uti Begert areas tee cena eht) iis Perac inte abet ad ¥ : if THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ~** LIBRARY Q22.335 PSw IDO _ Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. | University of Illinois Library APR 31.195 te AAT => ‘@' at Wy 4 . 5 ~ 3 : fer es lV nn, f | re a) Ni-i A FG TG lor, 2 iVuFg MAR 13 Dbeatbh’s English Classics foe MERCHANT Ve eN TOE, EDITED BY H. L. WITHERS PRINCIPAL OF ISLEWORTH TRAINING COLLEGE ; SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, AND ASSISTANT MASTER AT CLIFTON COLLEGE THE LIBRARY OF THE MAY 9 o5 ce 1937 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS BOSTON, U.S.A. D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS IgIo THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE HAMLET. Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. MACBETH. Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. JULIUS CAESAR. Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M. A., Oxford. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Edited by H. L. Withers, B. A., Oxford. TWELFTH NIGHT. Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M. A., Oxford. AS YOU, LIKE: IT; Edited by J. C. Smith, M. A., Edinburgh. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. CYMBELINE. Edited by A. J. Wyatt, M. A., Cambridge. THE TEMPEST. Edited by F. S. Boas, M. A., Oxford. KING JOHN. Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M. A., Cambridge. RICHARD II. Edited by C. H. Herford, L. H. D., Cambridge. RICHARD III. Edited by George Macdonald, M. A., Oxford. HENRY IV— FIRST PART. Edited by F. W. Moorman, B. A., Yorkshire College. HENRY V. Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M. A., Cambridge. HENRY VII. Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M. A., Edinburgh. CORIOLANUS. Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B. A., Oxford. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Edited by J. C. Smith, M. A., Edinburgh. KING LEAR. Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M. A., Edinburgh, The remaining volumes will also be edited. Price, 25 cents per volume y I 4 4/23 /37,¢-Mrs.G. Hurt) GENERAL PREDACE. ra) 0 LPP J atte IN this edition of SHAKESPEARE an attempt is made to present the greater plays of the dramatist in their literary aspect, and not merely as material for the study of philology or grammar. Criticism purely verbal and textual has only - been included to such an extent as may serve to help the student in the appreciation of the essential poetry. Questions of date and literary history have been fully dealt with in the Introductions, but the larger space has been devoted to the interpretative rather than the matter-of-fact order of scholar- ship. Aesthetic judgments are never final, but the Editors have attempted to suggest points of view from which the analysis of dramatic motive and dramatic character may be profitably undertaken. In the Notes likewise, while it is hoped that all unfamiliar expressions and allusions have been adequately explained, yet it has been thought even more important to consider the dramatic value of each scene, and the part which it plays in relation to the whole. These general principles are common to the whole series ; in detail each Editor is alone responsible for the play or plays that have been intrusted to him. Every volume of the series has been provided with a Glossary, an Essay upon Metre, and an Index; and Appen- dices have been added upon points of special interest, which could not conveniently be treated in the Introduction or the Notes. The text is based by the several Editors on that of the Glove edition: the only omissions made are those that are unavoidable inan edition likely to be used by young students. By the systematic arrangement of the introductory matter, and by close attention to typographical details, every effort has been made to provide an edition that will prove con- venient in use. ee a i aoe : tS ih, “bare P sed, dee, fi wrSOon OU CONTENTS INTRODUCTION “ x . DRAMATIS PERSONA - 2 4 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE NOTES - . Mi e L . APPENDIX A—THE TEXT APPENDIX B— PROSODY - - APPENDIX C—THE ‘ MEANING’ OF GLOSSARY 2 . = : 4 INDEX OF WORDS - . ‘ z GENERAL INDEX - ; 2 : INTRODUCTION. He THE! PLOT. In the days when Venice was the busiest and wealthiest city in all Europe, there lived in it a rich merchant named Antonio, who by means of several great ships of his own traded eastward as far as India, and westward as far as Mexico. This Antonio, at a time when all his wealth was at sea, wishing to furnish his young kinsman and dearest friend, a soldier and scholar called Bassanio, with means to pay his court to Portia, a lady of Belmont in Italy, borrowed the sum of three thousand ducats, for three months, from an enemy of his own, one Shylock, a Jew, on agreement that, if he failed to repay the sum in time, he should suffer the loss of a pound of his own flesh. On the selfsame night in which Bassanio, thus equipped, set sail from Venice, an acquaint- ance of his, by name Lorenzo, fled to the mainland of Italy with Jessica, Shylock’s only child, carrying off also a quantity of his jewels and money. This loss so inflamed the Jew’s malice, that when Antonio’s ships failed to come home within the period of three months, Shylock flung him into prison and clamoured to the Duke for execution of the forfeit on his bond. Meantime Bassanio, by a right choice among three caskets respectively of gold, silver, and lead, having won Portia to wife, in the very hour of marriage heard of Antonio’s danger, and, provided by Portia with three times the sum needed, sped to Venice. His intervention failing, Antonio was saved in extremity by Portia herself, who, in the guise of a Doctor of Civil Law, followed her husband into the Duke’s Court of Justice. The trial over, they returned severally to vill THE, MERCHANT OF VENICE. Belmont, Bassanio taking Antonio with him; there Portia, by means of a ring which in her disguise she had got from Bassanio, made clear to him who it was that had delivered his friend from death. 2, SOURCES: OF | THE) RPEpT Note.—This section is only for pupils who can read, or get somebody to read to them, at least a few extracts either from the authorities given below or from the abridgment in Furness’ Variorum Edition, For others it will be unintelligible and useless. 1. Shakespeare did not as a rule invent the incidents which occur in his plays, but borrowed them, in outline at least, from Shakespeare’s Very various sources. Some of his plots are plots notoriginal. fonded on older plays, others on romances; several are taken from Sir Thomas North’s version of a French rendering of Plutarch’s Lives. Scholars have spent endless pains in tracking out the old plays and: stories on which Shakespeare drew for material; a number of them were collected and published in the year 1843 by John Payne Collier, under the title of Shakesfeare’s Library. 2. Inthe case of Zhe Merchant of Venice, the outline of the plot, as has been given above, was found by Capell as one of a collection of stories in an Italian book called Main outline of ; ; ‘ P Merchant of | 41 Pecorone, written by a certain Ser Giovanni pine derived | Fiorentino, and printed in 1378. A modern translation of it is given in the second volume of Collier’s Shakespeare's Library; but no translation of Shakespeare’s time has been discovered, and either such.a translation once existed and has since perished, or else Shake- speare read the story in the original Italian. [For another possible alternative, see § 4, below. ] The story in // Pecorone is, in main particulars, the same as that given above. We find in it a Venetian merchant fondly devoted to a young kinsman, and this kinsman in love with a fair and wise lady of Belmont, who is only to be won by the suitor who shall undergo successfully an extra- ordinary test; we have the same pledge with a Jew, made for the same purpose, followed by the lover’s success and the INTRODUCTION. ix merchant’s bankruptcy, and later on by a trial in which the merchant’s rescue is achieved, through just the same inter- pretation of the law, by the lady in the same disguise; and finally, on their return to Belmont it is by means of a ring, begged from her husband when in Venice, that she is able, after due banter and mystification, to prove her identity with the unknown lawyer. There are minor differences: for instance, in the Italian story none of the names of persons are the same as Shake- peare’s. The lover makes ¢hree voyages to Belmont; the sum borrowed is ¢ez thousand ducats; when the marriage takes place the young kinsman forgets the merchant, and is only accidentally reminded of him just as the time allowed by the bond is on the point of expiring; and so on. But, besides these slight variations, two important differ- ences in incident are made by Shakespeare. First, he changes the method by which the Lady of Belmont is to be won, from its unsuitable form in //7 Pecorone to that of the choice among three caskets; and secondly, he gives the Jew a daughter, whose elopement with a Christian forms an im- portant part of the play. 3. The sources of these two variations must be looked for elsewhere. (i) The story of a choice among three vessels, respectively of gold, silver, and lead, with in- ah scriptions somewhat similar to those in the play, main changes of and with a marriage depending on the right mde choice, occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of medizval tales, made in England probably about the thirteenth century. This collection was translated into Eng- lish, became extremely popular, and was frequently printed in Shakespeare’s time! (ii) A story resembling in some points that of Jessica has been found in the Tales of Mas- succio di Salerno, who flourished about 1470. 4. Scholars have proved that both the story of the Pound of Flesh, and the story of the Caskets, were widely popular, and that they occur in slightly different forms again and 1 Any good library will possess the reprint of this collection, published by the Early English Text Society. 3 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. again in European and in Oriental literature.1 But it is cer- : _ tain, from accumulation of coincidences, that ean pica it was upon /7 Pecorone and the Gesta Roman- Bay called 74¢ orum that Shakespeare drew for the plot of the Merchant of Venice. It has been conjectured, indeed, that Shakespeare did not use these sources at first hand, but that the two stories had already been combined to form a single play, and that it was this play that Shakespeare used as his material. This conjecture is founded on a refer- ence which has been discovered in a book called Zhe Schoole of Abuse, published in 1579, written by a certain Stephen Gosson, a student of Oxford. The book is an attack on the poets and playwrights of the time, and among the plays specially excepted from blame by the author is “ Zhe Jew... shown at the Bull... representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes of usurers”. ‘This description is exceedingly short, but it is certainly apt enough if it refers to the combined tales of the Bond and the Caskets. Two other possible references to this play of The Jew have been discovered : one in a letter of Edmund Spenser’s, writ- ten about 1579, and another in a play called 7he Three Ladies of London, printed in 1584. These two references are, how- ever, both slight and doubtful, and since not a line of the play itself survives, the conjecture that Shakespeare founded The Merchant of Venice upon it must remain conjecture only, though an extremely probable one. Even granting its truth, we only set /7 Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum one step further back in the pedigree of the plot, for that they are in the direct line of its ancestry cannot be doubted. 5. So far we have been dealing with the sources of the incidents only. Shakespeare owes nothing of his character- Possible proto. Grawing to J/ Pecorone or the Gesta. These types of Shylock. old tales are tales of incident almost entirely, and the persons who take part in them are but slightly out- lined, as slightly indeed as we find the characters in the Arabian Nights, the most famous of all collections of the kind. 1 For details, refer to F. S. Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors (Murray, London, 1896), page 215, note. INTRODUCTION. xi (a) As to the character of Shylock, it has been supposed that its germ is to be found in Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta, which was written about yyartowe's 1589 or 1590. It is agreed that Shakespeare araéas. owed much in a general way to Marlowe, and particularly in versification. It is quite certain that Shakespeare knew his Jew of Malta, an exceedingly popular play, repeatedly acted about the time when 7%e Merchant of Venice was produced. Principal Ward, in his H/story of English Dramatic Litera- ture, has collected a number of parallels between the two plays, to which may be added one that he does not notice. [See note on iii. 2. 239.] But all the resemblances added together do not make the debt of Shakespeare in this case more than a very slight one. The stories of the two plays are completely different; and between the characters of Barabas of Malta and Shylock of Venice,—once granted that each is a Jew and a usurer, that each lives by the shore of the Mediterranean, and that each has an only daughter who is converted to Christianity,— there is only so far a parallel that they may be said never to meet. Charles Lamb has put the difference between them thus: “Shylock, 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 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 resolved on by the Cabinet.” (4) One other source of possible suggestion to Shakespeare must be mentioned. It had long been supposed that, ex- cept by travelling, Shakespeare could not have had any personal knowledge of Jews, since they had been banished from England in 1290, and did not receive formal permission to return until the time of Dr. Roderigo Lopez. xii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. the Commonwealth. It has been proved, however, by Mr. S. L. Lee,! that Jews did find their way into England in Tudor times, and that in particular one named Lopez was for some twenty years, towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, a prominent figure in London and at Court. He was one of the first physicians of his day, and had the Earl of Leicester and, later, the Queen among his patients. In 1594 he was hanged at Tyburn on the charge of conspiring with the King of Spain to poison, first, a Portuguese pretender named Axtonio,and secondly—as was alleged—Queen Eliza- beth herself. The history of Dr. Lopez must have been well known to Shakespeare, and may possibly have suggested other points besides the name of his enemy, Antonio. 6. To recapitulate: the main outline of the incidents of the play is taken from one of Ser Giovanni’s tales in // Pecorone, with two main changes, a substitution and an addition. The substitution occurs in the nature of the test by which the Lady of Belmont was to be won: this, namely the choice among three caskets, Shake- speare took from the Gesta Romanorum. ‘The addition, the story of the Jew’s daughter and her elopement, may be paralleled in a few points from a story of Massuccio di Salerno. Lastly, while it is certain that in drawing the figure of Shylock, Shakespeare had in his mind—if only by way of contrast—Marlowe’s Baradas, it is also established that he may very well have had personal, first-hand acquaintance with Jews in his own country. Recapitulation. 3. CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLOT. Content as Shakespeare was to take the main outline of his story from romances already existing, he was careful so to shape it in detail that it should work in with the temper and the motives of living men and women. With him, a story was “‘just a stuff To try the soul's strength on, educe the man”. 1In The Gentleman's Magazine, Feb., 1880. INTRODUCTION. xiii But in pitting his heroes and heroines against circumstance, he brought circumstance into relation with them and their surroundings. Improbable, for example, as a string of bare incidents, the story of the Pound of Flesh becomes manifestly true in relation to Shylock and Antonio. In Mogens ’ odifications of the play, the bond appears no longer as a chance the stories of the contract between strangers, but as a plan for 8 revenge imposed by one bitter enemy on another in the guise of a ‘merry sport’, which, in the nature of the case, will never come to serious execution. The Christian merchant, fresh from denouncing interest, cannot draw back from a bond in which—to please him—no mention of interest is made. Moreover, he had only just pledged ‘his purse, his person, his extremest means’ to his dearest friend to help him to win the heroine of the caskets; generosity, therefore, will not allow him to hesitate. Finally, the Jew’s ferocity in after- wards exacting forfeit is made comprehensible by the loss of his daughter and his ducats. With such wonderful skill has this part of the story been handled, that readers are finally almost divided in sympathy between Antonio and his would- be murderer. The riddle of the caskets is similarly humanized. It be- comes part of a scheme designed by a dying father for the protection of an only child, a girl of incompar- ang of the Cas- able beauty, heiress to great riches. So for- kets. midable, therefore, are the conditions imposed, that all but the most earnest suitors are repelled from even an attempt at the enterprise (i. 2. 107), and, over and above the father’s inspired assurance (i. 2. 26) that it would never be solved by anyone who did not ‘rightly love’, the lottery constitutes a real test of insight and devotion. The stories of the Bond and the Caskets, thus transformed, are most artfully interwoven throughout (compare 1. 2. 100; 11. 8. 39; 11. 9. 100), and at one point with notable pending of these skill. In 7 Pecorone, as mentioned above, ‘we stories. the successful suitor forgets his merchant friend for some time after marriage; but Shakespeare makes the bad news from Venice arrive before the wedding, so that the Trial of xiv THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. the Caskets is, as it were, carried on into the Trial of the Bond, and Bassanio and Portia are not fully man and wife until after they have rescued the friend whose devotion had made their union possible. Shakespeare’s introduction into the play of yet a third story,—the Elopement of the Miser’s Daughter,—far from The Third Tale. unduly complicating the plot, seryes to knit that of the Miser’s together more closely its different events and Danaete characters. Shylock is thereby brought into fresh relations with Antonio and his friends. Even Launcelot the clown is no unimportant link ‘in the action. As servant first to the Jew and then to Bassanio, as go-between for Lorenzo and Jessica, and finally by his appearance at Bel- mont, he passes from one group to another, and makes a fantastic cross-thread in the embroidery of the plot.. So dependent are the three stories upon one another—from the first scene, in which they are all set going, to the last, in which they are all combined and concluded—that if Antonio had not signed the bond, Bassanio could not have gone a-wooing; if Bassanio had not won Portia, there would have been no one to save Antonio; if Lorenzo and Jessica had not wandered to Belmont, Portia could not so readily have quitted Belmont for Venice. It is by this vital interdependence of feelings and fortunes among the persons of the Drama, not by any abstract idea mad: ds or moral common to all the parts, that ‘unity e ‘unity of : ; action’inthe Of action’ is secured by Shakespeare. A useful aN mechanical help to a study of the method by which Shakespeare interlaces the various threads of interest in the play, is to make a list of the scenes, entering opposite each the place where it is laid, and the persons who take part in it. Inspection of such a list will show that the action passes constantly from Belmont to Venice and back again. By these transitions the different ‘intrigues’ of the plot are kept moving, and, further, the effect of lapse of time is pro- Management of Guced. It is one of the cleverest points in the time and place. stage-craft of the play, that the formidable period of three months is made to pass, and is felt to be passing, INTRODUCTION. XV and yet we are nowhere conscious of a gap in the action.! This result is produced, as was pointed out by Professor Wilson in reference to Othello, by the use of ‘double time’. That is to say, phrases implying short spaces of time in the future, are combined with others implying long spaces of time in the past, in such a way that both the continuity and the lapse of time are kept before our minds. Thus from i. 1. 70 and i. 3. 166 we should gather that Bassanio is to meet Lorenzo and Shylock again the same day; but from Jessica’s words in lil. 2. 281 ff., and indeed from the very circumstances of the case, it is clear that a long interval must have elapsed between Acts i. and ii. So, again, from the last few lines of ii. 2. one would suppose that the farewell feast before Bassanio’s departure is referred to, and that he starts that night; yet, a little while before (line 104), he had said “ put these liveries to making”, a matter requiring some time. No sooner has Bassanio started than the indications of the lapse of time become more frequent (“ Let good Antonio look he keep his day”, ii. 8. 25) (“Yet it lives there unchecked that”, &c., ili. I. 2), and from line 83 in the last-mentioned scene we learn that Tubal has been from Venice to Genoa and back since Jessica’s flight; so that we are quite prepared to find that on the day of Bassanio’s choice among the caskets he receives news that the bond is already forfeit. Yet, when we come to inquire minutely how and where Bassanio had spent the three months, we find—as we deserve—that the inquiry is futile. It is important, at the outset, to recognize that some lines of Shakespeare study lead to nothing; and to grasp the reason of their failure. They assume that the poet worked in a spirit which was, as a matter of fact, foreign to him. For the purposes of a play, matters of time and place are stage-properties of the same kind as paste-board crowns and paper trees. To make them ‘real’ in minute detail is to make everything round them false, just as to put a ‘real’ ring on the finger of a painted portrait destroys the truth of the picture. 1 Vide Furness’ brilliant note on ‘Double Time’, as used in this play and in the ‘Agamemnon’ of AXschylus. Variorum Ed., 1892, pages 338 to 345. Xvi | THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Thus, to ask where Belmont precisely was, is to put a question which has no answer. Shakespeare has no further localized Belmont than to put it on the mainland of Italy, apparently on the sea-coast, at no great distance from Venice on one side and Padua on the other. It is enough for a play that its indications of time and place should ‘semblably cohere’. Zhe Merchant of Venice will repay endless study as a piece of dramatic construction, not from any attempt which it contains at historical or geo- graphical ‘realism’, nor from any symmetrical formula con- necting its several parts, but from the perfect lucidity with which it sets forth how, at a crisis of their fate, a number of people became involved with one another, how they severally bore themselves, and how by the action of each the fortune of all was determined. ; 4.'THE PERSONS OF ‘THE PLAY, Thoroughly to enjoy Shakespeare, it is necessary to be- come intimate with the people of his plays. Intimacy is impossible at second-hand; it must be gained for one’s self and gradually, with Shakespeare’s people as with others, by seeing what they do, by hearing them talk, and by noting what their neighbours feel and say about them; in a word, by living with them for a while. After the first reading of a play has given an understanding of its main outlines, it is well to take the chief persons separately, and to observe— (i) The precise share which so and so has in the action. _ (ii) Sayings of his which seem to tell most about him. (iii) Any noticeable opinions of him expressed by enemy or friend. After bringing, in this fashion, our own notions to a point, we can enjoy the views of critics and commentators. A great delight waiting to reward anyone who will in this way make a careful analysis of Zhe Merchant of Venice, is the reading of Mrs. Jameson’s study of ‘ Portia’ in her Characteristics of Women, and of Hazlitt’s view of ‘Shylock’ in his Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. (M330) INTRODUCTION, XVil The following notes on the various characters of the play are not intended to supersede the student’s own analysis, but to be read after such an analysis has been made, for the pur- pose of comparison. Where a blank has been left between brackets, the student is meant to fill-in the reference to act, scene, and line, for himself. 1. (2) SHYLOCK was ‘old’ (iv. 1. 168) at the time of the events which made him famous. We know a good deal of his history. He had wandered, in the way of his q3. nistory and trade, as far north as Frankfort [ ], Position in Venice. but settled at Venice, whose laws, liberal as times went towards aliens, enabled him to follow his business securely. He had only one child, a daughter, called Jessica; his wife, ‘Leah, must have died soon after the child’s birth, for, while Shylock remembered her fondly, and treasured a ring she had given him when he was a bachelor [ ], Jessica never speaks in a way that suggests she had known her mother. Jessica kept house for her father with the help of a single servant, in a style—forced on her by Shylock—of the severest simplicity. By trade he was a ‘usurer’, that is, he lent money out at interest. He had acquired great wealth, partly by knowledge of his business and of the commercial position of those with whom he dealt (i. 3), partly—as his enemies asserted—by taking advantage of his clients’ weaknesses and mercilessly ‘selling them up’ if they were unpunctual in payment (iii. 3. 