Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/blackveniceOOshakrich EXCELLENT Hiftory of the Mer^ chant of Venice, With the extreme crxxtXvfoiShylocf^eLj the lew towards the faide Merchant,m cuc- ttrig a iuB pound of Insflejh. Jnd the dtatni/fg oiPortUy by the choyfe of Wnttenby W. Shakespeare. Printed by f . "^berts.l 6oo* Pacsimile of Title-Page, First Quarto (Roberts Quarto) THENEWIiUDSON SHAKESPEARE THEMERCHANT OF VENICE HENRYNORMAN HUDSON,LLD'l^ EDITED AND REVISED BY EBENEZER CHARITON BLA.CK LLD- (GLASGOW) writt THE coopERAarroN op ANTDREW JACKS ON GEORGE inrDOMKRSD GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON NEWTORK CHICAGO LONDON ATLANTA. DALLAS 00UJMBU5 SANPHANCISO} Entered at Stationers' Hall Copyright, 1879 By henry N. HUDSON Copyright, 1906 By GINN and COMPANY all rights reserved EDUCATION DEPT. gbe fltftenatum ^re« GINN AND COMPANY- PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. PREFACE The text of this edition of The Merchant of Venice is based upon a collation of the Quartos of 1600 and the seventeenth century Folios. Exclusive of changes in spell- ing, punctuation, and stage directions, only five emenda- tions by eighteenth century and nineteenth century editors have been incorporated into the text ; and these, with every variation from the First Folio, are indicated in the textual notes. The only omissions are such passages as are out of place in a school edition. The spelling and the punctuation of the text are mod- ern, except in the case of verb terminations in -edy which, when the e is silent, are printed with the apostrophe in its place. This is the general usage in the First Folio. Modern spelling has to a certain extent been followed in the text variants ; but the original spelling has been re- tained wherever its peculiarities have been the basis for important textual criticism and emendation. With regard to the general plan of this revision of Hudson's Shakespeare, Professor W. P. Trent, of Columbia University, has offered valuable suggestions and given important advice. August 14, 1906 iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Pagb I. Sources vii Subplots vii Main Plot x II. Date of Composition xi III. Editions xiii Quartos xiii Folios xv Rowe's Editions xvi IV. Dramatic Structure and Management of Time AND Place xvi V. Versification and Diction xviii Blank Verse xviii Rhyme . xix Prose xix VI. General Characteristics xx VII. Outline of the Story xxii VIII. Characters xxiv Antonio xxv Antonio's Friends xxvii Lorenzo and Jessica xxviii Launcelot Gob bo xxix Portia xxx ShYLOCK . XXXV IX. Conclusion xl Chronological Chart o « xliv vi CONTENTS THE TEXT Pagb Act I 3 Act II 32 Act III 69 Act IV 101 Act V 124 Index of Words and Phrases 141 INTRODUCTION Note. In citations from Shakespeare's plays and nondramatic poems the numbering has reference to the Globe edition, except in the case of this play, where the reference is to this edition. I. SOURCES The Merchant of Venice is woven out of story- threads as old and as varied as human nature. Four distinct sets of these story-threads, two primary — the Caskets and the Pound of Flesh (or the Bond) — and two secondary — Jes- sica's Elopement and the Rings — are in the web of the complete plot. They may be regarded as subplots, and in this summary of sources will naturally be considered firsts and in the order in which they come into the play. The Subplots I . The Caskets, The device of the caskets, varied occa- sionally by the substitution of vats, or even of cakes and of pasties, for chests and coffers, is found in many languages and is probably of oriental origin. The underlying philoso- phy of choice as the foundation of moral activity may be read in the Genesis narrative of the fall of man and in the mythologies of all Indo-European peoples. In mediaeval literature the caskets-form of the story takes definite shape in the Greek romance, Barlaam and Josaphaty by Joannes viii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE Damascenus {circa 800) ^ ; and through a Latin translation in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais it made its way into The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. In Boccaccio's Decame?'on and in Gower's Confessio Aman- lis are interesting variants. The popular collection of stories in Latin called the Gesta Ro?na?ioru7n, compiled about the year 1300, contains the version most similar to that in The Merchant of Venice ; and it is significant that this version is found in the English translation of the Gesta printed by Wynkin de Worde — a translation so popular in Elizabethan England as to be issued six times between 1577 and 1601 under the title Records of Ancyent Historyes, 2. The Pound of Flesh {or the Bond), In the Afahabha- rata, in Aryan myth and folk-tale generally, and in Egyptian and oriental literatures, may be read the germ-ideas of the bond story. Like that of the caskets, it has its foundations deep in man's moral nature. In essence, it is the lex talionis in its relation to the Christian principle of mercy and for- giveness. It is significant that the first specific reference in English literature to the flesh-without-blood incident is in the Cursor Mufidi {circa 1320), a Northumbrian religious poem which curiously anticipates later fourteenth century miracle- play cycles. In this poem a Jew guides the Empress Helena to the place where the true cross is concealed, and reveals the secret to save himself from punishment for hav- ing tried to enforce his terrible flesh compact with a Chris- tian. The mediaeval conception of Christ's sacrifice, and the popular interpretation of the terrible Roman law of the 1 Translations, transcripts, or summaries of all the more important source-versions will be found in the Appendix of Furness's A New Variorum Edition — The Merchant of Venice, INTRODUCTION ix Twelve Tables which gave a creditor full power over the person of a debtor, are responsible for the dozen and more versions of the bond story (with, or without, a Jew ; some- times with The Merchant of Venice positions of Jew and Christian reversed) which were current in Europe in short story collections — Gesta Romanorum, JDoIopathos, etc. — between 1400 and 1600. In one version the compact turns upon the right to gouge out one of the creditor's eyes — a punishment inflicted oftener upon Jews than by them, and one that may be grimly suggested in The Merchant of Venice^ II, v, 42. Important among these many versions is the ninety-fifth "declamation" in The Orator . . . Written in French by Alexander Silvayn and Englished by Z. P.^ Lon- don . . . I3g6 : "Of a Jew who would for his debt have a pound of the flesh of a Christian." Shylock's speeches in the trial scene strongly resemble the arguments of the Jew in this * declamation.' Important, too, is the version of the story in the ballad, Gernutus the Jew, preserved in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and printed somewhat carelessly in Percy's Reliques: "A new Song, shewing the crueltie of Gernutus, a Jewe, who lend- ing to a merchant an hundred crownes, would have a pound of his fleshe, because he could not pay him at the time appointed. ..." There is uncertainty as to the date of this ballad, but the weight of evidence is in favor of its antedating Shakespeare's play. Of all the possible source- versions of the bond story, the closest in resemblance to The Merchant of Venice is in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's ^ collec- tion of romances, II Fecorone, written, as we are quaintly ^ That is, Lazarus Plot, a nom de guerre of Anthony Munday. 2 Probably an assumed name. X THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE told, three years after the death of Boccaccio. In IlPecorone is introduced a lady of * Belmonte ' ; the usurer is a Jew of Mestre, near Venice ; and the flesh-without-the-blood argu- ment is used by a woman disguised as a lawyer. 3. Jessica's Elopement, This story has been traced to the fourteenth novellino of Masuccio di Salerno, which tells how the daughter of a rich miser of Naples stole her father's jewels and eloped with her lover. But the theme is com- mon to the fiction, prose and verse, of many countries. 4. The Rings, This episode is found in // Pecorone. The Main Plot That the ancient stories of the caskets and the pound of flesh were combined in a drama before Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice^ is clear from what Stephen Gosson says in The Schoole of Abuse, pubhshed in 1579. He makes distinct reference to a play, now lost, called The JeWy "... representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and bloody mindes of Usurers. . . .'* Under the date August 25, 1594, Henslowe in his Diary mentions as a new play the Venesyon comodey (The Venetian Comedy) which Fleay claims as a lost work of Dekker's, The Jew of Venice, upon which he asserts that Shakespeare's play was based. Sidney Lee suggests that the Venesyon comodey was Shakespeare's revision of some old play made when popular interest in things Jewish was at fever heat over the trial in February, 1594, and the execution in the following June, of Queen Elizabeth's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez. It is inter- esting to note that the chief undoer of Lopez was Antonio Perez, usually called Don Antonio. "That a Christian INTRODUCTION xi named Antonio should be the cause of the ruin alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama, is a curious confirmation of the theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shylock" — Lee. In the play, The Three Ladies of London ^hy R. W. (1584), a Jewish creditor, Gerontus — evidently the same name as that of the Jew in the ballad mentioned above — tries to recover a loan of three thousand ducats for three months from a Christian debtor, Mercatore. The influence of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta makes itself felt in general inspiration rather than in plan and details of plot, though Abigail's attitude to her father, Barabas, and her leaving him through love of a Christian, strongly suggest the relations between Jessica, Shylock, and Lorenzo. IL DATE OF COMPOSITION The only thing certain about the date of composition of The Merchant of Venice is that it was written before 1598. In that year we have two independent references to it : (i) in the Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury ; being the Sec- ond Part of Wits Commonwealth of Francis Meres ; and (2) in The Stationers* Registers, It is sixth in the list of twelve Shakespeare plays, and last of the six comedies, men- tioned in the Palladis Tamia, that famous terminus ante quern in Shakespeare chronology, the largest bit of solid rock amid the shifting sands of conjecture as to date of composition. Under the date July 22, 1598, James Roberts (the name is spelled here and elsewhere, Robertes) had the play entered in The Stationers' Registers under the title "a booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the xii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE Jewe of Venyce," with the significant proviso that " yt bee not prynted by the said James Robertes or anye other what- soeuer without lycence first had from the Right honourable the lord Chamberlen." At that time the theatrical company to which Shakespeare belonged bore the title of '' The Lord Chamberlain's Servants," and the proviso indicates suspicion of Roberts, the probability that his copy was " stolen and surreptitious," ^ and a desire to keep the play out of print until the company gave official sanction through its patron. This sanction seems to have been granted within two years, for in 1600 two editions of the play were published. Attempts have been made to give an approximate date to the composition by identifying it with one or other of the plays discussed in the preceding section, notably the Venesyon comodey, but the theories advanced are only inter- esting guesses. A judicious application of the leading inter- nal tests would indicate that the date of composition was as near as possible to the terminus ante quern} Every- where the play shows the easy freedom of conscious mastery, the characters being so entirely under the author's control, and subdued to his hand, that he seems to let them talk and act just as they have a mind to. The style throughout is so 1 " . . . You were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniuri- ous impostors" (Heminge and Condell's address "To the Great Variety of Readers," First Folio, 1623). 2 But Conrad, in his Metrische Untersuchungen, Shakespeare /ahrbucky XXXI, 326, bases a plea for 1595 upon an analysis of verse structure. On the other hand, Ward, in the new and revised edition (1899) of his History of English Dramatic Literature ^ tends away from the early date to which he was inclined when the first edition of his work was published. INTRODUCTION xiii even and sustained, the word and the character are so fitted to each other, the laws of dramatic proportion are so well observed, and the work is so free from any jarring or falling out from the due course and order of art, as to justify the conclusion accepted by several recent editors that the play was written at such a stage of intellectual growth and fur- nishing as Shakespeare undoubtedly had reached by the beginning of the year 1598. III. EDITIONS Quartos Two Quarto editions of The Merchant of Venice were published in the year 1 600 : (i) A sixpenny Quarto of forty leaves, with the title-page which is shown in facsimile in the frontispiece of this volume. As this — sometimes called the Roberts Quarto — was evidently the first of the two 1600 Quartos to be entered on The Stationers' Registers (see above), though its priority of publication is uncertain, J. P. Kemble (1798) called it the First Quarto ; and this nomenclature has been adopted by the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare and by almost all the leading Shakespeare scholars and editors of recent years. In this edition it is designated Qj. (2) A Quarto of 38 leaves, with the title-page shown in facsimile on the following page. This — sometimes known as the Heyes^ Quarto — is called by the Cambridge editors the Second Quarto, though 1 In The Stationers' Registers^ under the date " 28 Octobris (1600, 42 Regine)," when this Quarto seems to have been entered, the name is given as " Thomas haies." The moft excellent Hiftorie of the ^SXderchant of Venice^. With the cxtrcame jcrucldeof iStj/oc^ the Icwc towards the fayd Merchant, in cutting a iuft pound of his flcfh: andiheobtayniDgofP^r/^4 bythc choyfc of three chcfts. As it hath heene Huers times Med by the Lord Chmberhin^his Serttants^ Written by William Shakcfpearc. AT. LONDON, Printed by 7. ^for Thomas Heyes, and are to be fold inPaulcs Church-yard, at the figncof the Greene Dragon. 