the mouth, and holding it up, judge by a sensible coldness on one side the digit, whence the wind blows. e My wealthy Andrew-] This name for a ship, it is not unlikely, was derived from the famous naval hero, Andrew Doria. As who should say, I am sir Oracle,* If they should speak, would almost damn those ears Which, hearing them, would call their brothers, fools." I'll tell thee more of this another time: Come, good Lorenzo:-Fare ye well, a while; LOR. Well, we will leave you then till dinnertime: I must be one of these same dumb wise men, GRA. Well, keep me company but two years more, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. ANT. Farewell: I'll grow a talker for this gear. GRA. Thanks, i' faith; for silence is only commendable In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible. [Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO. ANT. Is that anything now? BASS. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice: his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them they are not worth the search. ANT. Well; tell me now, what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, That you to-day promis'd to tell me of? BASS. "Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate, (*) First folio, sir, an oracle. (1) First folio, far you well. (+) Old copies, when. If they should speak, would almost damn those ears The meaning seems to be: There are people whose reputation for As you yourself still do,-] That is, always, ever do. This signification of the word is frequent in Shakespeare, although no commentator that I remember has noticed it. "To find forth," says an accomplished critic on the language of Shakespeare, "may, I apprehend, be safely pronounced to be neither English nor sense." It may not be English of the present day, but it was thought good sense and good English in the time of our author. Forth here means out,-"To find the other out," and with this import the word is used in the following, and in a hundred other, instances. "Who, falling there to find his fellow forth." By something showing a more swelling port [it; BASS. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, d I shot his fellow of the self-same flight ANT. You know me well, and herein spend but time, To wind about my love with circumstance; "Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth." Circumstance, • To wind about my lore with circumstance;] for circumlocution, or " going about the bush," as the old lexicographers define it, though in common use formerly, has now become quite obsolete : "Therefore it must, with circumstance, be spoken-" f And I am prest unto it:] Prest, signifying ready, is, as Steevens remarks, of common occurrence in the old writers; but it may be doubted whether in this instance the word is not used in the current sense of bound or urged. POR. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great world. NER. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are; and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean* happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. POR. Good sentences, and well pronounced. NER. They would be better, if well followed. POR. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the (*) First folio, small. a Sometimes.] Sometimes here means, formerly, in other times. b He hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian:] This satirical allusion to our ignorance in "the tongues" has not yet lost all its point. meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband:-O me, the word choose! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father:-Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none? NER. Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their death have good inspirations; therefore, the lottery that he hath devised in these three chests, of gold, silver, and lead, (whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you,) will, no doubt, never be chosen by any rightly, but one who you shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come? POR. I pray thee, overname them; and as thou namest them I will describe them; and according to my description level at my affection. NER. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. POR. Ay, that's a colt, indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself: I am much afraid my lady his mother played false with a smith. NER. Then, is there the county Palatine.(2) POR. He doth nothing but frown; as who should say, An you will not have me, choose; he hears merry tales, and smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be § married to a death's head with a bone in his mouth, than to either of these. God defend me from these two! NER. How say you by the French lord, monsieur le Bon? POR. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker; but he why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's; a better bad habit of frowning than the count Palatine: he is every man in no man: if a throstle || sing he falls straight a capering; he will fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him I should marry twenty husbands if he would despise me I would forgive him; for if he love me to madness I shall never requite him. NER. What say you then to Fauconbridge, the young baron of England? POR. You know I say nothing to him; for he understands not me, nor I him he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will come into the court, and swear that I have a poor (*) First folio, reason. (1) First folio, it is. () Old copies, trassell. b (+) First folio omits, the. (§) First folio, to be. (T) First folio, should. |