22). Devoted as he was to money-making, his race and his religion occupied quite as much of his thoughts. The Jews in Shakespeare’s Venice were allowed a synagogue to worship in [ ]; they were obliged to wear a distinctive dress, and, no doubt, lived (both by their own choice and by compulsion) in a quarter of their own. They were granted unusual privileges before the law: the Duke himself went in pursuit of Lorenzo and Jessica at Shylock’s bidding [ ], and it was again the Duke in full court who would not wrest the law against the foreigner. But in matters of ordinary intercourse they had to endure, even at the hands of the noblest among the Christians, the bitterest ( M 330) B XVili THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. contempt and most intolerable personal insult [ ]. To this Shylock! replied with a hatred all the fiercer for being concealed, and with an exclusiveness all the haughtier that he found himself despised by men whom he regarded as his inferiors in religion and in race. Shylock regarded his nation as ‘sacred’ [ ], and greatly esteemed his tribe; in imagination he was constantly back in Palestine, with the folk of his sacred Scriptures. He quotes Jacob, whose ‘wise mother’ [ ] gave him his position among the patriarchs, as an example of heaven-prospered trading ; his servant he thinks of as the offspring of Hagar; pork reminds him of the conjuring of the prophet of Nazareth; in his enemy he sees a resemblance to the ‘ publicans’ who had vexed the souls of his countrymen sixteen centuries before; his very oaths (“by Jacob’s staff”, “by our holy Sab- bath”, “cursed be my tribe”) speak of his people and’his faith. (6) How ought we to feel towards Shylock? The vast difference of opinion on the point is reflected in the diverse interpretations of the character which have held eating ease the stage. In the last century Macklin laid character by ac- stress upon his ‘snarling malignity’, and pre- tors and critics. sented a frightful figure of devilish cunning and hatred—a combination of mere miser and murderer—which is described as follows by a spectator. “The first words which he utters are spoken slowly and deliberately: ‘Three thousand ducats’. The ¢k and s twice occurring, and the last s after the ¢ have a lickerish sound from Macklin’s lips, as if he were tasting the ducats and all that they can buy; this speech creates for the man, upon his first appearance, a prepossession which is sustained throughout. Three such words, thus spoken, and at the very first, reveal a whole char- acter. In the scene in which he first misses his daughter he appears hatless, with hair all flying, some of it standing up straight, a hand’s-breadth high, just as if it had been lifted 1 A poem of Browning’s is often a most helpful commentary to a play of Shake- speare’s. To understand Shylock better, read Browning’s Holy Cross Day, and Lilippo Baldinucct. INTRODUCTION. xix up by a breeze from the gallows. Both hands are doubled — up, and his gestures are quick and convulsive. To see a man thus moved, who had been hitherto a calm determined villain, is fearful.” } | On the other hand, in this century, Kean and Irving have followed out that view of his character which is summed up in Hazlitt’s fine phrase: “He seems the depositary of the vengeance of his race”. This view, extended so far as to make Shylock a martyr, has been wonderfully expressed by Heine (a Jew himself) in a superb criticism of the play, trans- lated on pages 449-452 of Furness’ Variorum Edition. A few sentences from it are given here. (Heine is visiting Venice.) “I looked round everywhere on the Rialto to see if I could find Shylock. I found him nowhere on the Rialto, and I determined to seek my old acquaintance in the syna- gogue. The Jews were just then celebrating their Day of Atonement, and they stood enveloped in their white talars, with uncanny motions of the head, looking almost like an assemblage of ghosts. There the poor Jews had stood, fast- ing and praying from earliest morning; since the evening before, they had taken neither food nor drink. Although I looked all round the synagogue, I nowhere discovered the face of Shylock. But towards evening, when, according to the Jewish faith, the gates of heaven are shut, and no prayer can then obtain admittance, I heard a voice, with a ripple of tears that were never wept by eyes. It was a sob that could come only from a breast that held in it all the martyrdom which, for eighteen centuries, had been borne by a whole tortured people. It was the death-rattle of a soul sinking down dead-tired at heaven’s gates. And I seemec to know the voice, and I felt that I had heard it long ago, when in utter despair it moaned out, then as now, ‘Jessica, my girl!’” (c) Thus actors and critics differ as to the proportion in which hatred and pity and fear should be blended in our feel- ings towards Shylock. One error we must guard against from the first, that, namely, of supposing that Shakespeare meant 1 Quoted, p. 374 of Furness’ Variorum Edition, from a letter written in 1775 by Lichtenberg, a German visitor to England. xX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. either to attack or to defend the Jews as a nation in the The point of Person of Shylock. Writing { with a purpose?’, view for sound in this narrow sense, is not in his spirit. A picententts Jew came into the story, and Shakespeare has taken care that we should understand both him and those with whom he dealt. With modern Englishmen, among whom Jews take a foremost place for public spirit and gener- osity, the difficulty is not so much to be fair to Shylock as to conceive the feelings with which Antonio regarded him. (2) Todo so we must follow carefully the indications which C Shakespeare gives us. Shylock was hated for auses of i i i je i gos hatred towards four mainreasons—his prideof race, his religious Jews. opinions, his mean and shabby habit of life, and his way of doing business. 1. As regards the first point, it is clear that the refusal of Jews in the middle ages to eat and drink with Christians, and Their racial their abhorrence of intermarriage with them, exclusiveness. were not only bitterly resented, but further laid Jews open to horrible suspicions. The penalty for seclusion of life is unrefuted calumny.2 The ghastly legend of St. Hugh of Lincoln was spread in various forms all over Europe, and in some parts is still believed. And even where the hatred for a people who kept so strictly apart did not take so hideous a shape, it appears in the not unnatural belief that Jews were an unkind? and uncharitable race, who did not consider themselves bound by the same obligations of honour and good feeling towards Gentiles as towards one another. . (Compare what Launce says in Zwo Gentlemen of Verona: ' “Go with me to the alehouse, if not thou art an Hebrew, a Jew .... because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a Christian” —with 7he Merchant of Venice, i. 3. 32, and ii. 5. 14.) | 2. A very similar opinion arose in matters of religion. 1Mr. F. S. Boas’ Shakespeare and his Predecessors, p. 226, in a most interest- ing study of Shylock, speaks of the speech in iii. 1. 44 as a ‘majestic vindication of Judaism’. Should not this be ‘of human nature’? 2 Compare the stories told of the retirement of Tiberius, Frederick the Great, and our own William ITI. 3 This belief appears as early as Juvenal, cf. Saz. xiv. 103, 104. INTRODUCTION. xxi In days when the story of the New Testament was chiefly known to people through miracle plays, the fact Religious that St. Paul and St. John, and the founder of Feeling. Christianity himself, had been Jews, became forgotten or overlooked. Even to those who could and did read their Bibles, the language of the Fourth Gospel, in which ‘the Jews’ are constantly mentioned in opposition to Christ (see St. John v. 15; vi. 41, etc.) might easily be misunderstood. Continual dwelling on the story of the crucifixion, without reference to the rest of Jewish history, led to a belief that the Jews were an exceptionally unfeeling and cruel race, and their supposed hardness of heart passed into a proverb. (Compare Launce again in 7wo Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 3, l. 12: “A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting”; and Richard I/,, act ii. 1. 55, “ Stubborn Jewry ”.) So that Antonio looks upon a piece of seeming kindness on Shylock’s part as a sign that he may yet ‘turn Christian’ [ ]. Conversely, the Jewish refusal of Christianity was regarded not as intellectual negation, but as a piece of the stiff-necked perversity with which their own prophets had charged them. It must also be remembered that religious intolerance was, in “the ages of conflict”, almost universal, and was displayed by the Jews themselves on a great scale during that short period of their history when they had the power of the sword over aliens in race and religion.2, Some of the beliefs and rites of medizeval Christianity appeared to Jews to be idolatrous and blasphemous, and towards them it was lawful and right in their eyes to feel a ‘lodged hate’ and ‘a loathing’. (See page 411 of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, by I. Abrahams; Macmillan, 1896.) 3. The widespread belief that Jews were miserly and squalid 11s it not possible to see traces of this in the description of Shylock’s conduct at the trial? Compare ‘‘I stand here for law” with ‘‘The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die” (St. John xix. 7); and again, **My deeds upon my head” with ‘‘ His blood be on us and on our children” (St. Matthew xxvii. 25); and again, ‘“‘ Would any of the stock of Barvadas had been her husband, rather than a Christian !” 2In this respect Shylock’s spirit is far more truly representative than the ‘undenominationalism’ of Lessing’s Mathan the Wise. xxii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. in their mode of life arose, no doubt, mainly from the fact Alleged miserli- that for many centuries it was as much as ness of Jews. their lives were worth to give signs of super- fluous wealth. But this unlovely hardness of life was only assumed by compulsion. In reality, Jews have always been fond of a rich and even luxurious style of living. (See Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, chapters viii. and xvi.) 4. We cannot understand this ground of hatred against Shylock without remembering that both Jews and Christians Odium againss Were forbidden by their ecclesiastical law to take usurers. interest on money from those of their own faith. But Jews might take it from ‘the stranger’ (Deut. xxiii. 20), and so it came about that when commerce increased and loans began to be an essential part of its machinery, Jews naturally assumed the position of money-lenders. This conse- quence was hastened by the very persecutions to which they were subject. The cruel laws which in many places forbade their plying any trade or profession recognized among Chris- tians (see chaps. xi. and xii. of Abrahams’ Jewish Life in the Middle Ages) drove them to usury. The necessity for having their property in such a shape that it could be easily ‘lifted’ in case of expulsion or attack, forced them to accumulate wealth in the form of gold and precious stones. Practice quickly made them experts at the financier’s trade, and from their very position as aliens they were able to make that dis- tinction between monetary and amicable relations without which extended commerce, as we know it now, is impossible. But the necessity for the trade did not make it popular, and the laws against usurers, by increasing the lender’s risk, kept up the rate of interest, and aggravated the evil. Shylock was thus one of a body who in religion and in society kept themselves aloof in repulsive isolation, who not only declined but abhorred the religious beliefs of their neighbours, and who, while taught by persecution not to show signs of wealth, were at the same time accumulating precious metals, and obtaining a great hold over individual Christians by their system of loans. INTRODUCTION. xxiii (e) In all this we see abundant explanation of such a feeling as is expressed in its most extravagant form in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. ‘The humanity with which |... f umanity of Shakespeare draws the portraiture of Shylock Shakespeare’s is therefore all the more striking. The Jews P°™* hatred for Antonio is not represented as mere ‘motiveless malignity’, but as the result of injured patriotism, of com- mercial jealousy [ ], and of resentment aroused by repeated personal insults. He speaks with tenderness of a relic of his dead wife. It is not hinted that he used any further unkindness towards his daughter and his servant than to make their life extremely bleak and dull; to Jessica his tone is not harsh, and he trusts her—though with some misgivings—with all his keys. His fury over her robbery and desertion of him for the sake of a Christian lover is very comprehensible, and the frightful savagery with which it is expressed cannot fairly be taken ‘literally, any more than Bassanio’s willingness to offer Portia in sacrifice to save Antonio. Shylock’s last reference to Jessica shows fatherly feeling [ ], and in Launcelot he recognizes kindness with appreciation [ ]. His great appeal to human nature [ ] is irresistible, though he fails to see its application to his own religious and racial exclusiveness. (/) In summary, Shylock is a miser, but a miser possess- ing great strength of resolution and high powers of intellect. His main fault is not a want of feeling, but @ summary of misapplication of it. So far is he from being of his character. an insensible, flinty character, that he rather appears exces- sively passionate and irritable. His cruelty is not that of a cold heart, but the more terrible cruelty of perverted and outraged sensitiveness. It comes nearer the rage of Othello than the malice of Iago. And even at his worst, when every other feeling has been absorbed in the one longing to feel his knife in his enemy’s heart, even then the concentration of his purpose, the clear force of his understanding, make him a figure terrible indeed, but not despicable. There wanted but another stroke to raise him to the dignity of possessing xxiv THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. ‘The unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome”’. (g) But his spirit bends at last, and the tale ends without atragedy. To think of his fate as hopelessly miserable is to force modern notions into our reading. We must remember that to Shakespeare’s audiences, conversion, even though compulsory, would mean the possi- bility of salvation for Shylock. Since adherence to Judaism was thought to rest not on spiritual conviction but on obstinate temper, Shylock’s becoming a Christian would be regarded as a recovery from sullenness. The remission of half his goods would appear generous. The absorption of so formid- able an alien into the body of the community, the marriage of his daughter to a Venetian, and the ultimate diffusion of his wealth among those willing to make a cheerful use of it, would—in those days—seem the happiest solution possible of the difficulties and dangers raised by his existence. After a study of Shylock and Jessica, it is interesting to go back to Jvanhoe, and to renew one’s recollections of Isaac of York and Rebecca. In what points is the novelist’s portraiture weaker than the poet’s? His fate. 2. PORTIA, at the opening of the story, appears without father or mother, or indeed any relative nearer than her cousin [ ], the famous jurisconsult of Padua, Doc- tor Bellario. Of her mother! we hear not a word; it seems she must have died in Portia’s infancy. Her father, a wealthy The childhood Italian noble, Lord of Belmont, had educated of Portia. his only child with the utmost care, to speak Latin and French as well as Italian [ ], to under- stand law, and to manage the affairs of a great property. He lived long enough (i. 2. 97) to see her of a marriageable age, and to notice the passionate admiration roused in men of every kind by her high spirit, brilliant wit, and ‘ beauty 1 Many of Shakespeare’s heroines are motherless:—Isabella, Beatrice, Rosa- lind, Imogen, Miranda, Cordelia, Viola, Helena, Ophelia. He was interested, perhaps, rather in the relation of mother to soz, and of father to daughter. Or he felt that—had their mothers been there—his maidens could never have fallen into so many perils and troubles. INTRODUCTION. xXV like the sun’, placed as these qualities were, in circumstances hardly less romantic and splendid than those of a princess of fairyland. But, before a marriage could be arranged, he was seized with mortal sickness. On his deathbed [ ] he willed that his daughter’s hand should—under restriction severe enough to keep away mere adventurers—be won by a ‘lottery’. This ‘lottery’, in so far as it was matter of chance, would be—so it was thought in those days—under the ruling of Providence, and so far as it was matter of choice, would be such as to test the insight and sincerity of her lovers. Thus was Portia, hardly yet out of her girlhood, left heiress of Belmont. The fame of her person and character, her wealth, and the hazard by which she was to be won, drew suitors from many lands. She watched them come with amusement, and with keenest penetration, for per loyalty to she knew the points of a man. But she was her father’s will. loyal to her father’s will, and to the oath (iii. 2. 11) which she had taken to fulfil it. Her loyalty was proof even against her own feeling that she had already seen (i. 2. Ioo), in a young Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, of gentle blood but no estate, the man to whom she could give the whole of herself. This decisive sense of honour was blended in Portia with a trained intelligence and a sense of humour. It is this union of qualities which marks her action ; . . €arness in throughout. It enables ber to see quite straight thought and in at moments of crisis, as when Antonio’s letter *““°™ comes on the eve of her marriage. By virtue of it she discerns in an instant a cu/-de-sac from a path, and loses no time by trying impracticable ways. Her wit is equal to a thousand shifts, but her practised reason and her sound feeling show her the only right one. The end once in view, she adjusts the means to it, and sets all in motion with a quickness and a swing and a lightness of touch that stamp her an artist in action. Her alacrity is beforehand with danger, and she beats difficulty by power of combination. To her husband she gives herself with a generous complete- ness which, in one so clear-sighted, makes her words after Bassanio’s choice the most moving thing of the kind in Xxvi THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. literature. Her solution of the problem of the bond, by a bold reduction to the absurd, is of a piece with that perfect clearness of character which appears in Portia sometimes as wit and grace, sometimes as courage, sometimes as penetra- ting insight. This extreme directness in thought and action gives to Portia an almost formidable air, not diminished by the trained Portia is for. Skill with which she approaches the discussion midable; of an abstract principle. In these respects she is unlike many others of Shakespeare’s women. It needs all her wisdom to keep her wit within bounds, and she is some- times too unmerciful to affectation (whether in a Prince of Arragon or in one of her own pages) to be perfectly courteous. But the warmth and openness of her heart, and an extreme generosity of feeling, kindle her amazing cleverness into tact, and make her great gifts available for the ordinary offices of + ._,. life. Again and again she relieves embarrass- ut her friendli- é . ness savesher ment and meets a difficult moment with a grace from pedantry. 54 perfect as to show, besides dexterity, true goodness of nature (¢.g. in her words to the Prince of Morocco when he makes apology for his complexion; or to Bassanio when, by a stinging pun, she draws attention from her own generosity in despatching him at once to the help of Antonio). Thus, although she could preach eloquently (iv. 1. 178, ff.), and argue most forcibly, she knows that sermons and argu- ments are comparatively futile (i. 2.14). Though from many indications we see she was sincerely religious, she would not be content with o#/y praying when she could work as well (compare v. I. 3I, with iii. 4. 30 to the end of the scene), And her delightful sense of humour saves her from any touch of self-conceit. Her spirit of comradeship and friendliness keeps her always human and kindly. No analysis can explain the charm and power of a char- acter like Portia’s. Wecan perhaps best realize pestove rg our feeling about her by the assurance we high and noble have that she would do nobly always, but that spirit. iy the full greatness of her qualities could only be shown in some crisis needing prompt and courageous INTRODUCTION. XXVii action. She had, indeed, along with all womanly virtues, a larger share than most women have of some qualities com- monly considered masculine, which ought perhaps to be regarded as the common property of women and men :—the power to see all round a point of abstract theory, and the will to take and keep a direct line in practice. We feel certain that were Bassanio called away to the wars, and Belmont besieged by his enemy, Portia could with undismayed cheer- fulness hold his house for him, command his men, keep them in heart with jests more humorous than Launcelot’s, see that her children were jn due order and attentive to their studies, and yet, all the while, have time to discomfit her domestic chaplain in quiet hours of chess and theology. 3. BASSANIO.—Bassanio’s character is to be judged less from what he himself says or does than from the reflected picture which we get of him in the words and actions of other people. The two main points we know about him are that he is Antonio’s chosen friend and Portia’s chosen lover. Antonio—who knew all Venice—only loves the world for Bassanio’s sake (ii. 8. 50), and for him Portia, courted by all nations and languages, would be trebled twenty times her- self (iii. 2. 154). Nerissa lets us know that he is a scholar and a soldier, and that “he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady”. Gratiano ‘must’ travel with him, even at the cost of a more subdued behaviour. And Launcelot Gobbo, who was too lively a lad not to be an excellent judge of a man when he saw one, thinks his fortune is made when he gets into his service, poor though Bassanio was. When he appears in company, other folks pay him a kind of deference which is all the more striking that it seems unconscious, and has no possible motive but to express natural feel- His force of ing. Thus even by his familiar friends he is character. addressed as ‘My Lord Bassanio’, ‘Signior Bassanio’. He becomes, without effort, the centre of any group in which he finds himself. The secret of his power is also the explan- ation of the comparatively small show which his actual words XXVill THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. and deeds make in a representation of the play—for of all qualities his are the least imitable by an actor. These qualities are simplicity, directness, and courage, combined with a perfect ease and kindliness of bearing and manner. Heavily in debt, he takes neither of the two easy alterna- tives for the poor man,—an impracticable stiffness, or a conscious humility, but borrows from his rich friend and wooes his wealthy mistress with such a natural and manly frankness as endears him further to them both. The enigma of the three caskets he solves because he ‘rightly loves’, and will hazard all to win. He has the gift, by nature and breed- ing, of doing and saying the right thing at the right time, the tact that is founded upon good sense and a kind heart. There is a fund of quiet masterfulness in his manner of giving orders: “ You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five ‘of the clock. See these letters delivered; put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging” (ii. 2. 104). With what fine discretion he guides his words in checking the excitable Gratiano! How plainly his firmer will and clearer sense come out in contrast with that volatile but otherwise delightful character! The effect of the splendid simplicity of his qualities is heightened by the external mag- nificence of the rivals to whom he is preferred. Some have ! questioned Portia’s insight, and maintained that reanbabe ny ge she ‘threw herself away’ on Bassanio. But eee indeed she, like the rest of the world, might have said to him much what Kent said to Lear, “You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master”. “ What’s that?” “Authority.” It is just this ‘authority’, or unconscious control, which, in a man, is the supreme quality. Oliver Wendell Holmes says, in speaking of a similar choice: “It takes a very ¢rvwe man to be a fitting companion for a woman of genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities (which are always ideas Masterfulness. INTRODUCTION. Xxix: behind shows of form or language), nothing is so contemp- tible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now, portia’s choice it is not easy to find a perfectly true woman, and_ °f Bassanio. it is very hard to find a perfectly true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than in her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of art” (from chapter xii. of Zhe Professor at the Breakfast- table). 4. ANTONIO was one of the chief men of that great Mediterranean city, ‘whose merchants were princes, whose traffickers were the honourable of the earth’. he spirit of Now and again in the course of the play, an Antonio’strading. odd term or phrase brings back the very look and colour of that old Venetian trading: ‘argosies’ that ‘richly come to harbour suddenly’, ‘pirates’ and ‘land-thieves’, ‘many a purchased slave’, ‘silks’ and ‘spices’, a ‘turquoise’ and a ‘diamond’ that ‘cost two thousand ducats’, ‘a beauteous scarf veiling an Indian beauty’, ‘ parrots’ of ‘ commendable discourse’, and ‘a wilderness of monkeys’. This last has a touch as of Sinbad himself in it, and, throughout, the com- merce is not confined or sedentary; there is a whole volume of ‘voyages’ in the very names of the places from which Antonio’s tall ships carry their rich lading— ‘¢From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England, From Lisbon, Barbary, and India”. The brisk movement of the piece appears in the medley of nations that find their way to Belmont—Neapolitan, French- man, Saxon, Spaniard, Englishman, and Moor. It has been objected to Bassanio that he makes love in the spirit of a trader, but it would be less misleading to say that Antonio trades in the spirit of a lover, like Jason and his Argonauts. Magnanimity, indeed, is the inmost quality of the ‘royal’ merchant. He lives to do great kindnesses greatly, XXX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. ‘*the kindest man, The best condition’d and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies, and one in whom The ancient Roman honour more appears Than any that draws breath in Italy” [ ]. He associates by preference, not with merchants, but with a soldier and a scholar like Bassanio, and his friends Lorenza His magnani- 2nd Gratiano. He is well known at court. The mity. Duke and ‘the magnificoes of greatest port’ [ ] are interested in his welfare. Consistently with this, he seems not to be greatly concerned with his merchan- dise except as the material of his bounty; he spends large sums in relieving poor debtors from difficulty (iil. 3. 