1 6 oo« INTRODUCTION XV Johnson and Capell, believing in its priority, named it the First Quarto. In this edition it is designated Q2. Each of these Quartos — the only editions of the play that are known to have appeared in Shakespeare's lifetime — seems to have been printed from a different transcript of what was probably the author's original copy, that of Qi being the work of a careful copyist, that of Q2 of one more careless if not more illiterate. In 1637 Laurence Hayes (Heyes, Haies), son of the pub- lisher of Q2, published what is now known as the Third Quarto (Qs), having entered it on The Stationers^ Registers eighteen years before (Regni Regis' 17° 8° Julii, 1619). Qg is in the main but a careless reprint of Q2, but in it appears *'The Actors Names " — the first list of dramatis personse. In 1652 appeared the Fourth Quarto (Q4), which seems but a reissue of Q3 with a new title-page. "... It is undoubtedly a fact worth remarking, — that just at the time of this reissue the Jews were beginning to ask for readmis- sion into England, and the consideration of their request to be seriously entertained." — Hales. Folios In the First Folio (1623), designated in this edition Fi, the text of The Merchant of Venice is very similar to that of Q2J but here for the first time is found the formal divi- sion into acts. The Second Folio, F2 (1632), the Third Folio, Fs (1663, 1664), and the Fourth Folio, F4 (1685), show few real variants in the text of this play and none of great importance. xvi THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE Rowe's Editions In 1709 Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate from 1715 to 1718, published what is the first critical and the first octavo edi- tion of Shakespeare and issued a second and enlarged edition five years later. Rowe, himself a practical play- wright, made the excellent division of acts into scenes which almost all later editors have accepted ; and he intro- duced the list of dramatis personae which has been made the basis for all later lists. IV. DRAMATIC STRUCTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF TIME AND PLACE The essential elements of a drama are (i) the exposition or introduction, (2) the complication or rising action, (3) the climax or turning point, (4) the resolution or falling action, and (5) the catastrophe or conclusion. In a tragic drama the hero struggles with antagonizing forces and is defeated ; in comedy he triumphs. The Merchant of Venice is a comedy in which Antonio triumphs over the difficulties and complications woven around him in the rising action. Plere as in Shakespeare's other plays the organic parts of the action do not correspond exactly to the mechanical division into acts. In this play the exposition is contained in the first two scenes ; the complication begins with the conver- sation between Bassanio and Shylock regarding the loan, and continues until the climax is reached in the casket scene of the third act, at the close of which is read Antonio's let- ter to Bassanio announcing the desperate condition of his INTRODUCTION XVU affairs. The beginning of the resolution is usually in the closest union with the climax, and Portia's sending Bassanio to the relief of Antonio is incorporated with the casket scene. The resolution or falling action is complete with the close of the trial scene and the episode of the rings. This epi- sode, linking the tragic subaction to the comic main action, brings about the exquisite conclusion amid the music and the moonlight of Belmont. The Merchant of Venice is a romantic drama in which the classical unities of time and place are quietly set aside in favor of the supreme unity of life. In the action of the play a quarter of a year is made to pass, and, as we read or listen, it seems a matter of a few hours. The scene shifts from Venice to Belmont and from Belmont to Venice ; and such improbabilities as the stories of the bond and of the caskets are interwoven with Jessica's elopement and the episode of the rings into a symmetrical, fascinating, an^ convincing plot. Eccles^ has one formal time analysis; Halpin, another ; P. A. Daniel, a third. Christopher North (Professor John Wilson) published in Blackwoo(Vs Edin- burgh Magazine a theory of 'double time,' as used by Shakespeare : " Shakespeare counts off days and hours, as it were, by two clocks, on one of which the true Historic time is recorded, and on the other the Dramatic time, or a false show of time, whereby days, weeks, and months may be to the utmost contracted." But such ingenious theories and analyses are beside the mark when the difference be- tween a poet's point of view and a scientist's is recognized. Shakespeare's time, like Sir Walter Scott's, is independent ^ See Fumess's A New Variorum Edition — The Merchant of Venice^ " The Duration of the Action," 332-341. xviii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE of chronometers and almanacs; and in his treatment of localities it is but a fool's errand to go for help to the maps and charts of the formal geographer. V. VERSIFICATION AND DICTION Blank Verse The greater part of The Mercha?it of Venice is in blank verse ^ — the rhymeless, iambic five-stress verse (iambic pentameter) introduced into England from Italy by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, about 1540, and used by him in a translation of the second and fourth books of Vergil's ^neid, Nicholas Grimald {TotteVs Miscellany^ i557) em- ployed the measure for the first time in English original poetry, and its roots began to strike deep into British soil and absorb substance. It is peculiarly significant that Sack- ville and Norton should have used it as the measure of Gorboduc, the first English tragedy (performed by " the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple" on January 18, 15 61, and first printed in 1565). About the time when Shakespeare arrived in London the infinite possibilities of blank verse as a vehicle for dramatic poetry and passion were being shown by Kyd and above all by Marlowe. The blank verse of Shakespeare's earlier plays, like that of Surrey and Sack- ville, is for the most part restrained and monotonously reg- ular; in his later plays it breaks away from the formal verse limits and sweeps all before it in its freedom, power, 1 The term * blank verse * is used for the first time in Nash's Preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589), where we find the expression : " the swelling bumbast of bragging blanke verse." INTRODUCTION xix and organic continuity. In the blank verse of The Mer- chant of Venice we have the transition from the earlier style to the later, and trochees, spondees, feminine endings, run-on lines, incomplete lines, Alexandrines, etc., vary the rhythm and give flexibility and vigor, though end-stopped lines abound, many of them (for instance, the first line of the play) examples of normal five-stress iambic pentameter. Rhyme When compared with Shakespeare's earlier plays. The Merchant of Venice shows a marked decrease in the use of rhyme in the dialogue. With the ever-increasing freedom from metrical ^restraint which distinguishes Shakespeare's development as a writer of verse, there is less and less employment of rhymed couplets, and in this play, as in the later plays, these couplets are for the most part rhyme-tags at the close of scenes. The scrolls within the caskets are in four-stress trochaic verse catalectic, varied by normal four-stress iambic lines. "Tell me where is fancy bred" is the only song in the play, but, woven of trochaic and iambic rhyming lines, it is one of the daintiest in the precious volume of Shakespeare's lyrics that daily "with the innocence of love like the old age." Prose In the development of the English drama the use of prose as a vehicle of expression entitled to equal rights with verse, was due to Lyly. He was the first to use prose with power and distinction in original plays, and did memorable XX THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE service in preparing the way for Shakespeare's achievement as a master of humorous prose in high comedy. In Shake- speare's prose, as has been pointed out by Delms (Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, V, 227-273) three varieties may be distinguished : (i) The speech of the comic characters, clowns, and their fellows, which in phrase- ology, dialect, and construction is the speech of the com- mon people. Such is what we have in the talk of Launcelot and Old Gobbo. (2) The essentially euphuistic prose, fea- tures of which are at times introduced in Shakespeare's earlier plays in order to ridicule it, but occur in his later dramas without any such purpose and in full seriousness where information is to be given as to the nature of a situa- tion, or where a specially solemn and ceremonious tone is intended. (3) The humorous prose spoken as a rule, though not exclusively, by persons of superior rank or importance — the prose of high comedy, vivacious, sparkling, and flashing with repartee. Examples of this are the conversations be- tween Portia and Nerissa in this play and the wit-combats in Much Ado About Nothing, VI. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS / While The Merchant of Venice shows no novelty either of story or of plot, Shakespeare here as elsewhere making use of material common to European and oriental literature and of universal appeal, it is one of the most original pro- ductions of the human mind by virtue of conception and development of character, poetical texture and grain, sap and flavor of wit and humor, and all that touches the real life and virtue of workmanship. The praise of the play is INTRODUCTION xxi in the mouth of all who have vision to discern. From the reopening of the theaters at the Restoration till the present day, it has kept its place on the stage ; it is among the first of Shakespeare's works to be read, and the last to be forgot- ten ; its interest is as durable in the closet as on the boards. Critics have too often entertained themselves with specu- lations as to the specific moral purpose in this play or that. A work of art, to be really deserving the name, must needs be moral, because it must be proportionable and true to nature, thus attuning our inward forces to the voice of external order and law; otherwise it is at strife with the compact of things, a piece of dissonance, a jarring, unbal- anced, crazy thing, that will die of its own internal disorder. If, then, a work be morally bad, this proves the author more a bungler than anything else. And if any one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from reason, but from something within him of which his reason, in so far as he has any, necessarily disapproves : so that he is rather to be laughed at as a dunce than preached to as a sinner. As to the moral temper of The Merchant of Venice^ critics have differed widely, some regarding the play as teaching the most comprehensive humanity, others as caressing the narrowest bigotries of the Elizabethan age. This difference may be fairly taken as an argument for Shakespeare's can- dor and evenhandedness. A special pleader is not apt to leave the hearers in doubt on which side of the question he stands. In this play, as in others, the poet ordered things mainly with a view to dramatic effect, though to such effect in the largest and noblest sense. And the highest praise compatible with tne nature of the work is justly his, inas- much as he did not allow himself to be swayed either way / xxii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE from the right measures and proportions of art. For art is, from its very nature, obliged to be " without respect of per- sons." Impartiality is its essential law, the constituent of its being. And of Shakespeare it could least of all be said, — he narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. He represented men as he had seen them. And he could neither repeal nor ignore the old law of human nature, in virtue of which the wisest and kindest men are more or less warped by social customs and prejudices, so that they come to do, and even to make a merit of doing, some things that are very unwise and unkind ; while the wrongs and insults which they are thus led to practice have the effect of goad- ing the sufferers into savage mahgnity and revenge. Had he so clothed the latter with gentle and amiable qualities as to enhst the feelings of all in their behalf, he would have given a false view of human nature, and his work would have lost much of its instructiveness on the score of prac- tical morality. For good morals can never be reached by departures from truth — a rule that may be profitably remembered by all who are moved to act as advocates and special pleaders in what they think a good cause. Vn. OUTLINE OF THE STORY Antonio, the Merchant, has a strange mood of sadness upon him, and three of his friends are bending their wits to play it off. Among them, and dearer to him than the others, is one Bassanio, a gentleman who, young and generous, has lavished his fortune. Bassanio's heart is turning towards INTRODUCTION xxiii Portia, a wealthy heiress who, highly famed for gifts and virtues, resides not many miles off; and from whose eyes he has received " fair speechless messages." But he wants ** the means to hold a rival place " among her princely suitors. Antonio freely and gladly pledges his wealth and credit to Bassanio*s service, but as his funds are all embarked in ventures at sea, he tries his credit with a rich Jew, whose person he has often insulted, and whose greed his Christian liberality has often thwarted. Shylock, the Jew, feigning a merry humor, consents to lend the sum, provided Antonio sign a bond authorizing him, in case of forfeiture, to cut a pound of flesh from whatever part of his body he may choose. Antonio readily agrees to this, and so equips his friend for the loving enterprise. Bassanio prosecutes his suit to Portia with success. But, while yet in his first transports of joy, he learns that Antonio's ventures at sea have all miscarried, and that the Jew, with malignant earnestness, claims the forfeiture. Leaving his bride the moment he has sworn the sweet oath, he hastens away, resolved to save his friend's life at the expense, if need be, of his own. Thereupon Portia gets instructions from the most learned lawyer in those parts, and, habiting herself as a doctor of laws, repairs to the trial. To divert the Jew from his purpose, she taxes her wisdom and per- suasion to the utmost, but in vain. Scorning the spirit of justice, and deaf to the voice of mercy, both of which speak with eloquence from Portia's lips, rejecting thrice the amount of the bond, and standing immovable on the letter of the law, Shylock pushes his revenge to the very point of making the fatal incision, when she turns the letter of the law against him, strips him of penalty, principal, and all, and xxiv THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE subjects even his life to the mercy of the Duke. As the condition of his life, he is required to sign a deed securing all his wealth to his daughter, who, loaded with his ducats and jewels, has lately eloped with another of Antonio's friends, and is staying at Portia's mansion during her absence. The play winds up with the hastening of all, except the Jew, to Portia's home. When all have met, Portia announces to Antonio the safe return of his ships supposed to be lost, and surprises the fugitive lovers with the news of their good fortune. VIII. THE CHARACTERS In respect of characterization The Merchant of Venice is exceedingly rich, and this too both in quantity and quality. The persons naturally fall into three several groups, with each its several plot and action ; but the three are skillfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet so drawing in with the others, that everything helps on everything else, there being neither any confusion nor any appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups, Antonio, Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centers. The part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems to grow forth as an element of the origi- nal germ, a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essen- tial to the well-being of the piece. It may be described as a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts, itself in perfect harmony with them, and perfecting their harmony with each other. In the first entry on The Statio7iers' Registers (see above, "Date of Composition") the play is described as "abookeof INTRODUCTION XXV the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce." This would seem to infer that the author was then in some doubt whether to name it from Antonio or from Shylock. As an individual, Shylock is the character of the play, and exhibits more of mastership than any of the others; so that, viewing the persons severally, we should say the piece ought to be named from him. But we have not far to seek for good reasons why it should be named as it is. For if the Jew is the more important individually, the Merchant is so dramatically. Antonio is the center and mainspring of the action ; without him, Shylock, however great in himself, had no business there. And the laws of dramatic combination, not any accident of individual prom- inence, are clearly what ought to govern in the naming of the play. Antonio Not indeed that the Merchant is a small matter in him- self; far from it; he is a highly interesting and attractive personage, with timber enough in him for a good dramatic hero apart from the Jew. Something of a peculiar charm attaches to him from the state of mind in which we first see him. A dim, mysterious presage of evil weighs down his spirits, as though he felt afar off the coming on of some great calamity. This unwonted dejection, sweetened as it is with his habitual kindness and good nature, has the effect of showing how dearly he is held by such whose friendship is the fairest earthly purchase of virtue. It is significant that upon tempers like his even the smiles of fortune often have a strangely saddening effect. For such a man, even because he is good, is apt to be haunted with a sense of XXVI THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE having more than he deserves ; and this may not unnatu- rally inspire him with an indefinable dread of some reverse which shall square up the account of his present blessings. Thus his very happiness works by subtle methods to charge his heart with certain dark forebodings. Such presentiments are in the right line of nature : Oft, startled and made wise By their low-breathed interpretings, The simply-meek foretaste the springs Of bitter contraries. But the sorrow that has such noble comforters as Antonio's can hardly be ungrateful to us. Our nature is honored in the feelings that spring up on both sides. Wealth indeed seldom dispenses such warnings save to its most virtuous possessors. And such is Antonio. A kind- hearted and sweet-mannered man > of a large and liberal spirit ; affable, generous, and magnificent in his dispositions ; patient of trial, indulgent to weakness, free where he loves, and frank where he hates ; in prosperity modest, in adver- sity cheerful ; craving wealth for the uses of virtue, and as the sinews of friendship ; — his character is one which we never weary of contemplating. The only blemish we per- ceive is his treatment of Shylock : in this, though it is more the fault of the times than of the man, we cannot help siding against him. We need not ask a clearer instance of poetical justice than this, and even this we blame rather as a wrong done to himself than to Shylock ; as the Jew, despite his provocations, avowedly grounds his hate mainly on those very things which make the strongest title to a good man's love. For Shylock's revenge fastens not so much on the man's abuse of him as on his kindness to others. INTRODUCTION xxvii Antonio's Friends The friendship between the Merchant and his compan- ions is such a picture as Shakespeare evidently delighted to draw. And so fair a sentiment is not apt to inhabit ignoble breasts. Bassanio, Gratiano, and Salarino give a pleasing variety to the scenes where they move. Bassanio, though something too lavish of purse, is a model of a gentleman, in whose character and behavior all is order and propriety, with whom good manners are the proper outside and visi- bility of a fair mind — the natural foliage and drapery of inward refinement and dehcacy and rectitude. Well-bred, he has that in him which, even had his breeding been ill, would have raised him above it and made him a gentleman. Gratiano and Salarino are as clever, sprightly, and voluble persons as any one need desire to be with ; the chief differ- ence between them being, that the former lets his tongue run on from good impulses, while the latter makes it do so for good ends. If not so wise as Bassanio, they are more witty; and as much surpass him in strength, as they fall short of him in beauty of character. Gratiano, while much more prone than Salarino to flood us with his talk, also shows less subjection of the individual to the common forms of social decorum : so that, if he behaves not quite so well as the others, he gives livelier proof that what good behavior he has is his own — a growth from within, not a piece of imitation. And we are rather agreeably surprised that one so talkative and rattle-tongued should carry so much weight of meaning ; he sometimes appears less sensible than he is, because of his galloping volubility. But he has no wish to be " reputed wise for saying nothing " ; and he makes a xxviii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE merit of talking nonsense when, as is sometimes the case, nonsense is the best sort of sense : for, like a prime good fellow, as he is, he would rather incur the charge of folly than not, provided he can thereby add to the health and entertainment of his friends. Lorenzo and Jessica Lorenzo and Jessica, the runaway lovers, are in such a lyrical state of mind that a clear view of their characters is somewhat interfered with. Both are indeed overflowing with sweetness and beauty, but more, perhaps, as the result of their relations to each other than of inherent qualities. Jessica's elopement, in itself and its circumstances, puts us to the alternative that either she is a bad child or Shylock a bad father. And while there is enough to persuade us of the latter, some share of the reproach falls to her. For if a young woman have so bad a home as to justify her in thus deserting and robbing it, the atmosphere of the place can hardly fail to leave some traces in her temper and character. Lorenzo stands fair in our regard, negatively, because he does nothing unhandsome ; positively, because he has such good men for his friends. And it is rather curious that what is thus done for him, should be done for Jessica by such a person as Launcelot Gobbo. For she and the clown are made to reflect each other's choicer qualities.) We think the better of her for having kindled something of poetry in such a clod, and of him for being raised above himself by such an object. Her conduct is further justified to our feelings by the odd testimony he furnishes of her father's INTRODUCTION XXIX badness; which testimony, though not of much weight in itself, goes far to confirm that of others. We see that the Jew is much the same at home as in the Rialto ; that, let him be where he will, it is his nature to snarl and bite. Launcelot Gobbo Such, from one point of view, is the dramatic propriety of this Launcelot. His part gives a fuller view both of Jes- sica and of her father. But, in addition to this function, he has also a value in himself. His own personal rights enter into the purpose of his introduction, and he carries in himself a part of the reason why he is so, and not otherwise ; for Shakespeare seldom if ever brings in a person merely for the sake of others. A mixture of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self, he is by no means a com- monplace buffoon, but stands firm in his sufficiency of original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural. The poverty of his wit is enriched by his complacency in dealing it out. His part indeed amply pays its way, in showing how much of mirth may be caused by feebleness in a great attempt at a small matter. In him the mother-element of the whole piece runs out into broad humor and travesty ; his reasons for breaking with his master the Jew being, as it were, a variation in drollery upon the main theme of the play. He exhibits under a comic form the general aspect of surrounding humanity ; while at the same time his character is an inte- gral part of that varied structure of human life which it belongs to the Drama to represent. XXX THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE Portia In Portia Shakespeare seems to have aimed at a perfect scheme of an amiable, intelligent, and accomplished woman. The result is a fine specimen of beautiful nature enhanced by beautiful art. Eminently practical in her tastes and turn of mind, full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, Portia unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse ; the whole being tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. As intelligent as the strongest, she is at the same time as feminine as the weakest of her sex : she talks like a poet and a philosopher, and she talks, for all the world, just like a woman ! She is as full of pleasantry, too, and as merry " within the limit of becoming mirth," as she is womanly and wise ; and her arch sportiveness always has a special flavor as the free outcome of perfect moral health. Nothing indeed can be more fitting and well placed than her demeanor, now bracing her speech with grave maxims of practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in sallies of wit, or of innocent, roguish banter. The sportive element of her composition has its happiest showing in her dialogue with Nerissa about the "parcel of wooers," and in her humorous description of the part she imagines herself playing in her purposed disguise. The latter is especially delightful from its harmonious contrast with the solid thoughtfulness which, after all, forms the staple and frame- work of her character. How charmingly it sets off the divine rapture of eloquence with which she discourses to the Jew of mercy ! — INTRODUCTION XXXI I '11 hold