23); and. he plainly says no more than the truth in telling Bassanio that to question the heartiness of his affection would hurt him more than to waste the whole of his fortune [ His spirit is serious and grave, subject to fits of melancholy, full of sensibility and tenderness. He is*content to enjoy His sensibility life through his friend (ii. 8. 50). He ‘embraces” and seriousness. heaviness, and tears come readily to his eyes, So full of anxious kindness is his manner that his enemy can describe him as ‘fawning’ [ ]. It is charac- teristic of him that he is sincerely resigned at the near prospect of dying; constitutional diffidence, perhaps physical weakness, make him feel that he is ‘a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death’, one of ‘the weakest kind of fruit?’ [ |. He rather discourages the attempts of his friends to save him (ili. 3. 19; iv. I. 77), and is satisfied to think that Bassanio will live still and write his epitaph. It is in keeping with his quiet temperament that he should put aside, almost angrily, the notion of his being in love (i. 1. 46). He is a bachelor ‘ predestinate’, and when we lose sight of him at Belmont it is with a feeling that his main interest for the future will be the duties of a godfather. It shocks us to find Antonio treating Shylock with gross personal discourtesy. Nothing indeed could have expressed so vividly the feeling of the time towards a Jewish usurer, as insult and violence from the stately and amiable Antonio. INTRODUCTION. Xxxi The historical explanation of this feeling is suggested else- where.! 5. THE MINOR CHARACTERS.—1I. Of the other persons of the play, Jessica and Lorenzo influence the story most. Jessica we are to think of as scarcely more than a child. Her mother had apparently been dead some years. Bright, winsome, and vivacious, Jessica feels she is not her father’s daughter [ ], at least in ‘man- ners’. Fond of movement and company, she saw no one at home but such as Tubal and Chus, grim men of business with whom her father talked of his design on the life of Antonio [ ]. Such a scheme must have terrified her as much as his dislike of masques and fifes repelled her [ ]. Out of Shylock’s house she passes as flightily and almost as unfeelingly as a Redes bird that leaves the nest [ |. It is not ‘her way’ to scruple or reflect. She takes jewels and ducats as lightly as she goes herself; she had never seen any pleasant use made of either, and, if she thought at all, she may have thought her father would not miss what he never wore nor spent. She talks very much too freely to Launcelot Gobbo. Her natural recklessness of temper appears from the style in which she makes the money fly at Genoa. (What kind of sitting was it, at which she spent fourscore ducats?) It is exquisitely characteristic in her to buy a monkey for a pet; no doubt Lorenzo took care it was left behind in Genoa. On her first arrival at Belmont she becomes amusingly ‘ proper’ and quiet. Portia was a reve- lation to her, and in her presence, as at the sound of sweet music, Jessica’s ‘spirits are attentive’ and she cannot be ‘merry’. Her words of enthusiastic praise to Lorenzo [ ] are the least inadequate that have ever been uttered about ‘my Lord Bassanio’s wife’. They show that she really is susceptible to strong feeling when she meets what is super- latively good. Possibly Lorenzo’s confidence that she is ‘true’ as well as ‘ fair and wise’ [ ] may, after all, be realized, if circumstances favour her. Jessica. 1See page xx. xxxii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Her husband, though possessed of deeper feelings and of much more power of thought than Jessica, yet looks on life from much the same point of view. He is intensely alive to delight, whether in natural beauty or in music. But his taste is so sound that, even by moonlight, his is a ‘ waking bliss’, full of ‘sober certainty’ as well as of the richest poetic rapture. Twice, in our short acquaintance with him, his sense of humour saves sentiment from extravagance or unreality (ili. 5. 58; v. 1.15). He is, as he admits, ‘unthrift’, and we may conjecture with much probability that his intimacy with Jessica began in visits to Shylock for severely business purposes. But the future of the pair in matters of finance is assured by the fact that they are to have a kind and careful trustee in the person of the Merchant of Venice himself. 2. Of the rest, Gratzano is talkative and gregarious to a fault, but he is excellent company and says some admirable things. There is, as Hazlitt says;a whole volume | of philosophy in his sermon against silence [ ], and his words in ii. 6. 8 ff show imagination. A man of his qualities may be tiresome in a small party, but is invaluable in a company of a dozen or more, where his loquacity can be ‘absorbed’. His wife will be the best possible match for him. Their conversation may indeed ‘overlap’ somewhat, for Nerissa has her own reflections on life and can ‘pronounce them well’ and ‘in good sentences’. But they are both too good-natured for the house ever to be seriously ‘unquiet’ (iv. 1. 288). 3. On the Princes of Morocco and Arragon, see notes to the scenes in which they appear. 4. Launcelot Gobbo is the ‘wag’ of the piece. His humour consists chiefly in a misuse of long words and in the liveliest animal spirits. There is less wit in what he says than is the case with any other of the prominent ‘clowns’ or ‘fools’ in Shakespeare. He is ready for any mischief, ‘a huge feeder’, and so averse to ‘ working between meals’ that Shylock has to employ three similes in two lines (‘snail’, ‘drone’, and ‘wild cat’) to express the Lorenzo. Gratiano. Launcelot. INTRODUCTION. ; bee te extent of his laziness. But even Shylock recognises that he is ‘kind enough’, and Bassanio takes to him immediately [ } 5. The characters of Sa/arino and Sa/anzo are not further defined than that they are Venetian gentleman, friends of Antonio and Bassanio, and full of the ordinary feeling of the time against Jewish usurers. 5. DATE OF THE COMPOSITION OF TH PLAY. ; The Merchant of Venice was first printed in 1600, when it appeared by itself in two quarto editions, one, called the First Quarto, published by James Roberts, the other, the Second Quarto, by Thomas Heyes. It had been in existence at least two years before, for on the 22nd of July, 1598, it was entered in the Stationers’ Register by James Roberts under the name of ‘a booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venice’. And, in the same year, 1598, appeared the Palladis Tamia or Wit’s Treasury, by Francis Meres, who names the following comedies of Shakespeare: ‘his Gentle- men of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, and his Mer- chant of Venice’. So far as ‘external evidence’ goes, therefore,! we can be certain that the play was not written later than the end of 1597. All attempts to fix the date more precisely than this rest upon unsatisfactory evidence. For instance, much use has been made of the fact that in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, proprietor of the theatre where Shakespeare’s fellow-actors were playing between 1594 and 1596, we find under the date 25th August, 1594, a reference to the per- formance of a new play, the Venesyon Comodey. But there is no sort of proof that this is Shakespeare’s play. Again, 1 For the different kinds of evidence obtainable in settling the date of one of Shakespeare’s plays, see the admirable summary in chapter iv. of Professor Dowden’s Shakspere Primer. ( M 330) Cc XXXIV THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. some have seen a close resemblance between Shylock’s argument in the trial scene as to the treatment of slaves and the argument of a Jew contained in Silvayn’s Ovator, which was published in 1596. But the differences are at least as striking as the resemblance. In manner, Zhe Merchant of Venice is near akin to Twelfth Night, As You Like It,and Much Ado About Nothing. With these plays of Shakespeare’s ‘middle’ period, it has much more in common than with the earlier comedies mentioned along with it by Francis Meres. This is particularly con- spicuous in the free employment of prose, even in scenes of serious interest, and in the easy and varied rhythm of the verse. We ought not perhaps to make much of the fact that it is the Zas¢ in Meres’ list. But on general grounds it seems safe to believe that The Merchant of Venice was written only a short time before the Palladis Tamia appeared, and that 1597 is therefore its probable date. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE DRAMATIS PERSON: The DuKE oF VENICE. The Prince oF Morocco, The PrincE oF ARRAGON, ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice. } suitors to Portia. BassAanio, his friend, suitor likewise to Portia. SALANIO, SALARINO, }frierids to Antonio and Bassanio. GRATIANO, LorENZzO, in love with Jessica. SHYLOCK, a rich Jew. TUBAL, a Jew, his friend. \ LAuUNCELOT GosBo, the clown, servant to Shylock. Ox.p Gosso, father to Launcelot. LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio. BALTHASAR, } servants to Portia. STEPHANO, PortIA, a rich heiress. NenrissA, her waiting-maid. Jessica, daughter to Shylock. Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Gaoler, Servants to Portia, and other Attendants. ScENE: Partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont, the seat of Portia, on the Continent. wail 1 J eZ om Pig Pe ee} ot” ; weed ral we ye 2 ¢ ” . 5 / At z F. } attr LL”: CBr OLA? AF OOS re A ‘ Ye dh ) gh " / rs a . Ms ge wei of & re ot fe . y we - ; e 2 ts . ad we : eo dal i eae ar. ro ae ) owt f Uprtakss mf ( GY 4 Dg (eaanitin’ So ual . ft A hed es THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ACEI: ScENE I. Venice. A street. Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, a7d@ SALANIO. +, & spper [oe 7. f. jeene Ae | Ant. In sooth, I know not why I am/so sad: fd LAE olf, It wearies me; you say it wearles you; re ll But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ’t is 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. Salar. Your mind is tossing on the ocean ; There, where your argosies with portly sail, Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, 10 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. Salan. 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 20 Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt Would make me sad. Salar. My wind cooling my broth Would blow me to an ague, when I thought What harm a wind too great at sea might do. I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, But I should think of shallows and of flats, And see my wealthy Andrew dock’d in sand, Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs 2 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. To kiss her burial. Should I go to church And see the holy edifice of stone, 30 And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, Which touching but my genile vessel’s side, Would scatter all her spices on the stream, Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks, And, in a word, but even now worth this, And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought To think on this, and shall I lack the thought That such a thing bechanced would make me sad? But tell not me; I know, Antonio Is sad to think upon his merchandise. 40 Ant. 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. Salar. Why, then you are in love. Ant. Fie, fie! Salar. Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad, Because you are not merry: and ’t were as easy For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, 50 Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, And other of such vinegar aspect That they ’ll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO. Salan. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman, Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well: We leave you now with better company. Salar. 1 would have stay’d till 1 had made you merry, 60 If worthier friends had not prevented me. Ant. Your worth is very dear in my regard. I take it, your own business calls on you And you embrace the occasion to depart. Salar. Good morrow, my good lords. Bass. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when? You grow exceeding strange: must it be so? Salar. We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours. [Zxeunt Salarino and Salanio. Lor. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio. Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE We two will leave you: but at dinner-time, I pray you, have in mind where we must meet. Bass. 1 will not fail you. Gra. You look not well, Signior Antonio ; You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care: Believe me, you are marvellously changed. Ant. 1 hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one. 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, As who should say ‘I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!’ O my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore only are reputed wise For saying nothing, when, I am very sure, 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: But fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile: Ill end my exhortation after dinner. Lor. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time: I must be one of these same dumb wise men, For Gratiano never lets me speak. Gra. Well, keep me company but two years moe, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. Ant, Farewell: I’ll grow a talker for this gear. Gra. Thanks, 7’ faith, for silence is only commendable 70 80 go 100 I10 In a neat’s tongue dried. [Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo. Ant. Is that any thing now? 4 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 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 promised to tell me of? Bass. ’T is not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate, By something showing a more swelling port Than my faint means would grant continuance: Nor do I now make moan to be abridged From such a noble rate; but my chief care Is to come fairly off from the great debts Whercin my time something too prodigal Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio, I owe the most, in money and in love, And from your love I have a warranty To unburden all my plots and purposes How to get clear of all the debts I owe. Ant. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; And if it stand, as you yourself still do, Within the eye of honour, be assured, My purse, my person, my extremest means, Lie all unlock’d to your occasions. Bass. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way with more advised watch, To find the other forth, and by adventuring both I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof, Because what follows is pure innocence. I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, That which I owe is lost; but if you please To shoot another arrow that self way Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, As I will watch the aim, or to find both Or bring your latter hazard back again And thankfully rest debtor for the first. Ant. You know me well, and herein spend but time To wind about my love with circumstance ; And out of doubt you do me now more wrong In making question of my uttermost Than if you had made waste of all I have: Then do but say to me what I should do 120 130 | 140 150 Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 5 That in your knowledge may by me be done, And I am prest unto it: therefore, speak. 160 Bass. In Belmont is a lady richly left ; And she is fair and, fairer than that‘word, Of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages : Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia: Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, For the four winds blow in from every coast Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece ; 170 Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strand, And many Jasons come in quest of her. O my Antonio, had I but the means To hold a rival place with one of them, I have a mind presages me such thrift, That I should questionless be fortunate ! Ant. Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea; Neither have I money nor commodity To raise a present sum: therefore go forth ; Try what my credit can in Venice do: 180 That shall be rack’d, even to the uttermost, To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go, presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is, and I no question make To have it of my trust or for my sake. [Exeunt. SCENE II. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. er. 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. Wer. They would be better, if well followed, 10 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 6 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. 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 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? 24 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 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, over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection. 34 ver. 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. er. Then there is the County Palatine. Por. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say ‘If 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! 46 Ver. 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. ‘Ver. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of England? Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 7 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 pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man’s picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour every where. Ner. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour? Por. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and swore he would pay him again when he was able: I think the French- man became his surety and sealed under for another. Ver. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew? 73, Por. Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast: an the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him. Ver. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father’s will, if you should refuse to accept him. 81 Por. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, set a deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do any thing, Nerissa, ere I’ll be married to a sponge. Wer. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords: they have acquainted me with their determinations ; which is, indeed, to return to their home and to trouble you with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father’s imposition depending on the caskets. Por. lf I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Djana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s will. ’ 1 am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for there is not one among them but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God grant them a fair departure. 6 Ver. Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat? Por. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so called. Ner. True, madam: he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady. 8 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Por. | remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy praise. 105 Enter a Serving-man. How now! what news? Serv. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their leave: and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the prince his master will be here to-night. Vi /10 Por. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good a heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his approach: if he have the condition of a saint and the com- plexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me. Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. Whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at the door. [Exeunt. ~t » tm “SCENE III. Venice. A public place. 5° : e clpbshiuner Enter BASSANIO and SHYLOCK. Shy. Three thousand ducats; well. Bass. Ay, sir, for three months. Shy. For three months; well. Bass. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. Shy. Antonio shall become bound; well. Bass. May you stead me? will you pleasure me? shall I know your answer? Shy. Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio bound. Bass. Your answer to that. 10 Sy. Antonio is a good man. ass. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary? Shy. Oh, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying hévis a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, sufficient. Three thousand ducats; I think I may take his bond... 23 Begun, a eg? | Y he 7 : t Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF. VENICE Bass. Be assured you may. Shy. 1 will be assured I may; and, that I may be assured, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio? Bass. If it please you to dine with us. Shy. Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here? Enter ANTONIO. Bass. This is Signior Antonio. Shy. [Aside| How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him for he is a Christian, But more for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice. If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, Even there where merchants most do congregate, On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift, Which he calls interest. Cursed by my tribe, If I forgive him! Bass. Shylock, do you hear? Shy. 1 am debating of my present store, And, by the near guess of my memory, I cannot instantly raise up the gross Of full three thousand ducats, What of that? Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, Will furnish me. But soft! how many months Do you desire? [Zo Azz.] Rest you fair, good signior ; Your worship was the last man in our mouths. Ant. Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow By taking nor by giving of excess, Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, I’ll break a custom. Is he yet possess’d How much ye would? Shy. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. Ant. And for three months. Shy. I had forgot; three months; you told me so. Well then, your bond; and let me see; but hear you; Methought you said you neither lend nor borrow Upon advantage. 33 40 50 60 10 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Ant. I do never use it. Shy. When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban’s sheep— This Jacob from our holy Abram was, As his wise mother wrought in his behalf, The third possessor; ay, he was the third— Ant. And what of him? did he take interest? Shy. No, not take interest, not, as you would say, Directly interest: mark what Jacob did. When Laban and himself were compromised ’ That all the eanlings which were streaked and pied Should fall as Jacob’s hire, The skilful shepherd pilled me certain wands And stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time Fall party-coloured lambs, and those were Jacob’s. This was a way to thrive, and he was blest; And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. Ant. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for; A thing not in his power to bring to pass, But sway’d and fashion’d by the hand of heaven. Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? Shy. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast: But note me, signior. Ant. Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! Shy. Three thousand ducats; ’t is a good round sum. Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate— Ant. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you? Shy. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my money and my usances: till have I borne it with a patient shrug, For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe, You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help: Go to, then; you come to me, and you say ‘Shylock, we would have moneys’: you say so; You, that did void your rheum upon my beard 70 80 100 Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE II And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say 110 _ * Hath a dog money? is it possible A cur can lénd three thousand ducats?? Or Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key, With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this; ‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; You spurn’d me such a day; another time You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys’? Ant. 1 am as like to call thee so again, 120 _To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. not As to thy friends; for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his f But Tend it rather to, thine enemy Who, if he break, thou ma with better-face xa , 7 AY. Why, look you, how you storm! I would be friends with you and have your love, Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with, Supply your present wants and take no doit 130 Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me: This is kind I offer. Bass. This were kindness. Shy. This kindness will I show. Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond; and, in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me. 140 Ant. Content, 1’ faith: I’ll seal to such a bond And say there is much kindness in the Jew. Bass. You shall not seal to such a bond for me: I’ll rather dwell in my necessity. Ant. Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it: Within these two months, that’s a month before This bond expires, I do expect return Of thrice three times the value of this bond. Shy. O father Abram, what these Christians are, ALU tlhe enn Ceatrrt 4 ‘é A ereert — j Cr 12 (‘THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect 150 The thoughts of others! Pray you, tell me this; If he should break his day, what should I gain By the exaction of the forfeiture? A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man Is not so estimable, profitable neither, As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say, To buy his favour, I extend this friendship: If he will take it, so; if not, adieu; And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. Ant. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. 160 Shy. Then meet me forthwith at the notary’s; Give him direction for this merry bond, And I will go and purse the ducats straight, See to my house, left in the fearful guard Of an unthrifty knave, and presently I will be with you. Ant. Hie thee, gentle Jew. [Exit Shylock. The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind. Bass. 1 like not fair terms and a villain’s mind. Ant. Come on: in this there can be no dismay; My ships come home a month before the day. [Axeunt. 170 AGT JUL. SCENE I. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF MOROCCO and his train; PORTIA, NERISSA, and others attending. Mor. Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. Bring me the fairest creature northward born, Where Pheebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles, And let us make incision for your love, To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine. I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine Hath feard the valiant: by my love, I swear The best-regarded virgins of our clime 10 Have loved it too: I would not change this hue, Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. Por. In terms of choice I am not solely led fol Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 13 By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes; Besides, the lottery of my destiny Bars me the right of voluntary choosing: But if my father had not scanted me And hedged me by his wit, to yield myself His wife who wins me by that means I told you, Yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair 20 As any comer I have look’d on yet For my affection. Mor. Even for that I thank you: Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets To try my fortune. By this scimitar That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, I would outstare the sternest eyes that look, Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, 30 To win thee, lady. But, alas the while! If Hercules and Lichas play at dice Which is the better man, the greater throw May turn by fortune from the weaker hand: So is Alcides beaten by his page; And so may I, blind fortune leading me, Miss that which one unworthier may attain, And die with grieving. Por. You must take your chance, And either not attempt to choose at all Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong 40 Never to speak to lady afterward In way of marriage: therefore be advised. Mor. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance. Por. First, forward to the temple: after dinner Your hazard shall be made. Mor. Good fortune then! To make me blest or cursed’st among men. [Cornets, and exeunt. SCENE II. Venice. A Street. Enter LAUNCELOT. Laun. Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me saying to me ‘Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot’, (330) D 14 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act {I. or ‘good Gobbo’, or ‘good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away’. My conscience says ‘No; take heed, honest Launcelot; take heed, honest Gobbo’, or, as aforesaid, ‘honest Launcelot Gobbo; do not run; scorn run- ning with thy heels’. Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack: ‘ Via!’ says the fiend; ‘away!’ says the fiend; ‘for the heavens, rouse up a brave mind’, says the fiend, ‘and run’. Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me ‘ My honest friend Launcelot, being an honest man’s son’, or rather an honest woman’s son; for, indeed, my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a kind of taste; well, my conscience says ‘ Launce- lot, budge not’. ‘Budge’, says the fiend. ‘ Budge not’, says my conscience. ‘Conscience’, say I, ‘you counsel well’; ‘Fiend’, say I, ‘you counsel well’: to be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master, who, God bless the mark, is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, ‘who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself. Certainly the Jewi is the very devil incarnal ; and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the more friendly counsel: I will run, fiend; my heels are at your command; I will run. 26 Enter Old GOBBO, with a basket. Gob. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the way to master Jew’s? Laun. [Aside] O heavens, this is my true-begotten father! who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not: I will try confusions with him. Gob. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to master Jew’s? Laun. Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew’s house. (37 Gob. By God’s sonties, ’t will be a hard way to hit. Can you tell me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with him, dwell with him or no? Laun. Talk you of young Master Launcelot? [Aszde] Mark me now; now will I raise the waters. Talk you of young Master Launcelot? Gob. No master, sir, but a poor man’s son: his father, though I say it, is an honest exceeding poor man and, God be thanked, well to live. 46 Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 15° Laun. Well, let his father be what a’ will, we talk of young Master Launcelot. Gob. Your worship’s friend and Launcelot, sir. Laun. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk you of young Master Launcelot? God. Of Launcelot, an’t please your mastership. 52 Laun. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Master Launcelot, father; for the young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven. Gob. Marry, God forbid! the boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop. Laun. Do L look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a prop? Do you know me, father? 61 Gob, Alack the day, I know you not, young gentleman: a # pray you, tell me, is my boy, God rest his soul, alive or ea Laun. Do you not know me, father? God. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind; I know ycu not. Laun. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but at the length truth will out. 71 God. Pray you, sir, stand up: I am sure you are not Launcelot, my boy. Laun. Pray you, let’s have no more fooling about it, but give me your blessing: I am Launcelot, your boy that was, your son that is, your child that shall be. God. I cannot think you are my son. Laun. 1 know not what I shall think of that: but I am Launcelot, the Jew’s man, and I am sure Margery your wife is my mother. 80 Gob. Her name is Margery, indeed: I’ll be sworn, if thou be Launcelot, thou‘art mine own flesh and blood. Lord worshipped might he be! what a beard hast thou got! thou hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail. Laun. It should seem, then, that Dobbin’s tail grows back- ward: I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I have of my face when I last saw him. Gob. Lord, how art thou changed! How dost thou and thy master agree? I have brought him a present. How *gree you now? gI 16 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Laun. Well, well: but, for mine own part, as I have set up my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some ground. My master’s a very Jew: give him a present! give him a halter: I am famished in his service; you may tell every finger I have with my ribs. Father, I am glad you are come: give me your present to one Master Bassanio, who, indeed, gives rare new liveries: if I serve not him, I will run as far as God has any ground. O rare fortune! here comes the man: to him, father; for I am a Jew, if I serve the Jew any longer. IOI Enter BASSANIO, with LEONARDO and other followers. Bass. You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See these letters delivered; put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging. [Exit a Servant. Laun. To him, father. Gob. God bless your worship! Bass. Gramercy! wouldst thou aught with me? Gob. Here’s my son, sir, a poor boy,— Laun. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew’s man; that would, sir, as my father shall specify— lil Gob. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve,— | Laun. Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, and have a desire, as my father shall specify— Gob. His master and he, saving your worship’s reverence, are scarce cater-cousins— Laun. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, having done me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being, I hope, an old man, shall frutify unto you— 120 God. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon your worship, and my suit is— Laun. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as your worship shall know by this honest old man; and, though I say it, though old man, yet poor man, my father. Bass. One speak for both. What would you? Laun. Serve you, sir. Gob. That is the very defect of the matter, sir. Bass. 1 know thee well; thou hast obtain’d thy suit: Shylock thy master spoke with me this day, 130 And hath preferr’d thee, if it be preferment To leave a rich Jew’s service, to become The follower of so poor a gentleman. Laun. The old proverb is very well parted between my Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 17 master Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough. Bass. Thou speak’st it well. Go, father, with thy son. Take leave of thy old master and inquire My lodging out. Give him a livery More guarded than his fellows’: see it done. 140 Laun. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no; I have ne’er a tongue in my head. Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune. Go to, here’s a simple line of life: here’s a small trifle of wives: alas, fifteen wives is nothing! eleven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man: and then to ’scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the edge of a feather-bed; here are simple scapes. Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear. Father, come; I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling of an eye. [Exeunt Launcelot and Old Gobbo. Bass. 1 pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this: 152 These things being bought and orderly bestow’d, Return in haste, for I do feast to-night My best-esteem’d acquaintance: hie thee, go. Leon. My best endeavours shall be done herein. Enter GRATIANO. Gra. Where is your master? Leon. Yonder, sir, he walks. [E-xz¢. Gra. Signior Bassanio! Bass. Gratiano! Gra. 1 have a suit to you. Bass. You have obtain’d it. 160 Gra. You must not deny me: I must go with you to Belmont. Bass. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano; Thou art too wild, too e and atte nd f voice ; tp payer Parts that become Se, Sy aNet vi ‘Ahe And in such eyes as ours appear steal ai : Vv AW But where thou art not known, why, there they show Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain To allay with some cold drops of modesty Thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behaviour 170 I be misconstrued in the place I go to And lose my hopes. Gra. Signior Bassanio, hear me: If I do not put on a sober habit, Talk with respect and swear but now and then, Ly: & ¥, W — : ae = ~ (jh ny OF oF ; % §£ : dp, « a ‘ a * on ba iy : m 4 e} re “» I am not to his manners, 18 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely, Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes Thus with my hat, and sigh and say ‘amen’, Use all the observance of civility, Like one well studied in a sad ostent To please his grandam, never trust me more. Bass. Well, we shall see your bearing. Gra. Nay, but I bar to-night: you shall not gauge me By what we do to-night. Bass. No, that were pity: I would entreat you rather to put on Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends That purpose merriment. But fare you well: I have some business. Gra. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest: But we will visit you at supper-time. 180 [Exeunt. Py. NScEnE Ill. Zhe same. A room in SHYLOCK’S house. Enter JESSICA and LAUNCELOT. Jes. 1 am sorry thou wilt leave my father so: WS are house is hell, and thou, a merry devil, Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. But fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee: And, Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see Lorenzo, who is thy new master’s guest: Give him this letter; do it secretly; And so farewell: I would not have my father See me in talk with thee. 9 Laun. Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew! But, adieu: these foolish drops do something drown my manly spirit: adieu. Jes. Farewell, good Launcelot. [Exit Launcelot. Alack, what heinous sin is it in me » To be ashamed to be my father’s child! But though I am a daughter to his blood, O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, Become a Christian and thy loving wife. [Exit Scene 4.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 19 SCENE IV. TZhesame. A street. Enter GRATIANO, LORENZO, SALARINO, amd SALANIO. Lor. Nay, we will slink away in supper-time, Disguise us at my lodging and return, All in an hour. Gra. We have not made good preparation. Salar. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers. Salan. ’T is vile, unless it may be quaintly order’d, And better in my mind not undertook. Lor. ’T is now but four o’clock: we have two hours To furnish us. Enter LAUNCELOT, with a letter. Friend Launcelot, what’s the news? Laun. An it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem to signify. II Lor. 1 know the hand: in faith, ’tis a fair hand ; And whiter than the paper it writ on Is the fair hand that writ. Gra. Love-news, in faith. Laun. By your leave, sir. Lor. Whither goest thou? Laun. Marry, sir, to bid my old master the Jew to sup to-night with my new master the Christian. Lor. Hold here, take this: tell gentle Jessica I will not fail her; speak it privately. 20 Go.— Gentlemen, [Exit Launcelot. Will you prepare you for this masque to-night? I am provided of a torch-bearer. Salar. Ay, marry, I'll be gone about it straight. Salan. And so will I. Lor. Meet me and Gratiano At Gratiano’s lodging some hour hence. Salar. ’T is good we do so. [Exeunt Salar. and Salan. Gra. Was not that letter from fair Jessica? Lor. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed How I shall take her from her father’s house, 30 What gold and jewels she is furnish’d with, What page’s suit she hath in readiness. If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake: And never dare misfortune cross her foot, Unless she do it under this excuse, 20 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. That she is issue to a faithless Jew. Come, go with me; peruse this as thou goest: Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer. [Exeunt. SCENE V. TZhesame. Before SHYLOCK’S house. Enter SHYLOCK and LAUNCELOT. Shy. Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge, The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio:— What, Jessica!—thou shalt not gormandise, As thou hast done with me :—What, Jessica !— And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out ;— Why, Jessica, I say! Laun. Why, Jessica! Shy. Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call. Laun. Your worship was wont to tell me that I could do nothing without bidding. Etnter JESSICA. Jes. Call you? what is your will? 10 Shy. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica: There are my keys. But wherefore should I go? I am not bid for love; they flatter me: But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl, Look to my house. I am right loath to go: There is some ill a-brewing towards-my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night. Laun. I beseech you, sir, go: my young master doth expect your reproach. 20 Shy. So do I his. Laun. And they have conspired together, I will not say you shall see a masque; but if you do, then it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday last at six o’clock 7? the morning, falling out that year on Ash- Wednesday was four year, in the afternoon. Shy. What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife, Clamber not you up to the casements then, 30 Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces, But stop my house’s ears, I mean my casements: Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter Scene 6.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 2t My sober house. By Jacob’s staff, I swear, I have no mind of feasting forth to-night: But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah ; Say I will come. Laun. 1 will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at window, for all this; 40 There will come a Christian by, Will be worth a Jewess’ eye. [Extt. Shy. What says that fool of Hagar’s offspring, ha? Jes. His words were ‘ Farewell mistress’ ; nothing else. Shy. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder ; Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild-cat: drones hive not with me; Therefore I part with him, and part with him To one that I would have him help to waste His borrow’d purse. Well, Jessica, goin: . 50 Perhaps I will return immediately: Do as I bid you; shut doors after you: Fast bind, fast find ; A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. [Exczt. Jes. Farewell; and if my fortune be not crost, I have a father, you a daughter, lost. [Exit SCENE VI. The same. Enter GRATIANO and SALARINO, masqgued. Gra. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo Desired us to make stand. Salar. His hour is almost past. Gra. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, For lovers ever run before the clock. Salar. O, ten times faster Venus’ pigeons fly To seal love’s bonds new-made, than they are wont To keep obliged faith unforfeited ! Gra. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast With that keen appetite that he sits down? Where is the horse that doth untread again 10 His tedious measures with the unbated fire That he did pace them first? All things that are, Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d. How like a younker or a prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, Hugg’d and embraced by the wanton wind! How like the prodigal doth she return, 22 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II, With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent and beggar’d by the wanton wind! Salar. Here comes Lorenzo: more of this hereafter. 20 Enter LORENZO. Lor. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode; Not I, but my affairs, have made you wait: When you shall please to play the thieves for wives, Ill watch as long for you then. Approach; Here dwells my father Jew. Ho! who’s within? Enter JESSICA, above, in boy's clothes. Jes. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty, Albeit I’ll swear that I do know your tongue. Lor. Lorenzo, and thy love. Jes. Lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, For who love I so much? And now who knows 30 But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours? Lor. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art. Jes. Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad ’tis night, you do not look on me, For I am much ashamed of my exchange: But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit ; For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy. Lor. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer. 40 Jes. What, must I hold a candle to my shames? They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light. Why, ’t is an office of discovery, love; And I should be obscured. Lor. So are you, sweet, Even in the lovely garnish of a boy. But come at once; For the close night doth play the runaway, And we are stay’d for at Bassanio’s feast. Jes. 1 will make fast the doors, and gild myself With some more ducats, and be with you straight. [Exit above 50 Gra. Now, by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew. Lor. Beshrew me but I love her heartily ; For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath proved herself, Me THE MERCHANT OF VENICE And therefore, like herself, wise, fair and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul. Enter JESSICA, below. What, art thou come? On, gentlemen; away! Our masquing mates by this time for us stay. [Exit with Jessica and Salarino Enter ANTONIO. Ant. Who’s there? 60 Gra. Signior Antonio! Ant. Fie, fie, Gratiano! where are all the rest? ’T is nine o’clock: our friends all stay for you. No masque to-night: the wind is come about; Bassanio presently will go aboard: I have sent twenty out to seek for you. Gra. I am glad on’t: I desire no more delight Than to be under sail and gone to-night. [Exeunt. SCENE VII. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Flourish of cornets. Enter PORTIA, with the PRINCE OF MOROCCO, and their trains. Por. Go, draw as de the curtains and discover The several caskets to this noble prince. Now make your choice. Mor. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, o chooseth me shall gain what many men desire’ ; he second, silver, which this promise carries, o chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’ ; is third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’. ow shall I know if I do choose the right? 10 Por. The one of them contains my picture, prince: If you choose that, then I am yours withal. Mor. Some god direct my judgement! Let me see; I will survey the inscriptions back again. What says this leaden casket? “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’. Must give: for what? for lead? hazard for lead? This casket threatens. Men that hazard all Do it in hope of fair advantages: A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross ; 20 24 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE {Act II. I’ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. What says the silver with her virgin hue? ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’, As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco, And weigh thy value with an even hand: If thou be’st rated by thy estimation, Thou dost deserve enough; and yet enough May not extend so far as to the lady: And yet to be afeard of my deserving Were but a weak disabling of myself. As much as I deserve! Why, that’s the lady: I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes, In graces and in qualities of breeding ; But more than these, in love I do deserve. What if I stray’d no further, but chose here? Let’s see once more this saying graved in gold; ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. Why, that’s the lady;.all the world desires her; From the four corners of the earth they come, To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint: The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now For princes to come view fair Portia: The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar To stop the foreign spirits, but they come, As o’er a brook, to see fair Portia. One of these three contains her heavenly picture. Is’t like that lead contains her? ’T were damnation To think so base a thought: it were too gross To nib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. Or shall I think in silver she’s immured, Being ten times undervalued to tried gold? O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem Was set in worse than gold. They have in England A coin that bears the figure of an angel Stamped in gold, but that’s insculp’d upon ; But here an angel in a golden bed Lies all within. Deliver me the key: Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may! Por. There, take it, prince; and if my form lie there, 30 40 60a Then I am yours. [He unlocks the golden casket. Mor. O hell! what have we here? A carrion Death, within whose empty eye There is a written scroll! I’ll read the writing. Scene 8.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 25 [Reads] All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms infold. Had you been as wise as bold, 7O Young in limbs, in judgement old, Your answer had not been inscroll’d: Fare you well; your suit is cold. Cold, indeed; and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost ! Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart To take a tedious leave: thus losers part. [Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets. Por. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. Let all of his complexion choose me so. [Exeunt. SCENE VIII. Venice. A street. Enter SALARINO azd SALANIO. Salar. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail: With him is Gratiano gone along; And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not. Salan. The villain Jew with outcries raised the duke, Who went with him to search Bassanio’s ship. Salar. He came too late, the ship was under sail: But there the duke was given to understand That in a gondola were seen together Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica: Besides, Antonio certified the duke 10 They were not with Bassanio in his ship. Salan. | never heard a passion so confused, | So strange, outrageous, and so variable, ke ) As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: (| / e7R/¥ ‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter’ Me NT Na Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! 4 y, Walt. Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter! iy fi A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, i Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter! i \ sn And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, 20 ~ \ Stolen by my daughter! Justice! find the girl; She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.’ Salar. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. 26 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Salan. Let good Antonio look he keep his day, Or he shall pay for this. Salar. Marry, well remember ’d. I reason’d with a Frenchman yesterday, Who told me, in the narrow seas that part The French and English, there miscarried A vessel of our country richly fraught; 30 I thought upon Antonio when he told me; And wish’d in silence that it were not his. Salan, You were best to tell Antonio what you hear; Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him. Salar. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth. I saw Bassanio and Antonio part: Bassanio told him he would make some speed Of his return: he answerd, ‘ Do not so; Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, But stay the very riping of the time; 40 And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me, Let it not enter in your mind of love: Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts To courtship and such fair ostents of love As shall conveniently become you there’: And even there, his eye being big with tears, Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, And with affection wondrous sensible He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted. Salan. I think he only loves the world for him. 50 I pray thee, let us go and find him out And quicken his embraced heaviness With some delight or other. Salar. Do we so. [Exeunt. SCENE IX. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Enter NERISSA with a Servitor. Ner. Quick, quick, I pray thee; draw the curtain straight: The Prince of Arragon hath ta’en his oath, And comes to his election presently. Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF ARRAGON, PORTIA, and their trains. Por. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince: If you choose that wherein I am contain’d, Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized: Scene g.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE But if you fail, without more speech, my lord, You must be gone from hence immediately. Ar. I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things: First, never to unfold to any one Which casket ’t was I chose; next,if I fail Of the right casket, never in my life To woo a maid in way of marriage: Lastly, If I do fail in fortune of my choice, Immediately to leave you and be gone. Por. To these injunctions every one doth swear That comes to hazard for my worthless self. Ar. And so have I address’d me. Fortune now To my heart’s hope! Gold; silver; and base lead. ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. You shall look fairer, ere I give or hazard. What says the golden chest? ha! let me see: ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire’. What many men desire! that ‘many’ may be meant By the fool multitude, that choose by show, Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach; Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet, Builds in the weather on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty. I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house ; Tell me once more what title thou dost bear: ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’: And well said too; for who shall go about To cozen fortune and be honourable Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume _ To wear an undeserved dignity. O, that estates, degrees and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer! How many then should cover that stand bare! How many be commanded that command! How much low peasantry would then be glean’d From the true seed of honour! and how much honour Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times To be new-varnish’d! Well, but to my choice: ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves’. I will assume desert. Give me a key for this, 27 Io 20 30 50 28 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ([ActII.Sc.o. And instantly unlock my fortunes here. [He opens the silver casket. Por. Too long a pause for that which you find there. Ar. What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot, Presenting me a schedule! I will read it. How much unlike art thou to Portia! How much unlike my hopes and my deservings! ‘Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.’ Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? Is that my prize? are my deserts no better? 60 Por. To offend, and judge, are distinct offices And of opposed natures. Ar. What is here? [Reads] The fire seven times tried this: Seven times tried that judgement is, That did never choose amiss. Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow’s bliss: There be fools alive, I wis, Silverd o’er; and so was this. I will ever be your head: 70 So be gone: you are sped. Still more fool I shall appear By the time I linger here: With one fool’s head I came to woo, But I go away with two. Sweet, adieu. I’ll keep my oath, Patiently to bear my wroth. [Exeunt Arragon and train. Por. Thus hath the candle singed the moth. O, these deliberate fools! when they do choose, They have the wisdom by their wit to lose. Se er. The ancient saying is no heresy, Hanging and wiving goes by destiny. Por. Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa. Enter a Servant. Serv. Where is my lady? Por, Here: what would my lord? Serv. Madam, there is alighted at your gate A young Venetian, one that comes before To signify the approaching of his lord; From whom he bringeth sensible regreets, To wit, besides commends and courteous breath, ActIII.Sc.1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 29. Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen 90 So likely an ambassador of love: A day in April never came so sweet, To show how costly summer was at hand, As this fore-spurrer comes befecre his lord. Por. No more, I pray thee: I am half afeard Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee, Thou spend’st such high-day wit in praising him. Come, come, Nerissa; for I long to see Quick Cupid’s post that comes so mannerly. er. Bassanio, lord Love, if thy will it be! [#xeunt. 100 lod tag #4 SCENE I. Venice. A street. Enter SALANIO amd SALARINO. Salan. Now, what news on the Rialto? Salar. Why, yet it lives there unchecked that Antonio hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the Good- wins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word. Salan. 1 would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband. But it is true, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the honest Antonio, O that I had a title good enough to keep his name company !— 12 Salar. Come, the full stop. Salan. Ha! what sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath lost a ship. Salar. | would it might prove the end of his losses. Salan. Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew. Enter SHYLOCK. How now, Shylock! what news among the merchants? Shy. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter’s flight. Zk Salar. That’s certain: I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal. (M330) E 30 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Salan. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam. Shy. She is damned for it. Salar. That’s certain, if the devil may be her judge. Shy. My own flesh and blood to rebel! Salan. Out upon it, old carrion! rebels it at these years? Shy. I say, my daughter is my flesh and blood. 31 Salar. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and rhenish. But tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no? Shy. There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond. 4I Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what’s that good for? Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, : scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I ama Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- sions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. 61 Enter a Servant. Serv. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and desires to speak with you both. Salar. We have been up and down to seek him. Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 31 Enter TUBAL. Salan. Here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. [Lxeunt Salan., Salar., and Servant. Shy. How now, Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast thou found my daughter? ‘ Tub. | often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find er. 70 Shy. Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No newsof them? Why, so: and I know not what’s spent in the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satis- faction, no revenge: nor no ill luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding. 82 Tub. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in Genoa,— Shy. What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? Tub. Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis. Shy. I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true? Tub. 1 spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck. Shy. I thank thee, good Tubal: good news, good news! ha, ha! where? in Genoa? gI Tub. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, in one night fourscore ducats. Shy. Thou stickest a dagger in me: I shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats! Tub. There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my com- pany to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break. Shy. 1am very glad of it: Ill plague him; Ill torture him: I am glad of it. Tub. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey. IOI Shy. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. Tub. But Antonio is certainly undone. Shy. Nay, that’s true, that’s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me 32 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandise I will. Go, go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal. [Exeunt. SCENE II. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, avd Attendants. Por. I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile. There’s something tells me, but it is not love, I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality. But lest you should not understand me well,— And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,— I would detain you here some month or two Before you venture for me. I could teach you 10 How to choose right, but I am then forsworn ; So will I never be: so may you miss me; But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, They have o’erlook’d me and divided me; One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours. O, these naughty times Put bars between the owners and their rights! And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, 20 Let fortune go to hell for it, not I. I speak too long; but ’t is to peize the time, To eke it and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election. Bass. Let me choose; For as I am, I live upon the rack. Por. Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess What treason there is mingled with your love. Bass. None but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: There may as well be amity and life 30 ’T ween snow and fire, as treason and my love. Por. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything. Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Bass. Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth. Por. Well then, confess and live. Bass. ‘Confess’ and ‘love’ Had been the very sum of my confession : O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance ! But let me to my fortune and the caskets. Por. Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them: If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And watery death-bed for him. He may win; And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch: such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear And summon him to marriage. Now he goes, With no less presence, but with much more love, Than young Alcides, when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice; The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, With bleared visages, come forth to view The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules! Live thou, I live: with much much more dismay I view the fight than thou that makest the fray. 33 40 50 Music, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself. SONG. Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. It is engenderd in the eyes, With gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy’s knell: I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell. All. Ding, dong, bell. Bass. So may the outward shows be least themselves: 70 34 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. The world is still deceived with ornament. Lin Jaw, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season’d with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? pt What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? 80 There is no vice so simple but assumes ~ Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: How many ny 2 »wassls) whose hearts are all as false As stairs of Sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who, inward search’d, have livers white as milk; And these assume but valour’s excrement To render them redoubted! Look on b P And you shall see ’t is ourchasetaP Ree ion ; Which therein works a miracle in nature, ge Making them lightest that wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on 100 To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee; Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge *Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I: joy be the consequence! Por. | Aside] How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! 110 O love, be moderate ; allay thy ecstasy ; In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess. I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit. Bass. What find I here? [ Opening ea leaden casket. Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion? Here are severd lips, Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs The painter plays the spider and hath woven A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men Faster than gnats in cobwebs: but her eyes,— How could he see to do them? having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his And leave itself unfurnish’d. Yet look, how far The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow In underprizing it, so far this shadow Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll, The continent and summary of my fortune. [Reads] You that choose not by the view, Chance as fair and choose as true! Since this fortune falls to you, Be content and seek no new. If you be well pleased with this And hold your fortune for your bliss, Turn you where your lady is And claim her with a loving kiss. A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave ; I come by note, to give and to receive. Like one of two contending in a prize, That thinks he hath done well in people’s eyes, Hearing applause and universal shout, Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt Whether those peals of praise be his or no; So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so; As doubtful whether what I see be true, Until confirm’d, sign’d, ratified by you. Por. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am: though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better; yet, for you I would be trebled twenty times myself ; A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times More rich; ' That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account; but the full sum of me Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised ; Happy in this, she is not yet so old 120 130 140 150 160 36 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE But she may learn; happier then in this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all in that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king. Myself and what is mine to you and yours Is now converted: but now I was the lord Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, Queen o’er myself; and even now, but now, This house, these servants and this same myself Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring; Which when you part from, lose, or give away, Let it presage the ruin of your love And be my vantage to exclaim on you. Bass. Madam, you have bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins; And there is such confusion in my powers, As, after some oration fairly spoke By a beloved prince, there doth appear Among the buzzing pleased multitude; Where every something, being blent together, Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, Express’d and not express’d. But when this ring Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence: O, then be bold to say Bassanio’s dead! er. My lord and lady, it is now our time, That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper, To cry, good joy: good joy, my lord and lady! Gra. My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady, I wish you all the joy that you can wish; For I am sure you can wish none from me: And when your honours mean to solemnize The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you, Even at that time I may be married too. {Act III. 170 180 Bass. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife. Gra. I thank your lordship, you have got me one. My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours: You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid; You loved, I loved; for intermission No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. Your fortune stood upon the casket there, And so did mine too, as the matter falls ; For wooing here until I sweat again, And swearing till my very roof was dry With oaths of love, at last, if promise last, 200 Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 37 I got a promise of this fair one here To have her love, provided that your fortune Achieved her mistress. Por. Is this true, Nerissa? 210 er. Madan, it is, so you stand pleased withal. Bass. And do you, Gratiano, mean good Ease Gra. Yes, faith, my lord. Bass. Our feast shall be much honourd in your marriage. But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel? What, and my old Venetian friend Salanio? Enter LORENZO, JESSICA, and SALANIO, a Messenger Jrom Venice. Bass. Lorenzo and Salanio, welcome hither; If that the youth of my new interest here Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave, I bid my very friends and countrymen, 220 Sweet Portia, welcome. Por. So do I, my lord: They are entirely welcome. Lor. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord, My purpose was not to have seen you here; But meeting with Salanio by the way, He did intreat me, past all saying nay, To come with him along. Salan. I did, my lord; And I have reason for it. Signor Antonio Commends him to you. [Gives Bassanio a letter. Bass. Ere I ope his letter, I pray you, tell me how my good friend doth. 230 Salan. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind; Nor well, unless in mind: his letter there Will show you his estate. Gra. Nerissa, cheer yon stranger; bid her welcome. Your hand, Salanio: what’s the news from Venice? How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio? I know he will be glad of our success ; We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece. Salan. 1 would you had won the fleece that he hath lost. Por. There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper, That steals the colour from Bassanio’s cheek: 241 Some dear friend dead; else nothing in the world Could turn so much the constitution Of any constant man. What, worse and worse! With leave, Bassanio; I am half yourself, 38 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Ana { must freely have the half of anything That this same paper brings you. Bass. O sweet Portia, Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady, When I did first impart my love to you, 250 I freely told you, all the wealth I had Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman; And then I told you true: and yet, dear lady, - Rating myself at nothing, you shall see How much I was a braggart. When I told you My state was nothing, I should then have told you That I was worse than nothing; for, indeed, I have engaged myself to a dear friend, Engaged my friend to his mere enemy, To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady; 260 The paper as the body of my friend, And every word in it a gaping wound, Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salanio? Have all his ventures fail’d? What, not one hit? From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, From Lisbon, Barbary and India? And not one vessel ’scape the dreadful touch Of merchant-marring rocks? Salan. Not one, my lord. Besides, it should appear, that if he had The present money to discharge the Jew, 270 He would not take it. Never did I know A creature, that did bear the shape of man, -So keen and greedy to confound a man: He plies the duke at morning and at night, And doth impeach the freedom of the state, If they deny him justice: twenty merchants, The duke himself, and the magnificoes Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him; But none can drive him from the envious plea Of forfeiture, of justice and his bond. 280 Jes. When I was with him I have heard him swear To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh Than twenty times the value of the sum That he did owe him: and I know, my lord, If law, authority and power deny not, It will go hard with poor Antonio. Por. Is it ycur dear friend that is thus in trouble? Scene 3.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 39 Bass. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, The best-condition’d and unwearied spirit 290 In doing courtesies, and one in whom The ancient Roman honour more appears Than any that draws breath in Italy. Por. What sum owes he the Jew? Bass. For me three thousand ducats. Por. What, no more? Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond; Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault. First go with me to church and call me wife, 300 And then away to Venice to your friend ; For never shall you lie by Portia’s side With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold To pay the petty debt twenty times over: When it is paid, bring your true friend along. My maid Nerissa and myself meantime Will live as maids and widows, Come, away! For you shall hence upon your wedding-day : Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer: Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear. 310 But let me hear the letter of your friend. Bass. |Reads| Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I. If I might but see you at my death—notwithstanding, use your pleasure: if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter. Por. O love, dispatch all business, and be gone! Bass. Since I have your good leave to go away, 320 I will make haste: but, till I come again, No bed shall e’er be guilty of my stay, No rest be interposer ’twixt ustwain. [2xeunt. SCENE III. Venice. A street. Enter SHYLOCK, SALARINO, ANTONIO, avd Gaoler. Shy. Gaoler, look to him: tell not me of mercy ; This is the fool that lent out money gratis: Gaoler, look to him. Ant. Hear me yet, good Shylock. 40 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Shy. I'll have my bond; speak not against my bond: I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond. Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs: The duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder, Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond To come abroad with him at his request. Ant, | pray thee, hear me speak. Shy. 1’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak: Ill have my bond; and therefore speak no more. I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield To Christian intercessors. Follow not; Io I’ll have no speaking: I will have my bond. [Exit. Salar. It is the most impenetrable cur That ever kept with men. Ant. Let him alone: I’ll follow him no more with bootless prayers. He seeks my life; his reason well I know: I oft deliver’d from his forfeitures Many that have at times made moan to me; Therefore he hates me. Salar. I am sure the duke Will never grant this forfeiture to hold. Ant. The duke cannot deny the course of law, For the commodity that strangers have With us in Venice. If it be denied, ’T will much impeach the justice of his state: Since that the trade and profit of the city Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go: These griefs and losses have so bated me, That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh To-morrow to my bloody creditor. Well, gaoler, on. Pray God, Bassanio come 20 30 To see me pay his debt, and then I care not! [Exeunt. SCENE IV. Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house. Enter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA, and BALTHASAR. Lor. Madam, although I speak it in your presence, You have a noble and a true conceit Of god-like amity; which appears most strongly In bearing thus the absence of your lord. But if you knew to whom you show this honour, Scene 4.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 4! How true a gentleman you send relief, How dear a lover of my lord your husband, I know you would be prouder of the work Than customary bounty can enforce you. Por. I never did repent for doing good, 10 Nor shall not now: for in companions That do converse and waste the time together, Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit; Which makes me think that this Antonio, Being the bosom lover of my lord, Must needs be like my lord. If it be so, How little is the cost I have bestow’d In purchasing the semblance of my soul 20 From out the state of hellish misery! This comes too near the praising of myself; Therefore no more of it: hear other things. Lorenzo, I commit into your hands The husbandry and manage of my house Until my lord’s return: for mine own part, I have toward heaven breathed a secret vow To live in prayer and contemplation, Only attended by Nerissa here, Until her husband and my lord’s return: 30 There is a monastery two miles off; And there will we abide. I do desire you Not to deny this imposition ; The which my love and some necessity Now lays upon you. Lor. Madam, with all my heart ; I shall obey you in all fair commands. Por. My people do already know my mind, And will acknowledge you and Jessica In place of Lord Bassanio and myself. And so farewell, till we shall meet again. 40 Lor. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you! Jes. 1 wish your ladyship all heart’s content. Por. 1 thank you for your wish, and am well pleased To wish it back on you: fare you well, Jessica. [Exeunt Jessica and Lorenzo. Now, Balthasar, As I have ever found thee honest-true, So let me find thee still. Take this same letter, And use thou all the endeavour of a man 42 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. In speed to Padua: see thou render this Into my cousin’s hand, Doctor Bellario; 50 And, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, Bring them, I pray thee, with imagined speed Unto the traject, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words, But get thee gone: I shall be there before thee. Balth. Madam, I go with all convenient speed. [Exiz. Por. Come on, Nerissa; I have work in hand That you yet know not of: we’ll see our husbands Before they think of us. Ner. Shall they see us? Por. They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit, 60 That they shall think we are accomplished With that we lack. I’Il hold thee any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace, And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride, and speak of frays Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies, How honourable ladies sought my love, 70 Which I denying, they fell sick and died; ' I could not do withal; then I’ll repent, And wish, for all that, that I had not kill’d them; And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell, That men shall swear I have discontinued school Above a twelvemonth. I have within my mind A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, Which I will practise. But come, I'll tell thee all my whole device When I am in my coach, which stays for us 80 At the park gate; and therefore haste away, For we must measure twenty miles to-day. [Exeunt. SCENE V. The same. A garden. Enter LAUNCELOT and JESSICA. Laun. Yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children: therefore, I promise ye, I fear you. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of the matter: therefore be of good cheer, for truly I think you are damned. Scene 5.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 43 Jes. 1 shall be saved by-my husband; he hath made me a Christian. Laun. Truly, the more to blame he: we were Christians enow before; e’en as many as could well live, one by another. This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs: if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. 12 Enter LORENZO. Jes. 1'll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say: here he comes. Lor. 1 shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you thus get my wife into corners. Jes. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo: Launcelot and I are out. He tells me flatly, there is no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter: and he says, you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork. 21 Lor. How every fool can play upon the word! I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable m none only but parrots. Go in, sirrah; bid them prepare for dinner. Laun. That is done, sir; they have all stomachs. Lor. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you! then bid them prepare dinner. Laun. That is done too, sir; only ‘cover’ is the word. Lor. Will you cover then, sir? 30 Laun. Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty. Lor. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows; bid them cover the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner. Laun. For the table, sir, it shall be served in; for the meat, sir, it shall be covered ; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why, let it be as humours and conceits shall govern. [ Exit. Lor. O dear discretion, how his words are suited ! 40 The fool hath planted in his memory An army of good words; and I do know A many fools, that stand in better place, Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word Defy the matter. How cheer’st thou, Jessica? And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio’s wife? Jes. Past all expressing. It is very meet 44 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. The Lord Bassanio live an upright life; For, having such a blessing in his lady, 50 He finds the joys of heaven here on earth; And if on earth he do not merit it, In reason he should never come to heaven. Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match And on the wager lay two earthly women, And Portia one, there must be something else Pawn’d with the other, for the poor rude world Hath not her fellow. Lor. Even such a husband Hast thou of me as she is for a wife. Jes. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that. 60 Lor. I will anon: first, let us go to dinner. Jes. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach. Lor. No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk, Then, howsoe’er thou speak’st, ’mong other things I shall digest it. Jes. Well, I’ll set you forth. [Exeunt. ACLs LV. SCENE I. Venice. A court of justice. Enter the DUKE, the Magnificoes, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, GRATIANO, SALANIO, and others. Duke. What, is Antonio here? Ant. Ready, so please your grace. Duke. 1 am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Uncapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy. Ant. I have heard Your grace hath ta’en great pains to qualify His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate And that no lawful means can carry me Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose 10 My patience to his fury, and am arm’d To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, The very tyranny and rage of his. Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court. Salan. He is ready at the door: he comes, my lord. “Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Enter SHYLOCK. Duke. Make room, and let him stand before our face. Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, That thou but lead’st this fashion of thy malice To the last hour of act; and then ’tis thought Thou ’lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange Than is thy strange apparent cruelty ; And where thou now exact’st the penalty, Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh, Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, But, touch’d with human gentleness and love, Forgive a moiety of the principal ; Glancing an eye of pity on his losses, That have of late so huddled on his back, Enow to press a royal merchant down And pluck commiseration of his state From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint, From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train’d To offices of tender courtesy. We all expect a gentle answer, Jew. Shy. I have possess’d your grace of what I purpose; And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn To have the due and forfeit of my bond: If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter and your city’s freedom. You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have A weight of carrion flesh than to receive Three thousand ducats: I’ll not answer that: But, say, it is my humour: is it answerd? What if my house be troubled with a rat And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats To have it baned? What, are you answerd yet? Some men there are love not a gaping pig; Some, that are mad if they behold a cat; And others, at the bagpipe; for affection, Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer: As there is no firm reason to be renderd, Why he cannot abide a gaping pig; Why he, a harmless necessary cat; Why he, a woollen bagpipe ; So can I give no reason, nor I will not, More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing I bear Antonio, that I follow thus A losing suit against him. Are you answerd? (™330) F 45 20 a 40 50 (aacte COLAND, hh FPL a a yruer2. 3 Cin: 46 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. PICO, Bass. This is no answer, thou unfeeling nan, 60 To excuse the current of thy cruelty. Shy. 1 am not bound to please thee with my answers. Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love? Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill? Bass. Every offence is not a hate at first. Shy. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice? Ant. I pray you, think you question with the Jew: You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height ; You may as well use question with the wolf 70 Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven ; You may as well do any thing most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what’s harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, I do beseech you, Make no more offers, use no farther means, But with all brief and plain conveniency Let me have judgement and the Jew his will. 80 Bass. For thy three thousand ducats here is Six. Shy. If every ducat in six thousand ducats Were in six parts and every part a ducat, I would not draw them; I would have my bond. Duke. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none? Shy. What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong? You have among you many a purchased slave, Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them: shall I say to you, go Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds Be made as soft as yours and let their palates Be season’d with such viands? You will answer ‘The slaves are ours’: so do I answer you: The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, Is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice. I stand for judgement: answer; shall I have it? 100 Duke. Upon my power I may dismiss this court, Unless Bellario, a learned doctor, Whom I have sent for to determine this, Come here to-day. Beene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Salan. My lord, here stays without A messenger with letters from the doctor, New come from Padua. Duke. Bring us the letters; call the messenger. Bass. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet! The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all, Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood. Ant. | am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground; and so let me: You cannot better be employ’d, Bassanio, Than to live still and write mine epitaph. Enter NERISSA, dressed like a lawyer's clerk. Duke. Came you from Padua, from Bellario? Ner. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your grace. 47 IIo [Presenting a letter. Bass. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly? Shy. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there. Gra. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, Thou makest thy knife keen: but no metal can, No, not the hangman’s axe, bear half the keenness Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee? Shy. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make. Gra. O, be thou damn’d, inexorable dog! And for thy life let justice be accused. Thou almost makest me waver in my faith To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam, Infused itselfin thee; for thy desires Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. Shy. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud: Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall To cureless ruin. I stand here for law. Duke. This letter from Bellario doth commend A young and learned doctor to our court. Where is he? er. He attendeth here hard by, To know your answer, whether you’ll admit him. 120 130 140 48 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Duke. With all my heart. Some three or four of you Go give him courteous conduct to this place. Meantime the ceyrt shall hear Bellario’s letter. Clerk. [Reads| Your grace shall understand that at the receipt of your letter I am very sick: but in the instant that your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor of Rome; his name is Balthasar. I acquainted him with the cause in controversy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant: we turned o’er many books together: he is furnished with my opinion; which, bettered with his own learning, the greatness whereof I cannot enough com- mend, comes with him, at my importunity, to fill up your grace’s request in my stead. I beseech you, let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation; for I never knew so young a body with so olda head. I leave him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his commendation. 160 Duke. You hear the learn’d Bellario, what he writes: And here, I take it, is the doctor come. Enter PoRTIA, dressed like a doctor of laws. Give me your hand. Come you from old Bellario? Por. 1 did, my lord. Duke. You are welcome: take your place. Are you acquainted with the difference That holds this present question in the court? Por. 1 am informed throughly of the cause. Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? Duke. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth. Por. Is your name Shylock? Shy. Shylock is my name. 170 Por. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow; Yet in such rule that the Venetian law Cannot impugn you as you do proceed. You stand within his danger, do you not? Ant. Ay, so he says. Por: Do you confess the bond? Ant. I do. Por. Then must the Jew be merciful. Shy. On what compulsion must I? tell me that. Por. The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 180 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: es > as F bn Gf +, Pron i; ; ts tes xf f y of fi LVL“ FD * 10° i> LAN Go fe tart : i I £ . OW " : ; tiene? Ps af o, VNiduate MLeriby ff " ri ‘ f ruil A “AA wer em , atthe THT Po pas OF LAA ur ws | Me i «IC ae ew if Fk ae iT, OF’ VEN , 49 / / ’T is mightiest in the mightiest ! it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 190 When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy ; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there. Shy. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, 200 The penalty and forfeit of my bond. Por. Is he not able to discharge the money? Bass. Yes, here I tender it for him in the court; Yea, twice the sum: if that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er; On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart: If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority: To do a great right, do a little wrong, 210 And curb this cruel devil of his will. Por. It must not be; there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established : ye *T will be recorded for a precedent, Ty i pee And many an error by the same example iis Will rush into the state: it cannot be. Shy. A Daniel come to judgement! yea, a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I do honour thee! Por. I pray you, let me look upon the bond. Shy. Here ’tis, most reverend doctor, here it is. 220 ae the Por. Shyl here’s thrice thy money, offer d thes. ey Shy. An oath, an oath, I have’an6ath in heaven: ~ """ 8 © i ae i ‘ ad ; ; : y week Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice. Por. Why, this bond is forfeit; © v4 /wany fa. LA And lawfully by this the Jew may claim yr » . Pi AM 4 a LAER OMNI, all ft 4 © ->P oF Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, ~ 50 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off Nearest the merchant’s heart. Be merciful: Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond. Shy. When it is paid according to the tenour. It doth appear you are a worthy judge; 230 You know the law, your exposition Hath been most sound: I charge you by the law, Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, Proceed to judgement: by my soul I swear There is no power in the tongue of man To alter me: I stay here on my bond. Ant. Most heartily I do beseech the court To give the judgement. Por. Why then, thus it is: You must prepare your bosom for his knife. Shy. O noble judge! O excellent young man! 240 Por. For the intent and purpose of the law Hath full relation to the penalty, Which here appeareth due upon the bond. Shy. ’T is very true: O wise and upright judge! How much more elder art thou than thy looks! Por. Therefore lay bare your bosom. Shy. Ay, his breast: So says the bond: doth it not, noble judge? ‘ Nearest his heart’: those are the very words. Por. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh The flesh? Shy. I_have them.ready... set aeeemnineneamninaeianiiiabtee ee 2 50 Lay fy f) To stop his wounds,.lest.he do bleed to death. od xy. Is it so nominated in the bond?” ‘2 ~\S Por. It is not so express’d: but what of that? *T were good you do so much for charity. Shy. 1 cannot find it; ’tis not in the bond. Por. You, merchant, have you any thing to say? Ant. But little: I am arm’d and well prepared. Give me your hand, Bassanio: fare you well! Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; 260 For herein Fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom: it is still her use To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow An age of poverty; from which lingering penance Of such misery doth she cut me off. Commend me to your honourable wife: Scene 1r.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 51 Tell her the process of Antonio’s end; Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death; And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 270 Whether Bassanio had not once a love. Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, And he repents not that he pays your debt; For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, I’ll pay it presently with all my heart. Bass. Antonio, I am married to a wife Which is as dear to me as life itself; But life itself, my wife, and all the world, Are not with me esteem’d above thy life: I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all 280 Here to this devil, to deliver you. Por. Your wife would give you little thanks for that, If she were by, to hear you make the offer. Gra. I have a wife, whom, I protest, I love: I would she were in heaven, so she could Entreat some power to change this currish Jew. Wer. ’T is well you offer it behind her back; The wish would make else an unquiet house. Shy. These be the Christian husbands. I have a daughter; Would any of the stock of Barrabas 290 Had been her husband rather than a Christian. [ Aside. We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence. Por. A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine: The court awards it, and the law doth give it. Shy. Most rightful judge! Por. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast: The law allows it, and the court awards it. Shy. Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare! or. Tarry a little; there is something else. ‘ This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; 300 \The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’: ake then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; ut, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed ne drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate Unto the state of Venice. Gra. O upright judge! Mark, Jew: O learned judge! Shy. Is that the law? Por. Thyself shalt see the act: For, as thou urgest justice, be assured Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest. 310 Gra. O learned judge! Mark, Jew: a learned judge! 52 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Shy. 1 take this offer, then; pay the bond thrice And let the Christian go. id Bass. Here is the money. Por. Soft! The Jew shall have all justice; soft! no haste: He shall have nothing but the penalty. Gra. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge! Por. Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more But just a pound of ‘flesh: if thou cut’st more Or less than a just pound, be it but so much “As makes it light or heavy in the substance Of the division of the twentieth part Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn But in the estimation of a hair, Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. Gra. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew! Now, infidel, I have you on the hip. [Act Por. Why doth the Jew pause? take thy forfeiture. Shy. Give me my principal, and let me go. Bass. 1 have it ready for thee; here it is. Por. He hath refused it in the open court: He shall have merely justice and his bond. Gra. A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. Shy. Shall I not have barely my principal? Por. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture, To be so taken at thy peril, Jew. Shy. Why, then the devil give nies good of it! I’ll stay no longer question. fen Por. Tarry, Tees / The law hath yet another hold on you. It is enacted in the laws of Venice, If it be proved against an alien That by direct or indirect attempts He seek the life of any citizen, The party ’gainst the which he did contrive Shall seize one half his goods; the other half Comes to the privy coffer of the state; And the offender’s life lies in the mercy Of the duke only, ’gainst all other voice. In which predicament, I say, thou stand’st ; For it appears, by manifest proceeding, That indirectly and directly too Thou hast contrived against the very life IV. 320 33° 35° Scener.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 53 Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr’d The danger formerly by me rehearsed. Down therefore and beg mercy of the duke. Gra. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself: And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, Thou hast not left the value of a cord; 360 Therefore thou must be hang’d at the ‘state’s charge. Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirits, I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it: For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s ; The other half comes to the general state, Which humbleness may drive unto a fine. Por. Ay, for the state, not for Antonio. Shy. Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: You take my house when you do take the prop That,doth sustain my house; you take my life 370 When you do take the means whereby I live. Por. What mercy can you render him, Antonio? Gra. A halter gratis; nothing else, for God’s sake. Ant. So please my lord the duke and all the court To qui the fine for one half of his goods, I am content,—so he will let me have The other halfin use,—to render it, Upon his death, unto the gentleman _ That latély stole his daughter : Two things/provided more, that, for this” eavoud, 380 pecome a Christiam; Here in the co ; 5 all he dies possess’d ot Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter. Duke. He shall do this, or else I do recant The pardon that I late pronounced here. Por. Art thou contented, Jew? what dost thou say? Shy. 1 am content. Por. Clerk, draw a deed of gift. Shy. I pray you, give me leave to go from hence; I am not well: send the deed after me, 390 ™ And I will sign it. Duke. Get thee gone, but do it. Gra. In christening shalt thou have two godfathers: Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, To bring thee to the gallows, not the font. [EZazt Shylock, Duke. Sir, 1 entreat you home with me to dinner. Por. 1 humbly do desire your grace of pardon: I must away this night toward Padua, f 54 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. And it is meet I presently set forth. Duke. 1 am sorry that your leisure serves you not. Antonio, gratify this gentleman, 490 For, in my mind, you are much bound to him. [Exeunt Duke and his train. Bass. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted Of grievous penalties; in lieu whereof, Three thousand ducats, due unto the Jew, We freely cope your courteous pains withal. Ant. And stand indebted, over and above, In love and service to you evermore. Por. He is well paid that is well satisfied ; And I, delivering you, am satisfied 410 And therein do account myself well paid: My mind was never yet more mercenary. I pray you, know me when we meet again: I wish you well, and so I take my leave. Bass. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further: Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute, Not as a fee: grant me two things, I pray you, Not to deny me, and to pardon me. Por. You press me far, and therefore I will yield. 419 [Zo Ant.] Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake; [Zo Bass.|] And, for your love, I ll take this ring from you: Do not draw back your hand; I’ll take no more; And you in love shall not deny me this. Bass. This ring, good sir, alas, it is a trifle! I will not shame myself to give you this. Por. 1 will have nothing else but only this; And now methinks I have a mind to it. Bass. There’s more depends on this than on the value. The dearest ring in Venice will I give you, And find it out by proclamation: 430 Only for this, I pray you, pardon me. Por. 1 see, sir, you are liberal in offers: You taught me first to beg; and now methinks You teach me how a beggar should be answer’d. Bass. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife; And when she put it on, she made me vow That I should neither sell nor give nor lose it. Por. That ’scuse serves many men to save their gifts. An if your wife be not a mad-woman, And know how well I have deserved the ring, 440 She would not hold out enemy for ever, Scene 2.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 55 For giving it tome. Well, peace be with you! [Axeunt Portia and Nerissa. Ant. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring: Let his deservings and my love withal Be valued,’gainst your wife’s commandment. Bass. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him; Give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst, Unto Antonio’s house: away! make haste. [Ax7t Gratiano. Come, you and I will thither presently; And in the morning early will we both 450 Fly toward Belmont: come, Antonio. [Exeunt. SCENE II. Zhe same. A Street. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. Por. Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed And let him sign it: we’ll away to-night And be a day before our husbands home: This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo. Enter GRATIANO. Gra. Fair sir, you are well o’erta’en: My Lord Bassanio upon more advice Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat Your company at dinner. Por. That cannot be: His ring I do accept most thankfully: And so, I pray you, tell him: furthermore, 10 I pray you, show my youth old Shylock’s house. Gra. That will I do. Ver. Sir, I would speak with you. [Astde to Por.| 1’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring, Which I did make him swear to keep for ever. Por. [Aside to Ner.| Thou mayst, I warrant. We shall have old swearing That they did give the rings away to men; But we'll outface them, and outswear them too. {4 loud] Away! make haste: thou know’st where I will tarry. Ner. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house? [Exeunt. 