thee any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, 1 41 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, Which I denying, they fell sick and died ; I could not do withal : then I '11 repent. And wish, for all that, that I had not kill'd them. And twenty of these puny lies I '11 tell ; Then 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. [Ill, iv, 62-78.] Partly from condition, partly from culture, Portia has grown to live more in the understanding than in the affec- tions ; for which cause she is somewhat self-conscious, but her character is hardly the less lovely on that account ; she talks considerably of herself indeed, but always so becom- ingly that we hardly wish her to choose any other subject, for we are pleasantly surprised that one so well aware of her gifts should still bear them so meekly. Mrs. Jameson, with Portia in her eye, intimates that Shakespeare is about the only artist, except nature, who can make women wise without turning them into men. And it is well worth the noting that, honorable as the issue of her course at the trial would be to a man, Portia shows no unwomanly crav- ing to be in the scene of her triumph : as she goes there prompted by the feelings and duties of a wife, and for the saving of her husband's honor and peace of mind, — being xxxil THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE resolved that " never shall he lie by Portia's side with an unquiet soul " ; so she gladly leaves when these causes no longer bear in that direction. Then, too, exquisitely culti- vated as she is, humanity has not been so refined out of her that in such a service she cannot stoop from her elevation, and hazard a brief departure from the sanctuary of her sex. As Portia is to act for once the part of a man, it would seem hardly possible for her to go through the undertaking without more of self-confidence than were becoming in a woman; and the student may find plenty of matter for thought in the poet's so managing as to prevent such an impression. For there is nothing like ostentation or con- ceit of intellect in Portia. Though knowing enough for any station, still it never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would therefore neither hide her light under a bushel that others may not see by it, nor perch it aloft in public that others may see it ; but would simply set it on a candlestick that it may give light to all in her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of poetry and the solidities of philosophy, all for use, nothing for show; and has fairly domesticated them, has naturalized them in her sphere, and tamed them to her fireside, so that they seem as much at home there as if they had been made for no other place. And to all this mental enrichment she adds the skill So well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. Portia's consciousness of power does indeed render her cool, collected, and firm, but never a whit unfeminine : her INTRODUCTION xxxiii smooth command both of herself and of the matter she goes about rather heightens our sense of her modesty than other- wise : so that the impression we take from her is, that these high mental prerogatives are of no sex ; that they properly belong to the common freehold of woman and man. Some of her speeches, especially at the trial, are evidently pre- meditated ; for, as any good lawyer would do, she of course prepares herself in the case beforehand ; but I should like to see the masculine lawyer that could premeditate anything equal to them. It is to be noted withal that she goes about her work without the least misgiving as to the result; having made herself so thoroughly familiar with both the facts and the law of the case as to feel perfectly sure on that point. Hence the charming ease and serenity with which she moves amid the excitements of the trial. No trepidations of anxiety come in to disturb the preconcerted order and method of her course. Her solemn appeals to the Jew are made in the earnest hope of inducing him to accept a full and liberal discharge of the debt. When she says to him, " there 's thrice thy money offer'd thee," it is because she really feels that both the justice of the cause and the honor of her husband would be better served by such a payment than by the more brilliant triumph which awaits her in case the Jew should spurn her offer. Thus her management of the trial throughout is a piece of consummate art ; though of art in such a sense as pre- supposes perfect integrity of soul. Hence, notwithstanding her methodical forecast and preparation, she is as eloquent as an angel, and her eloquence, as by an instinctive tact, knows its time perfectly. One of her strains in this kind, xxxiv THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE her appeal to the Jew on the score of mercy, has been so often quoted, that it would long since have grown stale, if it were possible by any means to crush the freshness of unwith- ering youth out of it. Her style in that speech is in perfect keeping with her habitual modes of thought and discourse; even in her most spontaneous expressions we have a reflex of the same intellectual physiognomy. For the mental apti- tude which she displays in the trial seems to have been the germinal idea out of which her whole part was consistently evolved ; as Shakespeare's method often was, apparently, first to settle what his persons were to do, and then to con- ceive and work out their characters accordingly. How nicely Shakespeare discriminates things that really differ, so as to present in all cases the soul of womanhood without a particle of effeminacy ! How perfectly he recon- ciles things that seem most diverse, pouring into his women all the intellectual forces of the other sex, without in the least impairing or obscuring their womanliness ! This is not more rare in poetry than it is characteristic of Shake- speare's workmanship. Thus Portia is as much superior to her husband in intellect, in learning, and accomplishment, as she is in wealth ; but she is none the less womanly for all that. Nor does she ever on that account take the least thought of inverting the relation between them. Her mental superiority breeds no kind of social displacement, nor any desire of it. While she is acting the lawyer in disguise, her speech and bearing seem to those about her in the noblest style of manliness. In her judgelike gravity and dignity of deportment, in the extent and accuracy of her legal knowl- edge, in the depth and appropriateness of her moral reflec- tions, in the luminous order and coherence and transparency INTRODUCTION XXXV of her thoughts, she suggests the worthiest of the great chief justices of history. To us who are in the secret of her sex, all the proprieties, all the inward harmonies, of her character are preserved ; and the essential grace of womanhood irra- diates and consecrates the dress in which she is disguised. Portia's strength and substantial dignity of character are not impaired by the romance which overflows her nature — this it is that glorifies her, and breathes enchantment about her ; it adds that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such winning beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the "rich-souled creature'' that Schlegel describes her to be. In her case we have a remarkable example of how Shakespeare makes the several parts and persons of a drama cohere not only with one another but with the general circumstances wherein they occur. In Portia's character the splendor of Italian skies and scenery and art is reproduced ; their spirit lives in her imagination and suffuses all she does and says. Shylock If Portia is the beauty of this play, Shylock is its strength. In the delineation of the Jew Shakespeare had to fill with individual life and peculiarity the broad, strong outlines of national character in its most revolting form. Shylock is a true representative of his nation ; wherein we have a pride which for ages never ceased to provoke hostility, but which no hostility could ever subdue, a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no rapacity could ever exhaust, and a weakness which, while it exposed the subjects to wrong, only deepened their hate, because it kept them without the xxxvi THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE means or the hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of national sufferings, national sympathies, national antipathies. Himself an object of bitter insult and scorn to those about him, surrounded by enemies whom he is at once too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose, he can have no life among them but money, no hold on them but interest, no feeling toward them but hate, no indemnity out of them but revenge. What wonder that the elements of national greatness became congealed and petrified into malignity? As avarice was the passion in which he mainly lived, the Christian virtues that thwarted this naturally seemed to him the greatest of wrongs. With these strong national traits are interwoven personal traits equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely Jewish, he is not more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy intellectuality, and his dry, mummylike tenacity of purpose, with a dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor, we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him ; remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him ; when he has not provoked them, he has been forced to bear them ; and now that he does provoke them, he is hardened against them. He may be broken ; he cannot be bent. Shylock is great in every scene where he appears, yet each later scene exhibits him in a new element or aspect of greatness. As soon as the dramatist has set forth one side or phase of his character, he forthwith dismisses that INTRODUCTION xxxvii and proceeds to another. For example, the Jew^s cold and penetrating sagacity, as also his malignant and remorseless guile, are effectively shown in the scene with Antonio and Bassanio, where he is first solicited for the loan. And the strength and vehemence of passion, which underlies these qualities, is still better displayed, if possible, in the scene with Antonio's two friends, Salanio and Salarino, where Shylock first avows his purpose of exacting the forfeit- ure. One passage of this scene has a peculiarly idio- matic strain of eloquence, steeped in a mixture of gall and pathos : He hath disgraced me, and hinder'd me half a million ; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorn'd my nation, thwarted my bargains, cool'd my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his- reason ? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands^ organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases^ heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd 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 villainy you teach me, I will execute ; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. [Ill, i, 47-63.] National and individual traits in Shylock are so attem- pered and fused together that we cannot distinguish their respective influence. Even his avarice has a smack of patriotism. Money is the only defense of his brethren as well as of himself, and he craves it for their sake as well as his own ; he feels indeed that wrongs are offered to them xxxviii THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE in him, and to him in them. Antonio has scorned his reli- gion, balked him of usurious gains, insulted his person : therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a Jew ; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer; hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. And who but a Christian, one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his precious, precious jewels? His religion, his patriotism, his avarice, his affection, all unite to stimulate his enmity; and his personal hate thus reenforced overcomes for once his greed, and he grows generous in the prosecution of his aim. The only reason he will vouchsafe for taking the pound of flesh is, " if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge"; a reason all the more satisfactory to him, in that those to whom he gives it can neither allow it nor refute it ; and until they can rail the seal from off his bond, all their railings are but a fore- taste of the revenge he seeks. In his eagerness to taste that morsel, sweeter to him than all the luxuries of Italy, his recent afflictions, the loss of his daughter, his ducats, his jewels, and even the precious ring given him by his departed wife, all fade from his mind. In his inexorable and imper- turbable hardness at the trial there is something that makes the blood to tingle. It is the sublimity of malice. We feel that the yearnings of revenge have silenced all other cares and all other thoughts. In his rapture of hate the man has grown superhuman, and his eyes seem all aglow with preter- natural malignity. Fearful, however, as is his passion, he comes not off without moving our pity. In the very act whereby he thinks to avenge his own and his brethren's wrongs, the national curse overtakes him. In standing up INTRODUCTION xxxix for the letter of the law against all the pleadings of mercy, he has strengthened his enemies* hands, and sharpened their weapons, against himself ; and the terrible Jew sinks at last into the poor, pitiable, heartbroken Shylock. Early in the play, when Shylock is bid forth to Bassanio's supper, and Launcelot urges him to go, because " my young master doth expect your reproach," Shylock replies, "So do I his." Of course he expects the reproach through the bankruptcy of Antonio. This would seem to infer that Shy- lock has some hand in getting up the reports of Antonio's "losses at sea," some of which turn out false in the end. Further than this, the poet leaves us in the dark as to how those reports grew into being and gained belief. Did he mean to have it understood that the Jew exercised his cunning and malice in plotting and preparing them? It appears that Shylock knew they were coming before they came. The natural impression from the play is that he lent the ducats and took the bond, on a mere chance of coming at his wish. But he would hardly grasp so eagerly at a bare possibility of revenge, without using means to turn it into something more. This would mark him with much deeper lines of guilt. Why, then, did not Shakespeare bring the matter forward more prominently? Perhaps it was because the doing so would have made Shylock appear too deep a criminal for the degree of interest which his part was meant to carry in the play. In other words, the health of the drama as a work of comic art required his criminality to be kept in the background. He comes very near over- shadowing the other characters too much, as it is. And Shylock*s character is essentially tragic ; there is none of the proper timber of comedy in him. xl THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE IX. CONCLUSION The Merchant of Venice is justly distinguished among Shakespeare's dramas, not only for the general felicity of the language, but also for the beauty of particular scenes and passages. For descriptive power, the opening scene of Antonio and his friends is not easily rivaled, and can hardly fail to live in the memory of any one having an eye for such things. Equally fine in its way is the scene of Tubal and Shylock, where the latter is so torn with the struggle of conflicting passions ; his heart now sinking with grief at the account of his fugitive daughter's expenses, now leaping with malignant joy at the report of Antonio's losses. The trial scene, with its tugging vicissitudes of passion, and its hush of terrible expectation — now ringing with the Jew's sharp, spiteful snaps of malice, now made musical with Portia's strains of eloquence, now holy with Antonio's tender breathings of friendship, and dashed, from time to time, with Gratiano's fierce jets of wrath, and fiercer jets of mirth — is hardly surpassed in tragic power anywhere; and as it forms the catastrophe proper, so it concentrates the inter- est of the whole play. Scarcely inferior in its kind is the night scene of Lorenzo and Jessica, bathed as it is in love, moonlight, " touches of sweet harmony," and soul-lifting dis- course, followed by the grave moral reflections of Portia, as she approaches her home, and sees its lights and hears its music. The bringing in of this passage of ravishing lyrical sweetness, so replete with the most soothing and tranquil- izing effect, close upon the intense dramatic excitement of the trial scene, is such a transition as we shall hardly meet with but in Shakespeare, and shows his mastery of the mind's INTRODUCTION xli capacity of delight. The affair of the rings, with the harm- less perplexities growing out of it, is a well-managed device for letting the mind down from the tragic height whereon it lately stood to the merry conclusion which the play requires. Critics indeed may easily quarrel with this sportive after- piece ; but it stands approved by the tribunal to which crit- icism itself must bow — the spontaneous feelings of such as are willing to be made cheerful and healthy, without beat- ing their brains about the how and wherefore. What a wide diversity of materials this play reconciles and combines ! One can hardly realize how many things are here brought together, they are ordered in such perfect concert and harmony. The greatness of the work is thus hidden in its fine proportions. In many of Shakespeare's dramas we are surprised at the great variety of character : here, besides this, we have a remarkable variety of plot. And, admirable as may be the skill displayed in the charac- ters individually considered, the interweaving of so many several plots, without the least confusion or embarrassment, evinces a still higher mastership. For, many and various as are the forms and aspects of life here shown, they all emphatically live together, as if they all had but one vital circulation. ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES Qi = First Quarto, 1600. Q2 = Second Quarto, i6oa Qs = Third Quarto, 1637. Q4 = Fourth Quarto, 1652. Qq = all the Quartos from 1600 to 1652. Fi = First Folio, 1623. F2 = Second Folio, 1632. Fs = Third Folio, 1664. F4 = Fourth Folio, 1685. Ff = all the seventeenth century Folios. Rowe = Rowe's editions, 1709, 1714. Pope = Pope's editions, 1723, 1728. Johnson = Johnson's edition, 1765. Camb = Cambridge edition (W. A. Wright), 1891. Clar = Clarendon Press edition (Clark and Wright), 1869. Fumess = H. H. Fumess's A New Variorum. The Merchant of Venice, 1888. Abbott = E. A. Abbott's A Shakespearian Grammar, Schmidt = Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon. Skeat = Skeat's An Etymological Dictionary. Murray = A New English Dictionary {The Oxford Dictionary), Century = The Century Dictionary. Other abbreviations are either self-explanatory or such as are in common use. ^1, O 4> .2 2 i a prisoner . Ascham rdale died, ds War of is a o M X;2H e " opened y Fields, flowed by in." 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S rt w >-• u ho 5 s o 1 (3 > 'So (4 s It •sis > o ^.« <1> A 4) u O a 1- w «*» till . « (U ^ 5l .2 o 'O'd So t/3 3« 1^ it 03 =3^ |SoS M 1 1 ^ ^ ^ S ,8 s ,? s H CO s ** M M M M M M " M xlvii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE DRAMATIS PERSON.^ 1 The Duke of Venice. The Prince of Morocco, 1 . ^ . ^ ^ . ^suitors to Portia. The Prince of Arragon,J Antonio,2 a merchant of Venice. Bassanio, his friend, suitor likewise to Portia. Salanio,^ "I Salarino, I friends to Antonio and Bassanio. Gratiano, J Lorenzo, in love with Jessica. Shylock, a rich Jew. Tubal, a Jew, his friend. Salerio,4 Launcelot Gobbo, the clown, servant to Shylock. Old Gobbo, father to Launcelot. Leonardo, servant to Bassanio. BaLTH ASAR, "1 ^ ^ i- servants to Portia. Stephano, J Portia, a rich heiress. Nerissa, her waiting-maid.^ Jessica, daughter to Shylock. Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Jailer, Servants to Portia, and other Attendants. Scene : Partly at Venice^ and partly at Belmont^ the seat of Portia^ on the Continent. 1 Dramatis PERSONiE. Under the title The Actors Names a list of Dramatis Personae is given in Qs. The list given above is based upon Howe's. 2 Antonio I Anthonio QqFf. 8 Salanio, Salarino i QqFf have such spellings as Solanio, Salino, Salaryno, Salerino, Slarino, Solarino, with varying abbreviations. 4 Salerio. See note, p. 86, 1. 214. 6 her waiting-maid 1 her wayting Gentlewoman Qs* ACT I Scene I. Venice. A street Enter Antonio, Salarino, and Salanio Antonio. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 't is made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn ; S And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado to know myself. Salarino. Your mind is tossing on the ocean ; There, where your argosies with portly sail. Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, lo Act I. In Qq no division into 5-6. Printed as one line in QiQ2Ff. Acts or Scenes ; in Ff into Acts only ; 8. Salarino Q1Q2 I Salanio in Rowe first division into Scenes. (Sal.) Ff and so to 1. 56. I. sooth : truth. See Skeat. 3. came by it. * To come by ' a thing is to get possession of it, to acquire it. Cf. I, ii, 8. This expression is still used colloquially. 5. I am to learn. See Abbott, § 405. 9. argosies : large merchant vessels usually carrying rich freight. The word is probably derived from * Ragusa,' though some authorities (Skeat, Clark, Wright) connect it with the classical * Argo.' It occurs four times, in the singular, in the first scene of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, 10. signiors. Shakespeare uses the word * signior ' in the sense of * lord ' or ' gentleman,* and occasionally, as in Much Ado About Nothing and Othello^ as a title of customary address. — burghers : citizens, free- men of a burgh. In As You Like It, II, i, 23, the deer in the Forest of Arden are described as " native burghers of this desert city." 3 4 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers. That curtsy to them, do them reverence. As they fly by them with their woven wings. Salanio. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, 15 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. Salarino. My wind, cooling my broth, Would blow me to an ague, when I thought What harm a wind too great might do at sea. I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, 25 But I should think of shallows and of flats, 19. Peering Fi I prying Q3Q4. — 24. might do at sea Q2Ff Q3Q4 and piers Fi | for piers Qi. I at sea, might do Qi. II. pageants. These were originally the high stages, or scaffolds, usually on wheels, on which miracle plays and shows of various kinds were given ; then the plays or shows themselves. 13. curtsy. "Suggested by the rocking, ducking motion in the petty traffiquers caused by the wake of the argosie as it sails past them." — Fumess. 15. venture : what is risked — exposed to " the perils of waters, winds, and rocks." — forth. In Shakespeare and in Elizabethan literature • forth' is often used in the sense of * out,' without any verb of motion. See Abbott, § 41. 17. still: continually. Cf. Fr. toujours. 18. " Take a straw and throw it up into the air, — you may see by that which way the wind is.*' — Selden's Table-talk. Country folks often hold long grass in the air to learn the wind direction. SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 5 And see my wealthy Andrew docks in sand, Vailing her high top lower than her ribs 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 gentle 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, 35 And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought To think on this ; and shall I lack the thought, 27. docks QqFf | dock'd Rowe. 36. nothing ? Qi | nothing. Q2Ff . 33. her Fi I the Qi. 27. Andrew. The name of the ship given in honor either of St. Andrew, or, as is more probable, of Andrea Doria (died 1560), the famous admiral of Genoa. — docks. More vivid than Rowe's ' dock'd.* 28. The image is of a ship tilted over on one side, the other side in the air, and the topmast down in the sand. — Vailing : lowering, Marlowe uses this verb (Fr. avaler^ Lat. ad valleni) twice in The Jew of Malta^ — transitively (V, iii, i) : Calymath. Now vail your pride, you captive Christians, And kneel for mercy to your conquering foe ; intransitively (II, ii, 11) : Del Bosco. Our fraught is Grecians, Turks, and Afric Moors, For late upon the coast of Corsica, Because we vailed not to the Turkish fleet, Their creeping galleys had us in the chase. 33, 34. These graphic figures are reproduced by Scott in Ivankoe, Chapter X, where Isaac recounts to Rebecca his perils and losses in the Gulf of Lyons. 35. Lettsom conjectures that a line has been lost here, but the meaning becomes clear if the actor makes a gesture indicating bulk or largeness. Shakespeare often leaves his meaning to be interpreted in this way. 6 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act I That such a thing bechanc'd would make me sad? But tell not me ; I know, Antonio Is sad to think upon his merchandise. 40 Antonio. Believe me, no : I thank my fortune for it, My ventures are not in one bottom trusted. Nor to one place ; nor is my whole estate Upon the fortune of this present year : Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. 45 Salarino. Why, then you are in love. Antonio. Fie, fie ! Salarino. 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 fram'd 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, 46. Salarino (Salar.) Qi | Sala- 47. neither: Q2F1Q3Q4 I neither? nio (Sola.) Q2Ff. Qi | neither ! F2. 42. bottom : merchant ship. 46. Dyce says : " I have little doubt that Shakespeare wrote, */« love ! fie, fie ! ' " This would make a normal blank verse line. 50. Janus, as the ancient Italian god who represents the spirit of opening — the opening day, the opening year {Ja7iu-2iYy) — was the tutelary deity of gates and archways. As every gate looks two ways, Janus was often represented with a double face, one on either side of his head. Occasionally a grave face would be associated with a laughing one; hence the peculiar propriety and significance of ' two-headed ' in Salarino's oath. 54. other. An old plural form found often in Middle and Eliza- bethan English, the result of the final e dropping away from othere {ptkre). Ci.Job^ xxiv, 24; The Comedy of Errors^ IV, iii, 5. SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 7 That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, 55 Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. Enter Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Gratiano Salanio. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kins- man, Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well : We leave you now with better company. Salarino. I would have stay'd till I had made you merry, 60 If worthier friends had not prevented me. Antonio. Your worth is very dear in my regard. 1 take it, your own business calls on you, And you embrace the occasion to depart. Salarino. Good morrow, my good lords. 65 Bassanio. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when? You grow exceeding strange : must it be so ? Salarino. We'll make our leisures to attend on yours. \_Exeunt Salarino and Salanio] 56. Nestor was the oldest and gravest of the Greek heroes in the Trojan war. The severest faces might justly laugh at what he should pronounce laughable. 