56 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. ACT V. SCENE I. Belmont. Avenue to PORTIA’S house. Enter LORENZO and JESSICA. Lor. The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss thé trees And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. Jes. In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew, And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself, And ran dismay’d away. Lor. In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Ie Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage. Jes. In such a night Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs That did renew old Aéson. Lor. In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew And with an unthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont. Jes. In such a night Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, Stealing her soul with many vows of faith And ne’er a true one. Lor. In such a night 20 Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jes. | would out-night you, did no body come; But, hark, I hear the footing of a man. Enter STEPHANO. Lor. Who comes so fast in silence of the night? Steph. A friend. Lor. A friend! what friend? your name, I pray you, friend? Steph. Stephano is my name; and I bring word My mistress will before the break of day Be here at Belmont: she doth stray about 30 Scene r.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 57 By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays For happy wedlock hours. Lor. Who comes with her? Steph. None but a holy hermit and her maid. I pray you, is my master yet return’d? Lor. He is not, nor we have not heard from him. But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica, And ceremoniously let us prepare Some welcome for the mistress of the house. Enter LAUNCELOT. Laun. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola! Lor. Who calls? 40 Laun. Sola! did you see Master Lorenzo? Master Lorenzo, sola, sola! Lor. Leave hollaing, man: here. Laun. Sola! where? where? Lor. Here. Laun. Tell him there’s a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere morning. [E-xit. Lor. Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming. And yet no matter: why should we go in? 50 My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, Within the house, your mistress is at hand ; And bring your music forth into the air. [Exit Stephano. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st 60 But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. Enter Musicians. Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn: With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear And draw her home with music. [Mustc. Jes. 1 am never merry when I hear sweet music. Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive: 70 58 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood ; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; 80 Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. Por. That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! 90 So shines a good deed in a naughty world. ver. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less: A substitute shines brightly as a king Until a king be by, and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook Into the main of waters. Music! hark! er. It is your music, madam, of the house. Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect: Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 100 Ver. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended, and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season season’d are To their right praise and true perfection ! Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awaked. [Music ceases. Lor. That is the voice, 119 Or I am much deceived, of Portia. Scene 1.] THE MERCHANT OF. VENICE 59 Por. He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, By the bad voice. Lor. Dear lady, welcome home. Por. We have been praying for our husbands’ healths, Which speed, we hope, the better for our words. Are they return’d? Lor. Madam, they are not yet; But there is come a messenger before, To signify their coming. Por. Go in, Nerissa; Give order to my servants that they take No note at all of our being absent hence; 120 Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you. [A tucket sounds. Lor. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet: We are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not. Por. This night methinks is but the daylight sick; It looks a little paler: ’tis a day, Such as the day is when the sun is hid. Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their followers. Bass. We should hold day with the Antipodes, If you would walk in absence of the sun. Por. Let me give light, but let me not be light; For a light wife doth make a heavy husband, 130 And never be Bassanio so for me: But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord. Bass. 1 thank you, madam. Give welcome to my friend. This is the man, this is Antonio, To whom I am so infinitely bound. Por. You should in all sense be much bound to him, For, as I hear, he was much bound for you. Ant. No more than I am well acquitted of. Por. Sir, you are very welcome to our house: It must appear in other ways than words, 140 Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy. Gra. [To Ner.| By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong; In faith, I gave it to the judge’s clerk. Por. A quarrel, ho, already! what’s the matter? Gra. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring That she did give me, whose posy was For all the world like cutler’s poetry Upon a knife, ‘ Love me, and leave me not’. Wer. What talk you of the posy or the value? You swore to me, when I did give it you, 150 60 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. That you would wear it till your hour of death And that it should lie with you in your grave: Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, You should have been respective and have kept it. Gave it a judge’s clerk! no, God’s my judge, The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it. Gra. He will, an if he live to be a man. Ver. Ay, if a woman live to be a man. Gra. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth, A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, 160 No higher than thyself, the judge’s clerk, A prating boy, that begg’d it as a fee: I could not for my heart deny it him. Por. You were to blame, I must be plain with you, To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift ; A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger And riveted with faith unto your flesh. I gave my love a ring and made him swear Never to part with it; and here he stands; I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it 179 Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano, You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief: An ’t were to me, I should be mad at it. Bass. [Aside] Why, I were best to cut my left hand off And swear I lost the ring defending it. Gra. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away Unto the judge that begg’d it and indeed Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk, That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine; 180 And neither man nor master would take aught But the two rings. Por. What ring gave you, my lord? Not that, I hope, which you received of me. Bass. If I could add a lie unto a fault, I would deny it; but you see my finger Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone. Por. Even so void is your false heart of truth. Bass. Sweet Portia, If you did know to whom I gave the ring, If you did know for whom I gave the ring, 190 And would conceive for what I gave the ring And how unwillingly I left the ring, When nought would be accepted but the ring, You would abate the strength of your displeasure. 4 Scene z.] | THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 61 Por. If you had known the virtue of the ring, Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, Or your own honour to contain the ring, You would not then have parted with the ring. What man is there so much unreasonable, If you had pleased to have defended it 200 With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty To urge the thing held as a ceremony? Nerissa teaches me what to believe: Ill die for’t but some woman had the ring. Bass. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul, No woman had it, but a civil doctor, Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me And begg’d the ring; the which I did deny him And suffer’d him to go displeased away ; Even he that did uphold the very life 210 Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady? I was enforced to send it after him; I was beset with shame and courtesy; My honour would not let ingratitude So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady; For, by these blessed candles of the night, Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d The ring of me to give the worthy doctor. Por. Let not that doctor e’er come near my house: Since he hath got the jewel that I loved, 220 And that which you did swear to keep for me, I will become as liberal as you; I’ll not deny him anything I have. Ant. 1 am the unhappy subject of these quarrels. Por. Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome notwithstanding. Bass. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong ; And, in the hearing of these many friends, I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes, Wherein I see myself— Por. Mark you but that! In both my eyes he doubly sees himself; 230 In each eye, one: swear by your double self, And there’s an oath of credit. Bass. Nay, but hear me: Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear I never more will break an oath with thee. Ant. I once did lend my body for his wealth ; Which, but for him that had your husband’s ring, Had quite miscarried: I dare be bound again, (M330) a 62 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V.Sc.1. My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord Will never more break faith advisedly. Por. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this 240 And bid him keep it better than the other. Ant. Here, Lord Bassanio; swear to keep this ring. Bass. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor! Por. \had it of him. You are all amazd: . Here is a letter; read it at your leisure; It comes from Padua, from Bellario: There you shall find that Portia was the doctor, Nerissa there her clerk: Lorenzo here Shall witness I set forth as soon as you And even but now return’d; I have not yet 250 Enter’d my house. Antonio, you are welcome ; And I have better news in store for you Than you expect: unseal this letter soon; There you shall find three of your argosies Are richly come to harbour suddenly: You shall not know by what strange accident I chanced on this letter. Ant. I am dumb. Bass. Were you the doctor and I knew you not? Ant. Sweet lady you have given me life and living; For here I read for certain that my ships 2 Are safely come to road. Por. How now, Lorenzo! My clerk hath some good comforts too for you. er. Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee. There do I give to you and Jessica, From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift, After his death, of all he dies possess’d of. Lor. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way Of starved people. Por. It is almost morning, And yet I am sure you are not satisfied Of these events at full. Let us go in; 270 And charge us there upon inter’gatories, And we will answer all things faithfully. Gra. Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. [Exeunt, NOTES. Act I.—Scene I. How Bassanio, a scholar and a soldter, tells the merchant, Antonio, of hts purpose to win Portia, the heiress of Belmont; and how Antonto undertakes to find the money to fit out a ship for him. The early scenes of Shakespeare’s plays serve both to introduce the foremost persons of the action, and to give a foretaste of the kind of tale that is to follow. Fine instances of his art in ‘ overture’ are the beginnings of Hamlet and Macbeth. Here, we begin by making the acquaintance of the Merchant of Venice himself and of two of his friends, who appear to be courtiers or soldiers. Antonio is out of spirits, and his melancholy is ominous— ‘* By a divine instinct men’s minds mistrust Ensuing dangers” (Azchard [/1., ii. 3. 42). His anxious words, together with the description by the others of a merchant’s risks, suggest the coming trouble. At the same time their solicitude and kindness are prompted by a touch of the same loyal friendship by which that trouble is to be remedied. Later, we are also introduced to Bassanio and certain of his com- panions. Immediately upon this the threefold action of the plot begins with Bassanio’s story of his hopes of Portia, with Lorenzo’s agreement to meet Bassanio ‘after dinner’, and with Antonio’s promise to raise money. 8. Scan this line, and note the word which has a different pronunciation from the modern. Compare ‘obscure’, ii. 7. 51, ‘aspéct’, ii, 1. 8. 13. The little ships feel the motion of the waves, and seem to bob and curtsy to the big, steady galleys of Antonio. 15. had I such venture forth. Put this expression along with i. I. 143, ‘‘to find the other forth”, and ii. 5. 11, ‘‘I am bid forth to supper ”, and explain the meaning of the adverb. 16. affections in Shakespeare’s time had a wider sense than in modern English, and included all feelings or emotions; so also in iv. I. 49. 64. ‘THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I. 18, sits. The wind is said to ‘sit’ in the quarter towards which it blows. So in Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 3. 102, ‘‘ sits the wind in that corner?” 1g. roads, parts of the sea where a ship may safely ‘ride’ at anchor. 28. Andrew, a name for a galley. It is not known whether Shakespeare had any particular ship in mind. 32. touching but, merely touching. There is a similar order of words in line 153 of this scene, and in iv. I. 272, ‘‘repent but you”. 50. two-headed Janus, the god of gates and doors, who there- fore was figured ‘facing both ways’, and so is a type of opposite extremes united in a single nature. . 52. peep through their eyes, z.¢. their eyes are ‘screwed up’, as their faces wrinkle with laughter. 56. Nestor, a proverb for age and gravity. He lived through three generations, and in the third fought with the Greeks against the Trojans. 61. prevented, anticipated; compare the derivation of the verb. 70. dinner-time, z.e. about eleven a.m. Compare the passage in A Description of England by William Harrison, an elder contem- porary of Shakespeare’s (p. 105 in Z/izabethan England, ed. Furni- vall, in the Camelot Series), ‘With us the nobility, gentry, and students do ordinarily go to dinner at e/even before noon”. 71. where we must meet. Lorenzo is already laying his plans to run off with Jessica, with the help of Bassanio. 74. 2€ you take the world more seriously than it is worth, and ‘lose’ it by losing the power to enjoy it. So Robert Louis Steven- son, after Thoreau: ‘‘A man may pay too dearly for his livelihood by giving his whole life for it”. 977. At its second occurrence in the line, ‘world’ must be read with a different intonation, and be understood with a different mean- ing: i ‘TI take the world, but as the wor/d’. A fuller emphasis gives quite another colour to a word, as in— ** Love is not love Which alters where it alteration finds”, or ‘Tf it were done, when ’t is done, then ’t were well It were done quickly”. 78. [In what other places does Shakespeare compare life to acting in a play?] 79. Rosalind says much the same: ‘‘I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad”, In this passage ‘‘ play the fool” means ‘act the part of clown’. 80. old wrinkles, 7.¢. such as old age produces. Scene 1.] NOTES. iL 65 | 84. his grandsire cut in alabaster, that is, like an effigy ona tomb. Alabaster tombs of Elizabethan times may be seen in many churches. There is a noble example of one at Mytton Church in Yorkshire. 90. entertain, we should now say ‘maintain’. Schmidt quotes *‘here we entertain a solemn peace” from the first part of Henry VZ. gi. opinion of wisdom =‘ reputation for wisdom’. 92. conceit has its original meaning of ‘something conceived’, a ‘thought’ or ‘fancy’. See note on ili. 4. 2. 99. Expand the phrase from the condensed form in which it appears in the text. What passage of the New Testament is referred to? ror, Gratiano accuses Antonio of putting on an appearance of melancholy to establish his reputation for wisdom. There is a curiously exact parallel in Howell’s Zustructions for Forreine Travell (first published 1642, reprinted by Arber), ‘‘The Italians are for the most part of a speculative complexion [#.¢. disposition], and he is accounted little lesse than a foole who is not melancholy once a day”. 102. this fool gudgeon, a greedy and stupid fish, easily caught, because it will swallow any bait, and not worth the trouble when you have caught it. 108. moe, a different word from ‘more’, and—in old English— differently used. ‘Mo’ or ‘moe’ was used of number, ‘more’ of size; ‘mo’ was the comparative used for the positive ‘many’, ‘more’ for ‘mickle’ or ‘much’. Vide Skeat’s Ztymological Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. ‘more’. 124, something, used adverbially = ‘ somewhat’, as in line 129. port=style of living. How does the word come to have this meaning? What other English words contain, the same metaphor? 126. make moan to be abridged, means ‘complain of being cut down’, Cf. note on line 150. 137. to stand within the eye of honour, means ‘to be within honour’s range’. How would you expand the metaphor contained in this phrase into a simile? 140. school-days. It is amusing to put together some of the passages in which Shakespeare speaks of school-days and school-boys: e.g. Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 1. 21, ‘‘to sigh like a schoolboy that hath lost his ABC”; Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 1. 229, ‘‘ the flat transgression of a schoolboy, who being overjoyed with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion and he steals it”; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. 156: ‘* Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks”; and, best known ofall, As You Like Jt, ii. 7. 145: «* And then the whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school”. 66 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 1., a lad named William, who is being taken to school by his mother, is met in the street by the schoolmaster and made to say his ‘ Hic, haec, hoc’ then and there. The whole passage is very curious, and reads like a reminiscence of Shakespeare’s own boyhood. 141. of the self-same flight, z.¢. feathered and weighted for the same distance. 144. =‘I put forward this experience of my boyhood, because of the simplicity of what follows.’ For this sense of ‘ proof’ compare /wlius Cesar, ii. 1. 21: “Tt is a common proof That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder”. 150. =‘I have no doubt, from the way in which I mean to watch the aim, that I shall either find both or’, &c. In Shakespearean English ‘to’ with the verb is used in many senses where nowadays we should either use other prepositions, or else a conjunction with a dependent clause. See line 126 above, and 154 below. 153, 154. =‘ You only waste time by approaching your friend in roundabout fashion.’ 166. Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia, a clear reference to Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, wherein Porcia says: ‘‘I am the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus”. It is interesting to see that, some four or five years before the Heieed Cesar was written, Shakespeare had this heroine already in is mind. Bassanio’s Portia had several of her namesake’s qualities, as Plutarch describes them: ‘‘ This young Ladie being excellently well seen in Philosophie, louing her husband well, and being of a noble courage, as she was also wise”, &c. The zame Porcia is the feminine form of the ‘ gentilician’ name of M. Porcius Cato, retained by his daughter, in Roman fashion, after marriage. The spelling Portia is due to the common sixteenth-century substi- tution of -¢z- for -ci- in the endings of Latin words. [Sir Thomas North spelt it with a c.] 171. Colchos, more accurately Co/chis, a country at the eastern end of the Black Sea, whither Jason went in quest of the Golden Fleece. See note on ili. 2. 238. 175. I have a mind presages me such thrift. We should insert the relative pronoun before ‘ presages’. In modern English we omit the relative only when it would be, if expressed, in the objective case, as, e.g.: ‘I cannot find the book I was reading yesterday’. Take care to put the accent on the right syllable in ‘ presages’. Scan the line. Under what general rule does the pronunciation of the word come? Scene 2.] NOTES. 67 Scene 2. How Portia, the Lady of Belmont, declares her resolution to marry none but the man who should win her in the manner of her father’s will; how she speaks of Bassanio; of the departure of certain suitors, and the coming of the Prince of Morocco. This scene does something more than show us some of Portia’s qualities, her insight into men, her wit, and her loyalty to her father’s wishes. It shows that the conditions of the ‘lottery’ are such as to frighten away the fainter-hearted among her suitors, and to constitute some test of true love; and further, that she has already seen in a poor ‘scholar and soldier’ from Venice, who had visited Belmont in the train of the Marquis of Montferrat, the man whom she would prefer above all others. For the dress in which we are to imagine Portia, see Godwin in Furness’ Variorum Edition, p. 387: ‘‘ Portia would do her shopping probably at Padua, and would therefore follow the fashions of the mainland”, But any sixteenth-century picture of an Italian lady would be near enough. 1. Portia’s opening words recall Antonio’s, She is not entirely at ease, though for a different reason. 7. There is a play here between two words, spelt and sounded alike, but of different sense and origin. ‘Mean’, in the phrase ‘it is no mean happiness’=trivial or contemptible, and is derived from A.S. ‘maene’, wicked. ‘Mean’, in the phrase ‘to be seated in the mean’, = middle or moderate, between two extremes, and comes from the French ‘moyen’, the Lat. ‘ medianus’. ’ In line 21 there is a play of another kind, namely, on two different meanings of the same word, ‘will’, as again in v. I. 135, 136, on two meanings of * bound’, Such ‘ puns’, or plays on words, have nowadays associations with pantomime or farce; but in Queen Elizabeth’s time were often used quite seriously (even ‘in real life’), as if the similarity in word or phrase pointed to some analogy in the things themselves. For a serious use of a pun, in this play, compare Antonio’s words in what he thought was his dying speech: ‘* And, if the Jew do cut but deep enough, I’ll pay it presently, wzth all my heart”. 11. chapels had been churches, #.¢, small churches would have been large ones. The distinction between achapel and a church originally was that a chapel had no parish belonging to it, while a church had. 17. Such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. Draw the emblem sug- ested by the words, and see if it is not an admirable ie of the idea. ow many such ‘ picture-phrases’ there are in Shakespeare’s 63 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I poetry! Here are one or two instances to start a collection with: ‘Pity’ is a ‘naked new-born babe’ (Jacbeth). ‘‘ This drivelling Love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole” (Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 95). ‘* Wither’d Murder, alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf” (Macbeth). 38. County Palatine. ‘County’ for ‘Count’, as often in Shake- speare (‘ Princes and Counties’, JZuch Ado About ‘ Nothing, i iv. I. 317). A ‘Count Palatine’ was a count holding office in the palace of king or emperor, with almost royal prerogatives in his own ‘fief’ or territory. There were three such in England: the Duke of Lancaster, the Earl of Chester, and the Bishop of Durham. In Germany the title had at first a general meaning, as above (‘ palatine’ is the same word as ‘ paladin’), but was afterwards applied particularly to the Lords of the ‘ Palatinate’ on the western bank of the Upper Rhine. 40. If you will not have me, choose. Apparently something is omitted after ‘choose’, which Portia expresses by a gesture, Per- haps the phrase means, choose your weapon, as fora duel. His frown conveys a threat. 42. weeping philosopher, a name traditionally given to Hera- clitus, in contrast to the ‘laugher’, Democritus. 52. a capering. ‘a’ in such phrases is another form of the preposition ‘on’. (Cf. abed, alive, afoot.) 60. Latin was still a ‘living language’, in the sense of a com- mon means of communication, in Shakespeare’s time,—a relic of the days of the Roman dominion in Western Europe, when. Latin was everywhere the language of church and state. Two generations later than Shakespeare, when Milton was Cromwell’s secretary, Latin was still used in state despatches to foreign courts, and, even later still, was used by George I. to converse with Walpole. 62. proper=handsome, as in Authorized Version of Hebrews xi. 23: ‘* By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proger child”. 64. doublet, a garment fitting close to the body from the neck to the waist; round hose, clothes that went from the waist to the knees, called ‘round’, because puffed, so as to be globe-like in shape. 67. Scottish lord. Altered from the reading in the text, which is that of the 1600 editions, to ‘‘other lord” in the First Folio (1623). What had happened meanwhile in English History to make the alteration a politic one? 7o. Frenchman; referring to the frequent alliances between France and Scotland against England. Sealed under, z.¢. put his seal below the Scotchman’s, as his surety. 83. Rhenish wine, a white wine like the modern Hock, exown in the valley of the Rhine. git. imposition, conditions laid down. Scene 3.] NOTES. 