61. prevented : anticipated. Often so in the Bible (King James version) and Book of Common Prayer. Words derived from Latin and Greek are almost always used by Shakespeare and Elizabethan writers in a signification peculiarly close to the root-notion of the word. So in this first scene of the play we have ' mortifying ' (1. 82), In the sense of 'causing death/ and 'conceit' (1. 92), in the sense of 'thought,' 'understanding.' 67. exceeding strange. Compare the colloquial expression, " You're quite a stranger." 8 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Lorenzo. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio, We two will leave you ; but, at dinner-time, 7c I pray you, have in mind where we must meet, Bassanio. I will not fail you. Gratiano. You look not well, Signior Antonio ; You have too much respect upon the world : They lose it that do buy it with much care. 75 Be.Heve me, you are marvellously chang'd. Antonio. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one. Gratiano. Let me play the fool : With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come ; 80 And let my Hver 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 85 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, 90 With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 78. man Q2FfQ3Q4 I one Qi. 89. cream Q2FfQ3Q4 I dream Qi. 84. alabaster | alablaster QqFf. 79. play the fool: act the part of a jester. Shakespeare draws many impressive illustrations from the trade of the professional *fooP — so important a character in the old comedies. Cf. Soruiets^ CXVI, 9; 2 He7iry IV, II, ii, 154. 82. mortifying : causing death. See note, p. 7, 1. 61. 91. opinion : reputation. So also in 1. 102. SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 9 Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit ; As who should say, * I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark ! * my Antonio, I do know of these, 95 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. 1 '11 tell thee more of this another time : 100 But fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. 93. am Sir Qq | am Sir an Ff. 97. when QqFf I who Rowe. 95. these Q2FfQ3Q4 I those Qi. 98. damn F4 1 dam Q1Q2F1. 92. conceit: though tfulness. See note, p. 7, 1. 61. 93. As who should say. Abbott, §257. — Sir Oracle: one who thinks himself possessed of oracular or prophetic wisdom, a wise- acre. With regard to the expression compare Sir Valour in Troilus and Cressida^ I, iii, 176, Sir Prudence in The Tempest^ II, i, 286, and Sir Smile in The Winter^ s Tale, I, ii, 196. 97. Rowe substituted ' who' for *when,' thus furnishing an obvious nominative for 'would' in the following line, but in Shakespeare and other Elizabethan writers the nominative is often omitted when the meaning is clear without it. 99. Referring to the judgment pronounced in the Gospel against him who says to his brother, " Thou fool." The meaning obviously is, that if those who "only are reputed wise for saying nothing" should go to talking, they would be apt to damn their hearers by provoking them to utter this reproach. A thing is often said to *do' that which it any way * causes to be done.' In Shakespeare are many instances of such usage, as in Hamlet, III, iv, 42. So in the text, ' damn' is a causative verb, and the meaning is — would almost cause those hearers to be damned. loi, 102. Do not bait your hook with this melancholy to catch this worthless fish. ' Gudgeon' is the name of a small fish very easily caught, which none but fools would care to catch. lO THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile : I '11 end my exhortation after dinner. Lorenzo. Well, we will leave you, then, till dinner-time. 105 I must be one of these same dumb wise men. For Gratiano never lets me speak. Gratiano. Well, keep me company but two years moe, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. Antonio. Farewell : I '11 grow a talker for this gear. 110 Gratiano. Thanks, i' faith ; for silence is only com- mendable In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible. \_Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo] Antonio. Is that any thing now? Bassanio. 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. 118 Antonio. Well, tell me now, what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, 120 That you to-day promis'd to tell me of? Bassanio. 'T is not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate, 108. moe (mo) QqFf | more Rowe. 115. as omitted in Ff. 113. Is that Rowe's emendation 121. of ? Ff | of. Qq. I It is that QqFf. 108. moe. So read the Quartos and Folios; Rowe substituted * more.* Scholars find a distinction in Middle English between the two forms, — *mo,' or 'moe,' being used of number and with collec- tive nouns, * more ' having reference specifically to size. no. gear. A word of wide, general import, often used of any business or affair in hand. SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE II By something showing a more swelling port Than my faint means would grant continuance : 125 Nor do I now make moan to be abridg'd From such a noble rate ; but my chief care Is, to come fairly off from the great debts, Wherein my time, something too prodigal, Hath left me gag'd. To you, Antonio, 130 I owe the most, in money and in love ; And from your love I have a warranty To unburthen all my plots and purposes How to get clear of all the debts I owe. Antonio. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; 135 And if it stand, as you yourself still do. Within the eye of honour, be assur'd. My purse, my person, my extremest means. Lie all unlock'd to your occasions. Bassanio. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 140 I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight 126. " To was originally used not with the infinitive but with the gerund in -^, and denoted a purpose. Gradually, as to superseded the proper infinitival inflection, to was used in other and more indefi- nite senses." — Abbott. 130. gag'd: pledged. So in i Henry IV, I, iii, 172, 173 : That men of your nobility and power Did gage them both in an unjust behalf. 137. Within the eye of honour : within the range of what may be regarded as honorable. Cf. The Whiter^ s Tale, III, ii, 52. 141. his. Theform'its' was just creeping into use in Shakespeare's day. It does not occur once in the Bible (King James version) as originally printed. — Arrows were of various lengths, weights, and featherings for different ranges, and * flight' seems to have been a tech- nical expression in archery with reference to range. A * shaft of the selfsame flight ' means an arrow made for shooting the same distance. 12 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i The selfsame 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. 145 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, 150 Or bring your latter hazard back again, And thankfully rest debtor for the first. Antonio. 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 155 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, That in your knowledge may by me be done. And I am prest unto it : therefore, speak. 160 Bassanio. In Belmont is a lady richly left ; And she is fair, and, fairer than that word, 155. do me now Qq | do to me F2F3F4 1 do Fi. 143. forth: out. See note, p. 4, 1. 15. 144. childhood proof : childish instance or experiment. Similarly, "childhood innocence" in A Midstcmmer Nighfs Dream^ III, ii, 202. 146. wilful. Warburton suggested 'witless,' and Collier 'wasteful,* as substitutes for ' wilful,' but the text needs no emendation. 154. circumstance-, circumlocution. Cf. The Comedy of ErrorSyV, i, 19; Two Gentleinen of Verona^ I, i, 40 ; Hamlety I, v, 127. 160. prest: ready {Yr. pr^ty L,3.t. praesio). 162. She is beautiful and has what is better than beauty. SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE I3 Of wondrous virtues : sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages. Her name is Portia ; nothing undervalued 165 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. my Antonio, had I but the means To hold a rival place with one of them, 1 have a mind presages me such thrift, 175 That I should questionless be fortunate. Antonio. 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 racked, 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. [^Exfun/] 185 X7X, strand Johnson | strond QqFf. 172. come Q2FfQ3Q4 I comes Qi. 163. * Sometimes * and * sometime * were used indifferently, and often, as here, in the sense of 'formerly,* or * former.' 165. nothing undervalu'd : not at all inferior in value. So, later in this play (II, vii, 53), we have "ten times undervalu'd to tried gold." And ' nothing ' as a strong negative is very common. 178. commodity: merchandise, anything that might be pledged as security for a loan, collateral. 14 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Scene II. Belmont. A room in Portia's house Enter Portia and Nerissa Portia. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. Nerissa. 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. Portia. Good sentences, and well pronounc'd. 9 Nerissa. They would be better, if well follow'd. Portia. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions : I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood ; but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree : such a hare is 5. aught I ought QqFf. 15. than be F4 1 then be F1F2F8 I 6. mean Qq | small Ff. then to be Qq. 6-8. The Folios, with their reading, " small happiness," lose the Shakespearian play on words. Here, with ' mean ' as with * will ' in 11. 21,22, the words are used in the double sense so dear to the euphuistic Elizabethan. — superfluity comes, etc. One who is rich and fares sumptuously sooner gets white hairs, grows old, and dies. — comes by. See note on I, i, 3. 16-17. blood . . . hot temper. These were cause and effect accord- ing to the old physiologists ; hence the mediaeval allegorical poets often identify the two, and put them for passion and impulse gen- erally — a tradition followed by the Elizabethan writers. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 1 5 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 curb'd by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none? 24 Nerissa. Your father was ever virtuous ; and holy men, at their death, have good inspirations : therefore the lottery that he hath devis'd 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? 32 Portia. I pray thee, over-name them; and, as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection. Nerissa. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. 36 Portia. Ay, that 's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but 19. reasoning is not in the Qq I 29. will, no doubt, never Q2Ff Qa reason is not in Ff. Q4 I no doubt you will never Qi. 33. Is it QqF2F8F4 I it is Fi. 30. who Qi 1 who you Q2FfQ3Q4. 19. reasoning: talk, conversation. Shakespeare uses 'reason,' noun and verb, in this sense, II, viii, 27 ; King Lear^ V, i, 26. 22. will. The second 'will* is *will and testament.' In Sonnets, cxxxv, cxxxvi, Shakespeare puns throughout upon the word ' Will.' 23-24. Double negatives are common in Early and Middle English. 35. level at : aim at, guess at. Cf. 2 Henry IV, III, ii, 86. The figure is that of leveling a weapon with a view to hit an object. 37. colt. An equivoque. 'Colt' was used for a wild, dashing, skittish youngster. Steevens notes that in the sixteenth century the Neapolitans were much noted for horsemanship. l6 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i talk of his horse ; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. Nerissa. Then is there the County Palatine. 40 Portia. 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 ! 47 Nerissa. How say you by the French lord. Monsieur Le Bon? 49 Portia. 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 40. Palatine Qi | Palentine Q2FfQ3. 45- te Qq | to be Ff. 38. appropriation. Used oddly here in the sense of ' addition.' The word does not occur again in Shakespeare. Collier suggested as an emendation the substitution of ' approbation of,' Shakespeare using * approbation ' more than once in the sense of 'proof.' Qi reads 'appropriation unto.' 43. the weeping philosophet. This was Heraclitus of Ephesus, who is said to have become a complete recluse, and retreated to "the mountains, where he lived on pot-herbs. He was called " the weeping philosopher" because he mourned over the follies of man- kind, just as Democritus was called "the laughing philosopher" because he laughed at them. Perhaps Portia has in mind the pre- cept : " Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." — Romans^ xii, 1 5. 45. The reference is to the skull and crossbones so often sculp- tured on tombstones. 48. by: about. Cf. II, ix, 25; Love's Labour'' s Lost^ IV, iii, 150; AlVs Well that Ends Well, V, iii, 237. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE I7 man in no man : if a throstle sing, he falls straight a-caper- ing ; he will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me, I would fargive him ; for, if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him. 58 Nerissa. What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of England? 60 Portia. You know I say nothing to him ; for he under- stands 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? 54. throstle I Trassell QqFi | 58. shall Qq | should Ff. Tarssell F2 I Tassell, F3 1 Tassel F4. 54. throstle. The F2 emendation, * Tarssell ' {tiercel, tarcel, or tercel, a male hawk), was an unlucky attempt to hit the right bird. * Trassell ' may be no misprint, but a phonetic representation of a pronunciation of * throstle ' still common in Scotland and the north of England; though in A Midsummer Night^s Dream, III, i, 130 — The ousel cock so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, the word is consistently spelled * throstle,' both in Quartos and Folios. 