69 92. Sibylla. The Sibyl is used here as a proverbial type of old age in woman, as Nestor in scene I. for old age and gravity in man. Stories are told of various sibyls or prophetesses, but the most famous by far was the Sibyl of Cumz, who guided Atneas to the under world, and afterwards sold her three books to the Roman king for the same price as that for which she had at first offered nine. She obtained as a boon from Apollo the power to live for as many years as she could hold grains of dust in her hand. 97. in your father’s time, seems to imply he had been dead some little while, and strengthens the general impression produced by the play that Portia is older than most of the heroines of Shake- speare. The Marquises of Montferrat were famous in Italy for centuries. Dante saw one in purgatory: **the Marquis William, For whose sake Alessandria and her war Make Montferrat and Canavese weep”. —Ffurg. vii. 134, Longfellow’s trans, 107. The four strangers. /our should be szx, to be consistent with the rest of the scene. The same mistake is made in both the Quartos of 1600 and also the First Folio, showing that they are not independent authorities for the text. [Compare a similar blunder, made by all the early editions, in v. I. 49, where ‘‘Sweet soul” is— in spite of sense and metre—given to the clown instead of Lorenzo. ] This mistake can hardly be taken as a safe ground for believing that a revision was made by the author, and two other characters added to an original four. It is only one more instance of inattention to *minutize ’, on the part of editors and printers. Scene 3. How the Merchant of Venice, who had reviled Shylock the Jew tor taking interest on loans, ts obliged to ask him for money, with which to equip Bassanio for Belmont. How Shylock agrees to lend it, without interest, on forfeit of a pound of the Merchant’s flesh. No more striking proof of the range of Shakespeare’s power could be given than the transition from the previous scene to this, from Portia to Shylock. Each picture is superb, but together they pro- duce the strongest possible effect. Note particularly in this scene the touches by which we are made to feel Shylock’s intellectual force, and his stiff-necked tenacity of will. The constant reference to Palestine and Scripture, to Rebekah and Jacob, to the publicans, to the temptation and miracles of Christ, seems to charge the lines with recollections of Jewish history, and of the events which both joined and severed Christianity and Judaism. But how these ‘abstractions’ are living flesh and blood in Shakespeare’s Jew! The ‘get up’ of Edwin Booth, the famous American actor (quoted, from his own MS., on page 387 of Furness’ Variorum Edition), may 70 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. {Act I. help to call up the detail of the picture. ‘* My costume for Shylock was suggested by one of a group of Oriental figures in a picture by Géréme. It consists of a long, dark-green gown, trimmed at the edge of the skirt with an irregular device of brown colour. A dark. brown gaberdine, with flowing sleeves and hood, lined with green, and trimmed as the gown. A variegated scarf about the waist, from which depends a leather pouch. Red-leather pointed shoes, and hat of orange-tawny colour. . . . Head gray and pretty bald; beard of same colour and quite long. LEar-rings and several finger- rings, one on the thumb and one on the fore-finger; a long knotted staff. Complexion swarthy; age about sixty.” Ir. a good man, 2z.e. of substantial or adequate means, commer- cially sound. Bassanio takes the word in the ordinary sense, and misunderstands Shylock. Its use in commerce is akin to its use in law, as when we speak of ‘a good title’, ‘a good claim’, or con- trariwise, ‘a dad document’. 15. in supposition, z.e. dependent on conditions, and not actu- ally in hand. bound to Tripolis. The word dound here has no connection by derivation with the word in line 4 above, ‘‘ Antonio shall be bound”. Applied to ships it means ‘ready to go’, ‘fit for sea’, and was in Middle English spelt ‘bown’, or ‘boun’, the final ‘d’ is an ‘excrescence’. There is a fine use of the word in Sommet lxxxvi.— ‘* Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Bound for the prize of all too precious you That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse?” &c. In general, it means ‘prepared’, ‘ready’. Like the word with which it is confused, it is a past participle, but from an obsolete verb meaning to ‘till’ or ‘ prepare’, which also gives us the substantive ‘boor’ or ‘ boer’=a farmer. Tripolis, zot the city in Barbary in N. Africa (as is clear from a comparison with iii. 2. 265 and 266), but the seaport in Syria, a little to the north-east of Beyrout. The African Tripolis was chiefly famous for its pirates, though there was some little trade with it in oil (for which see a curious tract, by one Thomas Sanders, called The Unfortunate Voyage of the Jesus to Tripoli in 1584, reprinted in vol. ii. of Arber’s English Garner, where illustrations in plenty may be found of the risks which Shylock speaks of here), The Aszatec Tripolis was on the way from Venice to the East, by the ‘Euphrates valley route’. It was a famous port in Crusading times, and traded with Venice in glass. 16. the Indies, z.e. the American Indies, as in Maria’s famous simile in Twelfth Night, iii. 2. 85: ‘‘He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies”. 17. The Rialto, the great meeting-place or ‘exchange’ of mer- Scene 3.] NOTES. 71 chants, or a bridge connecting the island named ‘ Rialto’ with the St. Mark’s quarter.of Venice. 18, England. Throughout the fifteenth, and in the early years of the sixteenth centuries, a fleet sailed yearly from Venice for Flanders and England, But this had ceased in the reign of Eliza- beth. 21. Pirates. The Barbary pirates were a terror in the Mediter- ranean down to the bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth in 1816, 25. Shylock refuses to be ‘assured’ in the conventional sense, and will make certain by his own inquiries. His answer is as charac- teristic of 42s keenness, as Bassanio’s invitation of the Jew to dinner is consistent with zs light-hearted ways of doing business, 29. Nazarite, for Nazarene, or inhabitant of Nazareth. So in all translations of the Bible down to the Authorized Version of 1611 (see note in Furness’ Variorum Edition). 32. Who is he comes here? For omission of the relative, see note on i. I. 175. 35- a fawning publican. It is the warmth of the greeting which Antonio gives to Bassanio that suggests the adjective (compare the lively feeling he shows at Bassanio’s departure, ii. 8. 48). The amiability of Antonio stirs Shylock’s gall. (So again in iii. 1. 38, **He that was used to come so smug upon the mart”.) As to the substantive, Shylock identifies himself with the Pharisee’s contempt for the humble-minded publican in the parable. Or is he thinking of Zacchzeus, the publican who gave half his goods to the poor? The word, with all its associations, by a single touch suggests a whole lifetime of hatred for the religion of people who would ‘‘ eat with publicans and sinners”. [References to the New Testament: would not be likely in the mouth of a Jew. But they are none the less vividly suggestive to the audience. Compare for Shakespeare’s method in this respect the note on ili. 2. 275. ] 40. upon the hip, a metaphor from a wrestling-bout. 53. rest you fair. Shylock had stepped aside when Antonio entered and greeted Bassanio. He pretends to have caught sight of him now for the first time. The phrase ‘rest you fair’ Schmidt explains by supposing ‘God’ to be understood as subject to ‘rest’, as in ‘God rest you merry’, 4s You Like It, v. 1. 65, where ‘rest’ has the sense of ‘keep’. 56, excess, z.¢. anything over and abave the principal. 57. ripe wants, 7z.¢. wants that will not bear delay. 75. pilled me certain wands. ‘Me’ is idiomatic in phrases of this sort, and has the expletive or demonstrative force of such ex- pressions as ‘ you know’, ‘look you’, ‘I'll trouble you’, &c. Com- pare Macbeth, ili. 6. 41, and Julius Cesar, i. 2. 267. 72 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act I.Sc.3. 88. Another of the many references to the Bible in this play. When was it that the devil ‘cited Scripture for his purpose’? 92. oh what a goodly outside falsehood hath, much what Bassanio says in declining the golden casket (iii. 2. 98). 95. beholding, a corruption of ‘beholden’, the past partic. of the verb ‘behold’ in the sense of ‘to guard’ or ‘keep’, and, meta- phorically, ‘to bind’ or ‘oblige’ (like German Jdehalten). Other instances of the confusion between -ing and -en are quoted by Abbott, Shakespearian Grammar, § 372. Iog. ‘moneys’ is your suit=the object of your petition is moneys. The word is quoted again, in contempt, from Antonio’s request. It is guoted, and hence the singular verb with it. Or perhaps ‘moneys’ may be regarded as a collective, on the false analogy of ‘riches’ (which is a true singular, from French ‘richesse’). In support of this compare ‘‘thus much moneys” in line 119 below. There are abundant traces, however, of an Early English third person plural inflection in -s still surviving in Elizabethan English, é.g. line 150 below: ‘Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect”, and Richard I71,, ii. 3. 4, 5: **These high wild hills and rough uneven ways Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome”. (See Abbott, Shakespearitan Grammar, § 333-) 124. The superstitious prejudice against the taking of interest arose from a confusion between loans made in charity or friendship and loans made as a matter of business. The prejudice took the form sometimes of a religious prohibition, sometimes of an argu- mentative attack. It is curious that Aristotle, who founded the scientific treatment of wealth by his exposition of the true nature of money, as a medium of exchange, also lent his authority to the quibble that because metal has no natural power of increase, therefore interest is against nature, as if it were mere metal and not power to acquire commodities which the borrower seeks from his creditor. 126. who, if he break. The ‘who’ and ‘he’ are to be taken in close connection with one another as making a compound subject to ‘break’ (=qui si fidem fefellerit). For similar instances of the relative with supplementary pronoun, see Abbott, Shakespearian Grammar, § 249, where, however, a different explanation of this passage is given. 134. your single bond, z.e. your bond without any other person as security. This proposal seems a concession on Shylock’s part, but it is meant to assist his plan for vengeance, since it leaves no second security to be called in in case of Antonio’s failure. 138. equal pound, exact pound. 150. dealings teaches, see on line 109 above. Act II. Scene 1.] NOTES. 73 155. estimable. We should apply the word nowadays only to persons, but in Ehzabethan English its use was less restricted. Com- pare ‘ varnished’, which we now only use of things, applied to persons in ii. 5. 32, and ii. 9. 49. 156. muttons, beefs=French ‘moutons, bceufs’. The dis- tinction between ‘sheep’ and ‘ox’, on one side, as living animals, and ‘mutton’ and ‘ beef’, on the other, as the same animals brought to table, had not become fixed in Shakespeare’s time, whatever be said in the famous passage at the opening of Scott’s /vanhoe. 159. =‘ Andas for my good-will, I beg you not to hurt me by your suspicions.’ 164. fearful guard, insecure, risky, or perilous guard. ‘ Fearful’ used to mean ‘ causing fear for’ as well as ‘ causing fear of”. Act |l.—Scene I. How the Prince of Morocco would undertake the adventure of the caskets, and what the Lady of Belmont said to him. The stage-direction in the First Folio edition begins ‘‘ Enter Morochus a tawnie Moore all in white, and three or foure followers accordingly”. The picture of the Moorish prince and his train, ‘* Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath’d ”, encountering Portia is one of the most striking in the whole of the play. The Moorish chivalry had been, in arts and arms, a match for Christendom, and the romance of the Middle Ages is full of such tales as: ‘When Agrican with all his northern powers Besieged Albracca, as romances tell; The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win The fairest of her sex, Angelica, His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, Both Faynim and the peers of Charlemain” ; or of those who ‘baptized or zzjfidel Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco or Morocco, or Trebisond Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia”. . The Mahometan warriors were still a peril to Europe in Shake- speare’s time. Lepanto, where the author of Don Quzxote lost an arm, was fought in 1571. This Moorish prince, with his gallantry, passionate feeling, and boyish simplicity, suggests an early study of Moorish character, afterwards worked out in the ‘ Moor of Venice’. His words have a fine rolling rhythm, his style a Southern gaudiness of colour. 74 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. 7. Red blood, as Johnson pointed out, was thought a sign of courage, while cowards ‘‘ have livers white as milk” (below, ii. 2. 86). g. fear’d=frightened. The verb ‘fear’ commonly had this transi- tive force in Old English, and often in Shakespeare, e.g. Henry V., i, 2. 155: “* She hath been, then, more /ear’d than harm’d, my liege”. 24. scimitar. Like Othello’s famous sword, “*a better never did itself sustain Upon a soldier’s thigh” ( Othello, v. 2. 260). 25. The Sophy, z.e. the Shah of Persia. The Persians were famous swordsmen; cf. 7welfth Night, iii. 4. 307, ‘She has been fencer to the Sophy”. 26. Sultan Solyman, called the ‘Magnificent’, was the tenth Ottoman Sultan, and reigned from 1520 to 1566. He took Belgrade and Rhodes from the Christians, but failed to capture Vienna. He also suffered defeat in Persia about 1534. 32. Lichas, the squire or attendant of Hercules, Ovid’s Meta- morphoses, ix. Alcides= Hercules, from the fact that Alcseus was his grandfather. 33. =(to decide) ‘which is the better man’. 35. Page, one of Theobald’s ‘emendations’, Quartos and Folios have ‘ Rage’. 43. Nor will not, emphatic double negative=‘ No more I will’ (speak to lady afterward, &c.). Scan line 43. 44. the temple where the oath to observe the conditions was to be taken. 46. blest or cursed’st. The superlative termination to one adjective does duty for both, as below, ili. 2. 290— “ The best condition’d and unwearied spirit”, and Measure for Measure, iv. 6. 13— ‘‘ The generous and gravest citizens”. (See Abbott, Shaksp. Gr., § 398.) Scene 2. How Launcelot Gobbo leaves his master, Shylock, to take service under Bassanio, and how Gratiano obtains Bassanto’s leave to go with him to Belmont. We must suppose some days to have elapsed since the bond was sealed. Meanwhile Bassanio has bought or hired a ship for his enter prise, and is engaged in hiring and clothing a retinue of followers. Scene 2.] NOTES. 75 Launcelot Gobbo is the ‘clown’ of the piece. He is a country lad, son of a small farmer, who has a horse called Dobbin, and keeps pigeons. Occasionally the old man comes into Venice to see how his boy is getting on in town-service. Thus Launcelot is not a pro- fessional jester like the Fools in Azug Lear, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It, but a servant by trade, and a wag by humour. His country appetite and power of sleeping, his untiring spirits and broad outspokenness prove him a ‘clown’ compared to the courtly attend- ants of Portia. 1. It looks as if there should be a ‘not’ before ‘serve’, (Halli- well.) 14. grow to, a ‘country phrase’, applied originally to milk which, in cooking, has been burnt to the bottom of the saucepan, and so has acquired a taste. (See note in Furness’ Variorum Edition. ) 21. saving your reverence=salva reverentia, z.¢. if I may say so without offence. 22. incarnal. Launcelot has not got quite the right word here. Compare ‘confusions’ in 31, ‘frutify’ in 120, and ‘impertinent’ in 123. His father has an equal difficulty with words from the Latin, such as ‘infection’ and ‘defect’. ‘ Malapropisms’ of this sort were particularly rife in Shakespeare’s time, when new words from other languages, especially Latin, were pouring into the vocabulary of English. Launcelot’s learning, like Ancient Pistol’s, smacks of the playhouse, as in his reference to the Sisters Three, to Fortune a woman, and his use of ‘ via’ for away, and ‘ ergo’ for therefore. 30. sand-blind, lit. half-blind (O.E. sdm-blind); but the first syllable was already in Shakespeare’s time misinterpreted, as Launce- lot’s pun shows. Capell’s note on the word is: ‘That is, purblind’; a vulgar phrase for it, as stone-blind is for those who are quite so; Launcelot finds a ‘blind’ between these, which he calls ‘ gravel- blind’. 46. well to live, according to Furness means ‘ with every pros- pect of a long life’. But it seems better to take it as=‘ well off’, and then the phrase is an absurdity of the Dogberry stamp (‘‘ You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the con- stable of the watch”, &c.). Old Gobbo utters just such another in line 63 below. 49. The father refuses to give his son the title ‘Master’, which the son continually repeats with increased emphasis. 83. what a beard hast thou got. The traditional stage ‘business’ here is that Launcelot should kneel down and present the dack of his head to his father, who takes the long, thick hair for a beard. 87. hair of his tail. A comparison of Launcelot’s words with Old Gobbo’s shows that ‘of’? has much the same sense as ‘on’ here. 76 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. [Act II. Abbott (Shakespearian Grammar, § 175) quotes Zaming of Shrew: iv. I. 7I— “*My master riding behind my mistress— Both of one horse”. The gradual change from Shakespeare’s English to ours is nowhere more clearly marked than in the uses of prepositions. The student should collect instances for himself of cases where prepositions are employed otherwise than they would be in modern English. For ‘of’ compare line 67 above, ‘‘ you might fail of the knowing me”, with ix. 11, and ** We have not spoke as yet of torchbearers”, ii. 4. 5 and 23. **T have no mind of feasting forth to-night”, ii. 5. 36. 93. set up my rest to run away, to ‘set up a rest’ was a term in games of chance, and seems to have meant to make a wager over and above the ordinary stake, to ‘ back one’s chance’ heavily; and so to ‘plunge’ on something in a metaphorical sense, to put every- thing on a single resolve. Here there is a play on the two meanings of ‘rest’. It is an instance of the amazing range of Shakespeare’s power that the very same play on words is used with extraordinary effect in one of the saddest scenes in tragedy (written, perhaps, within a short time of the Merchant of Venice): **O here Will I set up my everlasting rest And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From my world-wearied flesh”. (Romeo and Juliet, v. 3. 109.) 97. give me your present to one Master Bassanio. For this use of ‘me’, cf. i. 3. 75, where, however, the meaning is not quite the same. Here it=‘for me’, or ‘please’, as in “* Heat me these irons hot” (King John, iv. 1. 1). too. to him, father, the verb of motion is often omitted in such phrases, especially in the imperative mood. So ‘‘ Father, in”, in line 141, and in the infinitive mood, **T must to Coventry” (Richard JT/., i. 2. 56). [The idiom includes far more than an ellipsis after ‘will’ and ‘is’, as Abbott explains it in § 405 of his Grammar. ] 103. supper...ready...by five of the clock. Elizabethan meals and meal-times were startingly unlike ours. ‘‘ The nobility, gentry, and students dined at eleven before noon, and supped between five and six. The merchant dined at twelve, and supped at six. Hus- bandmen dined at noon and supped at seven or eight. To take two meals only was the rule; none but the young, the sick, and very early risers were thought tc need odd repasts”. (Soczal England, ed. H. D. Traill, vel. iii. p. 392 of the 1895 edition, following the passage in Harrison, cited above, i. I. 70.) Scene 3.] NOTES. 77 135. The old proverb, z.e. as Staunton pointed out, ‘‘ God’s grace is gear enough”. parted, z.e. divided. 140. more guarded, with more facings or coloured stripes set across it, the mark of a jester; compare the description of a fool in line 16 of the prologue to Henry ViII.— 6. 30. 139 GENERAL INDEX. Abbott, Shakespearian Gram- mar, i. 3. 95, 109, 126; ii. I. 40504 25875 GkOO tb ae Gs iis) On, OFS AL 7essviien sac Tig (2120, oes li Ss eis Neen 49, 74, 125, 249, 425, 439, 445; v. I. 175. ‘ adjective, extended meaning of, iro. 42> We OS. adverb, use of, i. 1. 15, 124, 150. Alcides, li. 1. 323 lil. 2. 55. Algiers, bombardment of, i. 3. 21. animals brought totrial, iv. 1.131. Antonio’s disposition of Shylock’s property, iv. I. 374. Baring Gould’s Book of the Were- wolf, iv. I. 132. Barnabe Rich’s Aphorismes, ii. 5. 29. Beeching, Rev. H. C., ii. 9. 84; ili, 2. 216. Belgrade, ii. I. 26. Biblical references, i. 1. 99; i. 3. 35, 885 ii. 5. 35, 435 lil. 1. 72; iit, 5s £3 1V;, Tadd, 00; 217) Veils) 00,2075 Black Monday, ii. 5. 24. blood, colour of, as a sign, li. I. 7. Booth, Edwin, i. 3. zzz¢.; iv. 1. 163. Boswell, ii. 5. 29. Cambridge editors, the, iii. 2. 216. Campbell, Lord, v. 1. 271. Capell, ii. 2. 20. Chambers’ Book of Days, iv. 1. 131. characteristics of Portia’s suitors compared, ii. 9. z7z¢., 53. ‘character’ notes, ii. 8. 52; ii. 9. 84; lil, 1.°20,/37,°62, 75; 775 103, 1105) 1, seme roe 159, 311; iil. 4° 3, 27, 33, 305 iv. 1. 43, 86, 88, 163, 164, 200, 217, 219, 280, 329, 390; v. I. 88, 130, 160, 251. Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, v. 1. 1; Zroilus and Cressida, V.i Teas Chus, iii. 2. 282. Colchos, i. I. 171. comic ‘irony’, iv. I. 280; v. I. 160. Coryat’s Crudities, ili. 4. 53. curse, the, on Israel, iii. I. 72. cutler’s poetry, v. I. 147. Daniel, iv. I. 217. Dante, Divina Commedia, \. 2.97. Democritus, i. 2. 42. Diana, v. I. 66. Dido, v. I. 10. dinner-time, i. I. 70. Don Quixote, ii. I. zt, double comparative, iv. I. 245. double negative, ii. I. 43; iii. 4. 11; lv. /eyaseeene Doyle, J. T., iv. 1. 163, 405. dramatic irony, li. 5. 15, 54. dress as Shylock, Booth’s, i. 3. init. dumb-show scene introduced by Irving, ii. 5. 54. Dyce, iii. 2. 2163° iin pee Elizabethan meals, ii. 2. 103; over-elaboration, ii. 7. 44. ellipsis, il. 9. 34. Endymion, v. I. 109. Erebus, v. 1. 87. fees to judges, iv. I. 405. Furness, Varzorum Edition, i. 2. GENERAL INDEX. rar RMT au eas ti. 2. 403 1:5. 29; iii. I. 8, 110; iii. 2. 216; iv. I. 163, 300, 405; v. I. 85. **God’s grace is gear enough”, Lin 2+. 235. Hagar, ii. 5. 43. Halliwell, ii. 7. 75. ‘*harmless necessary cat”, iv. I. 4. He rrison’s Description of Eng- land, i. 1. 70. Heraclitus, i. 2. 42. Howell’s /zstructions for Foreign eaves i, 1.101. Hugo, Fran¢ois Victor, iii. 1.110; lil. 4. 67. Hunter, iii. 4. 53; v. I. I. Hyrcanian deserts, ii. 7. 41. Indies, i. 3. 16. interest, prejudice against, i. 3. 124. Irving, Henry, ii. 5. 54; iv. I. 298, 390. Jacob’s staff, ii. 5. 35. Janus, i. I. 50. Teen le 071; ii, 2. 239. Jason, W. Morris’s, iii. 2. 239. Jespersen’s Progress in Language, Mu aetO33)ii. 2. 275,' 3155 v. I. 175. Jessica’s desertion of Shylock, ii. 3. 17. Jewess’ eye, worth a, ii. 5. 42. Jewish prejudice, ii. 8. 16. Johnson, ii. 7. 69; iii. 2. 193. Kean, iv. I. 390. Knight, iii. 2: 84. Launcelot’s ‘malapropisms’, ii. oes 144. 10; i. 5. 203 iil. Sea Lichas, ii. 1. 32. Malone, iv. 1. 47; v. I. I4I. (330) Marlowe, reminiscence of, iii. 2. 230. masques, ll. 5. 27. Medea, v. I. 12. métaphors, i: 10/137 3.1.2. 37-3 i, 3. 40; Ul. 2. 935 il, 7. 443 in. 2. 159. metrical points, i. 1. 8, 178; ii. On 2A Fe OF eli 2y Osa iy 3. 20; iv. I. 269, 336, 445; v. she ° Midas, iii. 2. 102. modifications in meaning of words, iil. 2. 195. Morris, W., iii. 2. 239. music of the spheres, v. I. 60. Mytton Church, i. 1. 84. Nashe’s Peerce Penilesse, iv. 1.47. Nazarite, i. 3. 29. negative, double, ii. I. 43. Nestor, i. I. 56. objective use of of ii. 5. 2, 36. omission of relative, i. I. 1753 i. 3. 325 ili. I. 71. omission of verb of motion, ii. Peas, UL 2. 395. 305%, lV. 1, 395: Orpheus, v. I. 79. personification, ii. 4. 36; iii. 1. 6. physiological theories of Middle Aces, iv. 1.'43, ‘picture-phrases’, i, 2. 173 iii. TG pirates, 1. 3. 21. places of worship as business resorts, iii, I. 110, plays on words, i. 2. 7; ii. 6. 42; Hi. 2.1939) tks 20,445, 1Vit- 1205. Vio8, 10750130, plural without s, iv. 1. 249. Pope, iii. 5. 52. Portia’s judgment, iv. I. 300. Portia’s treatment of her suitors, li. 9. z7zt. prepositions, use of, by Shake- speare, ii, 2, 87. M 142 THE ,MERCHANT OF VENICE. Pythagorean doctrine of trans- migration of souls, iv. I. 128. references to Scripture, i. I. 99; L$: 36. Os Lie Shs STL. I. 72; iil. 5. 1; iv. I. 194, 200, 217; v. I. 60, 267. relative, omission of, i. I. 175; 63 325) ee 7 it Rhodes, ii. 1. 26. rhyme, ili. 2. 140. rhyming close, ii. 5. 54. rhythm as expressing feeling, ii. 38. Rialto, L'3. 17. Rolfe, iii. 4. 12. Rowe, iii. 4. 533 v. I. 49, 65. Ruskin defends Shakespeare’s want of ‘ realism’, ill. 2. 275. Salanio, iii. 2. 216. Sanders, Thomas, i. 3. I5. Schlegel, iii. 2. 183, 193; v. I. 160. Shakespeare’s early scenes, i. I. intt.; his prose, iii. 1. 43; his use of classical stories, ili. 2. 102; his use of Latin deriva- tives, ili. 2. 131; his English colouring, iii. 2. 175; his way of ending a play, v. I. zv7z.; his debt to Ovid, v. I. 12. Shylock’s treatment of Jessica, i Waa’ Fahl be Sibylla, i. 2. 92. Silvayn’s Orator, iv. 1. 88. simile, ii. 6. 14. Solyman, Sultan, ii. 1. 26. Sophy, ii. I. 25. stage business, ii. 2. $3. Staunton, ii, 2. 135. Steevens, v. I. 85. Strachan Davidson, J., ii. 9. z77¢. superlative implied, iii. 2. 290. superlatives, il. I. 46. swan-song, ili. 2. 44. Tennyson, ili. 2. 44. textual points, ii. 1. 35; ii. 7. 69; iii. 2, 99, 103, 216; ili. 3. 27; lil. 4. 53; ill. 5. 523; lv. I. 49, 125; v. I. 49, 65. Theobald, iii. 3. 27. Thirlby, iv. 1. 49. ‘time’ notes, iii, I. 2; iii. 2.. intt., 282; iii. 3. zvet.; iil. 4. imit.; lil. 5. ent. ' tombs, Elizabethan, i. 1. 84. torture, lil. 2. 33. trade between Venice and Eng- land, i. 3. 18. tragic ‘irony’, il. 5. 15. Tripolis, i. 3. 15. Troy, iii. 2. 56. Tylor’s Anthropology, iv. 1. 132. Venus’ pigeons, ii. 6. 5. verb of motion omitted or im- plied, ii. 2. 100; iii. 2. 39, 308; lv. I. 395. Vienna, ii. I. 26. Warburton, iii. 2. 103. ‘woollen bagpipe”, iv. I. 55. worth a Jewess’ eye, ii. 5. 42. wrestling, I. 3. 40. ‘‘ wryneck’d fife”, ii. 5. 29. © nef ( Cen tite ie ae : wt ; anal gae LO a ae Toy hs a ee Port WH f JAA he a4 ow an | ahd hihe Ce C... ase 2 Orth fore ee : ‘ee rad en Raa ay reo 4) . 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