55-56. I should ... I should. See Abbott, §§ 322-331. 59. to: as to, concerning. Portia in her answer uses Nerissa's expression ' say to ' punningly in its ordinary signification. 64. proper: well-formed. The word is still used in this sense in certain districts in Scotland. Hebrews, xi, 23 : " By faith Moses, when he was bom, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child." Cf. A Midsummer Night^ s Dream^ I, ii, 88 ; 2 Henry IV, II, ii, 72 ; As You Like It, III, v, 51. 65. dumb-show : a dramatic representation, or part of one, shown pantomimically. Dumb-shows were common in the early English drama and were familiar to Shakespeare's audiences. A dumb-show b introduced in Hamlet^ III, ii, 145. l8 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act t 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. 68 Nerissa. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neigh- bour? 70 Portia. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him ; for he borrow'd 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 seal'd under for another. 74 69. Scottish Qq I other Ff. 72. swore Fi | sworne F2. 66. doublet : the outer body garment worn by men in the sixteenth century, the name having reference to the heavy lining or quilting. 67. hose: very tight trousers covering the waist and legs. Foot covering was not known by this name until after 1600. — bonnet: common name for man's headdress in many districts of Scotland to-day. This fashion of affecting foreign dress is satirized in a simi- lar vein by Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothiiig, III, ii, 33 : "A Dutchman to-day, a Frenchman to-morrow, or in the shape of two countries at once, as, a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet." Such passages resemble descriptions of Elizabethan fops and gallants in Joseph Hall's Satires {Virgidemiarum)^ published in 1 597-1 598: How stiffly struts he by, All trapped in the new-found bravery. The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent, In lieu of their so kind a conquerment. What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain, His grandame could have lent with lesser pain? 69. The Folio substitution of 'other' for the 'Scottish' of the 1600 Quartos was obviously in deference to King James I. 74. To ' seal ' was to ' subscribe ' ; as Antonio afterwards says, I, iii, 144, "I'll seal to such a bond." The principal sealed to a bond, his surety sealed under. The meaning therefore is that the Frenchman became surety for another box of the ear, to be given in repayment of the first. There is satirical allusion here to the fre- quent Scottish-French alliances against England. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 19 Nerissa. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew? 7^ Portia. 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 : and the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go with- out him. 82 Nerissa. 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. 85 Portia. 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 '11 be married to a sponge. 90 Nerissa. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords : they have acquainted me with their determina- tions; 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. 96 77. vilely I vildely QiFf. 89. I '11 1 He Qi 1 1 will Ff. 80. and. Such is the reading of Quartos and Folios. No need to change the word to • an.' * And* meaning ' if ' is common in Middle and Elizabethan English, as well as in colloquial and provincial use to-day. See Abbott, §§ 10 1, 103. 91. the having. See Abbott, § 93. 95. sort. Here used in the sense of * lot ' ; from the Latin sors. So in Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 376: "let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector." — your father's imposition : the condi- tions imposed by your father. 20 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Portia. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtain'd by the manner of my father's will. I 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. 102 Nerissa. 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? 105 lox. pray God grant Qq | wish 104. Venetian, a scholar QaFfQs F1F2. Q4 I Venetian scholler Qi. 97. Shakespeare here turns the word * sibyl ' into a proper name. That he knew it to be a generic, not an individual name, appears in Othello, III, iv, 70 : A sibyl, that had number'd in the world, The sun to course two hundred compasses. In her prophetic fury sew'd the work. Bacon, in his essay, Of Delay Sy also uses the word as a proper name : "Fortune is like the market where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall. And again, it is sometimes like Sybilla^s offer, which at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price." The particular sibyl referred to by Portia is the Cumaean Sibyl, so named from Cumae in Italy, where she had her prophetic seat. Apollo offered to grant any request she might make. Her request was that she might live as many years as the number of the grains of sand which she was grasping. Id. I pray God grant. So the Quartos ; the Folios read, • I w4sh.* The famous statute of 1605, "to restrain the abuses of Players," is perhaps responsible for this change. This statute expressly states, " that if . . . any person ... do or shall in any Stage-play . . . use the holy Name of God . . . shall forfeit . . . ten pounds." But elsewhere in the Folio of 1623 the name of God is retained in similar expressions, I, ii, 46, 50 ; II, ii, 60 ; II, ii, 102, etc., so too much need not be made of the influence of the 1605 legislation upon this textual variation. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 21 Portia. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio ; as I think he was so caird. 107 Nerissa. True, madam : he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes look'd upon, was the best deserving a fair lady. no Portia. I remember him well; and I remember him worthy of thy praise. Enter a Serving-man How now I what news? 113 Serving-man. 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. 117 Portia. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good 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 complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me. 122 Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. Whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at the door. \Exeunt\ ^ y 106. he was so Qi I so was he Q2Ff 114. seek for you Qq | seek you Ff. Q8Q4. 123-124. Printed as prose in Qq 113. Hownowl whatnew8?Qq | Ff | first as verse by Knight, omitted in Ff. 124. gates Qi | gate Q2Q8Q4Ff. 114. The four strangers. Six have been enumerated. Most prob- ably this is an oversight on Shakespeare's part. Attempts have been made to saddle the mistake on careless editors and printers ; also to found upon it a theory of a first draft of the play (or an older play) in which were only four strangers, the English and the Scottish lords being probably added in the revision, to please an English audience. 22 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Scene III. Venice. A public place Enter Bassanio and Shylock Shylock. Three thousand ducats, — well. Bassanio. Ay, sir, for three months. Shylock. For three months, — well. Bassanio. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. 5 Shylock. Antonio shall become bound, — well. Bassanio. May you stead me? will you pleasure me? shall I know your answer? Shylock. Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound. lo Bassanio. Your answer to that. Shylock. Antonio is a good man. Bassanio. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary ? Shylock. Ho ! no, no, no, no : my meaning, in saying he is 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. Enter Bassanio ... I Enter Bas- 19-20. hath, squander'd I Theo- sanio with Shylock the Jew QqFf. bald inserted comma | hath squan- dered QqFf. I. well. The word has here something of an interrogative force. 4. the which. See Abbott, § 270. 7. May you. 'May' originally involved the notion of ability (Anglo-Saxon magan^ German mdgen). See Abbott, § 307. 18. the Rialto. "As it were Rivo Alto, a high shore. . . . An emi- nent place in Venice where Merchants commonly meet." — Florio, Italian Dictionary ^ 161 1. See note on 1. 99. SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 23 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. 25 Bassanio. Be assur'd you may. Shylock. I will be assur'd I may; and, that I may be assur'd, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio? Bassanio. If it please you to dine with us. 29 Shylock. Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjur'd 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? 35 Enter Antonio Bassanio. This is Siguier Antonio. Shylock. \^Aside\ How like a fawning publican he looks I I hate him for he is a Christian ; But more for that, in low simplicity. He lends out money gratis and brings down 40 31. See Matthew^ viii, 32. In all Bible translations into English in the sixteenth century, from Tyndale's to that of the Bishops' Bible, ' Nazarite ' is used, as ' Nazarene ' is in the King James ver- sion, to describe a man of Nazareth. 37. fawning publican. The explanation of this peculiar and difficult expression may be found in Luke, xviii, 10-14. Professor Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, p. 61, note, suggests that this line should be given to Antonio. 24 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i 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, 45 On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift. Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, If I forgive him ! Bassanio. Shylock, do you hear? Shylock. I am debating of my present store ; And, by the near guess of my memory, 50 I cannot instantly raise up the gross Of full three thousand ducats. What of that ? Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, 46. well-won Qq | well-worn Ff. 48. Shylock 1 Shy loch Q2. 41. 'Usance,' 'usury,' and 'interest' were all terms of precisely the same import in Shakespeare's time ; there being then no such law or custom whereby ' usury ' has since come to mean the taking of interest above a certain rate. How the taking of interest, at what- ever rate, was commonly esteemed at that time is shown in Lord Bacon's essay, Of Usurie, where he mentions the popular arguments against it : " that the usurer is the greatest Sabbath Breaker, because his Plough goeth every Sunday . . . that the usurer breaketh the First Law, that was made for Mankind after the Fall ; which was. In sudor e Vult{ls tui comedes Panem tuum)- . . . That usurers should have Orange-tawney Bonnets, because they do Judaize. That it is against Nature, for Money to beget Money . . ." From this it is plain that usury was regarded as a badge of Judaism. 42. upon the hip. Some explain this as a phrase of wrestling; others, of hunting. To 'have orve on the hip' was to have the advantage. Henley thinks the explanation of the expression may be found in Genesis^ xxxii, 24-32. Cf. IV, i, 329, and Othello^ II, i, 314. 1 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread. SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 2$ Will furnish me. But, soft ! how many months Do you desire ? — [7^ Ant.] Rest you fair, good signior ; Your worship was the last man in our mouths. 5^ Antonio. Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow, By taking nor by giving of excess, Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, I '11 break a custom. — Is he yet possess'd 6o How much ye would ? Shylock. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. Antonio. And for three months. Shylock. 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 65 Upon advantage. Antonio. I do never use it. Shylock. When Jacob graz'd his uncle Laban's sheep,— This Jacob from our holy Abram was 55. [To Ant. ] Rowe. 60-61. Ishe . . . ye would Q2Q3Q4 57. although Qi | albeit Q2FfQ3 I are you resolv'd, How much he Q4. would have Qi I is he yet possest 59. ripe QqFf | rife Johnson conj. How much he would Ff. 55. Rest you fair : good health to you ! may you continue well ! — a conventional greeting where ' God ' may be understood as the sub- jectof 'rest,' as in the common Elizabethan wish, especially at part- ing, " God rest you merry ! " Cf. As You Like It, V, i, 65. 60-61. Is he yet possess'd How much ye would? This is the reading of the Second Quarto, and Fumivall calls it the test passage in deter- mining the superiority of this Quarto to the First. Fumess prefers and defends the reading of the First Quarto, adding at the close of his argument, " if, however, the text of Q2 is to be preferred, I should certainly change the ye, not into you, as Theobald changed it, but into we, as suggested by Walker and adopted by Dyce and Hudson." l The Folio reading is obviously a mistake. — possess'd : informed. 1 In the earlier editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 26 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act r (As his wise mother wrought in his behalf) The third possessor ; ay, he was the third, — 70 Antonio. And what of him? did he take interest? Shylock. No, not take interest ; not, as you would say. Directly interest : mark what Jacob did. When Laban and himself were compromis'd That all the eanlings which were streak'd and pied 75 Should fall as Jacob's hire, The skilful shepherd pill'd me certain wands ; He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time Fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were Jacob's. 80 This was a way to thrive, and he was blest : And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. Antonio. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob serv'd for ; A thing not in his power to bring to pass, But sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven. 85 Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? Shylock. I cannot tell ; I make it breed as fast. But note me, signior. 70. third, — Dyce | third. QqFf. 77. pill'd | pil'd F, | peel'd Pope. 70. The third possessor. Reckoning Abraham himself as the first. How Jacob's " wise mother wrought " is told in Genesis^ xxvii. 75. eanlings : newborn lambs. — pied : spotted. 77. me. This is the ethical dative, with the force of ' mark me well,' as in i Henry IV^ II, iv, 233, 241. See Abbott, § 220. 79. eaning time: lambing season. From Anglo-Saxon edniafty * bring forth.' 86. Was this inserted in Scripture? 86, 88. " The Greek word for interest, t6ko^, is the exact equivalent of the English word breed, and the idea underlying the two was regularly connected with that of interest in ancient discussions. The SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 27 Antonio. Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 90 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 ! 94 Shylock. Three thousand ducats, — 't is a good round sum. Three months from twelve, — then, let me see ; the rate — Antonio. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you? Shylock. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me 99 94. goodly QqFf I godly Rowe | 96. then, let me see; the rate — comely Bailey conj. Camb | then let me see the rate. QqFf. same idea is present throughout the dispute between Antonio and Shylock. . . . They considered the distinction between the using of flesh and metal for the medium of wealth to be the essential point in their dispute." — Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist^ p. 63. Hence, according to Moulton, the root-idea of the conversa- tion flashes into Shylock's mind the idea of the bond. 90. Cf. The Jew of Malta, I, ii, 112 : What, bring you Scripture to confirm your wrongs ? 94. goodly. Rowe substituted 'godly.' Walker made the same change, remarking that ' goodly ' and * godly,' and, in like manner, ' good ' and ' God,' have been confounded in various passages of old English writers. Dyce held that the * goodly ' of Quartos and Folios was repeated from the preceding line by a printer's mistake. 97. beholding : beholden. A common sixteenth century corruption. 99. Rialto. In this scene we have already had "on the Rialto" and " upon the Rialto." Concerning the place meant, Rogers thus speaks in one of the notes to his poem on Italy : " Rialto is the name, not of the bridge, but of the island from which it is called ; and the Venetians say // ponte di Rialto. as we say Westminster- bridge. In that island is the exchange ; and I have often walked there as on classic ground. In the days of Antonio and Bassanio it was second to none." See note on 1. 18. 28 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i About my moneys and my usances : loo Still 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. 105 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, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur no Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say, * Hath a dog money ? is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats? ' or Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key, 115 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 caird me dog ; and for these courtesies 120 I '11 lend you thus much moneys ' ? Antonio. I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 104. spit F8F4 I spet QqFiF2. ii8. spit | spet QqFf. 114. can Qq I should Ff. 119. day ; another time Ff | day 117-118. Printed as one line in another time Qq. QqFf. 123. too Ff I to Qq. 104. gaberdine : a long, coarse outer garment or frock. Caliban, in The Tempest^ II, ii, 40, wears one big enough, it seems, to wrap both himself and Trinculo in. SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 29 As to thy friends ; for when did friendship take 125 A breed of barren metal of his friend ? But lend it rather to thine enemy ; Who if he break, t&ou mayst with better face Exact the penalty. Shylock. Why, look you, how you storm ! I would be friends with you, and have your love, 130 Forget the shames that you have stain'd me with. Supply your present wants, and take no doit Of usance for my moneys, and you '11 not hear me : This is kind I offer. Bassanio. This were kindness. Shylock. This kindness will I show : Go with me to a notary, seal me there 136 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 Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit 140 Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me. 125. friends QqFi | friend F2F8F4. 129. penalty Qq ! penalties Ff. 126. breed of Ff | breed for Qq. 143. pleaseth Qq | it pleaseth Ff. 126. breed: interest ('bred' from the principal). 128. Who if he break. Doubling of the subject, * who * and ' he,* in relative clauses was common with Elizabethan writers. Bacon has it often. So in The Advancement of Learning: "Which though it be not true, yet I forbear to note any deficiencies." But * who ' in this line may be equal to ' from whom.' See Abbott, § 249. 132. doit : small Dutch coin of little value. 141-142. The language is odd, and rather obscure. The sense probably is : Let the forfeiture of a pound of your flesh be named or specified as an equivalent for the debt. 30 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act i Antonio. Content, in faith ; I '11 seal to such a bond, And say there is much kindness in the Jew. 145 Bassanio. You shall not seal to such a bond for me : I '11 rather dwell in my necessity. Antonio. 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 150 Of thrice three times the value of this bond. Shylock. O father Abram, what these Christians are. Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect The thoughts of others ! — Pray you, tell me this : If he should break his day, what should I gain 155 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 : 160 If he will take it, so ; if not, adieu ; And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. Antonio. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. Shylock. Then meet me forthwith at the notary's : Give him direction for this merry bond ; 165 And I will go and purse the ducats straight ; See to my house, left in the fearful guard 153. dealings teaches QqFi I deal- 161. it, so Q2FfQ3Q4 I it so Qi. ing teaches F2F3F4. 167. fearful | fearless Warburton. 153. teaches. This is probably the old Northern plural in-j-, still common in Scottish dialect: "when the kye comes hame." See Abbott, § 233- 155. break his day : fail to pay on the day appointed. 167. fearful guard : a guard not to be trusted, or that gives cause of fear. ' To fear' was used in an active as well as a passive sense. So in the next scene : ** this aspect of mine Hath fear'd the valiant." SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 31 Of an unthrifty knave ; and presently I will be with you. Antonio. Hie thee, gentle Jew. \_Exit Shylock] The Hebrew will turn Christian : he grows kind. 170 Bassanio. I like not fair terms and a villain's mind. Antonio. Come on : in this there can be no dismay ; My ships come home a month before the day. \_Exeunt] 169-170. Antonio's speech printed This Ff. — grows kind Ff | grows so as prose in QqFf. kind Qi. 170. The Qq Pope Capell Camb | 171. terms | teames Ff . ACT II 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 Morocco. 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 bom, Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, 5 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 fear'd the valiant : by my love, I swear The best-regarded virgins of our clime lo Have lov'd it too. I would not change this hue. Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. 4. Bring me the Ff | bring the Qi. 11. Have Ff | Hath Qi. 1. The old stage direction introducing this second scene and its characters contains a graphic description of the Prince of Morocco : " Enter Morochus, a tawny Moor all in white, and three or four followers accordingly, with Portia, Nerissa, and their train. Flo. Comets." 2. burnish'd. Collier suggested * burning ' as an emendation, and this reading appeared in the earlier editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 7. " Red blood is a traditionary sign of courage. Thus, Macbeth calls one of his frightened soldiers a ' lily-liver'd ' boy ; again, in this play, cowards are said to have ' livers as white as milk ' ; and an effeminate and timorous man is termed a milksop." — Johnson. For the superlative, • reddest,' see Abbott, § 10. 32 SCENE I THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 33 Portia. In terms of choice I am not solely led By nice direction of a maiden's eyes ; Besides, the lottery of my destiny 15 Bars me the right of voluntary choosing : But, if my father had not scanted me, And hedg'd 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. Morocco. 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 25 That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, I would out-stare the sternest eyes that look, 18. wit QqFf I will Hanmer 27. out-stare Qi | ore-stare Q2Ff (Theobald conj.). Q8Q4. 14. Portia means that reason and judgment have a voice potential in her thoughts of marriage. So in Hamlet^ IV, iii, 4 : " the dis- tracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes." 18. wit: judgment, foresight. Theobald suggested *wiir as an emendation, and this reading was adopted in previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 25. Sophy. From The History of the Warres between the Turkes and the Persians (London, 1595), Shakespeare might have learned that *' Soffi and Sofito, an ancient word signifying a wise man . . . is growen to be the common name of the Emperour of Persia." Ismael Sophi is said to have been the founder of what was called the Suff avian dynasty. The same potentate is twice referred to in Thvelfth Night (II, v, 198 ; III, iv, 307). 26. Sultan Solyman. The reference is doubtless to Solyman the Magnificent, the greatest sultan of the sixteenth century, who led a disastrous campaign against the Persians in 1535. 34 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, Yea, mock the Hon when he roars for prey, 30 To win the 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 rage ; 35 And so may I, blind fortune leading me, Miss that which one unworthier may attain. And die with grieving. Portia. 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 advis'd. Morocco. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance. 31. the lady | thee, lady Rowe 35. rage QqFf | page Theobald. QqFf. 31. alas the while. An imprecation upon contemporary conditions like " Woe the while ! " " Woe worth the day ! " 32-33. If they try the question of which is the braver man by a game of dice. The story of Lichas and his bringing to Hercules the " shirt bestained with the blood of Nessus " is found in Ovid's Metamorphoses., IX. Hercules was a descendant of Alcaeus, and so is called, in the Greek idiom, Alcides, in 1. 35. See also III, ii, 55. 35. rage. Almost all modern editors have accepted Theobald's emendation, * page.' But the text as it stands is more poetical and Shakespearian. For an ingenious defense of the Folio reading see Porter and Clarke's ' First Folio ' edition of the play. 42. advis'd. " Therefore be not precipitant ; consider well what you are to do. 'Advis'd ' is the word opposite to ' rash.' " — Johnson. 43. Nor . . . not. See note, p. 15, 1. 24. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 35 Portia. First, forward to the temple : after dinner Your hazard shall be made. Morocco. Good fortune then ! 45 To make me blest or cursed'st among men. \_Cornets, and exeunt] Scene II. Venice. A street Enter Launcelot Launcelot. 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,* or * good Gobbo,' or * good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away.* My con- science says, * No ; take heed, honest Launcelot ; take heed, honest Gobbo,' or, as aforesaid, * honest Launcelot Gobbo ; do not run ; scorn running with thy heels.' Well, jE«/^rLAUNCELOT! Enter Laun- 3. tempts QqFiF2 | attempts Fs celot alone Rowe | Enter the Clowne F4. — Gobbo Qi | lobbe Q2F1 1 Job alone QqFf. Fs. 44. temple. Keightley wished to substitute * table,' but possibly Portia's command to the Prince is to go to the church to take the oath mentioned just before, and described more particularly in the ninth scene of this act. Bibles were not kept in private houses in Shakespeare's time ; and such an oath had to be taken on the Bible. 46. The force of the superlative in ♦ cursed'st ' retroacts on ' blest ' ; so that the sense is ' most blest or most cursed.' So in Measure for Measure^ IV, vi, 13, " The generous and gravest citizens." 8. To scorn a thing with the heels appears to have been an old phrase for spuming or kicking at a thing. Shakespeare has the phrase again in Much Ado About Nothing, III, iv, 50. Launcelot seems to be in chase of a quibble between the heels as used in kicking, and the heels as used in running. 36 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii the most courageous fiend bids me pack : * Via ! * says the fiend; *away P says the fiend; * for the heavens, rouse up a brave mind/ says the fiend, * and run.' Well, my con- science, 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, * Launcelot, 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 con- science, I should stay with the Jew my master, who, God bless the mark, is a kind of devil ; and, to run away from 9. Via Rowe | fia QqFf. 19. well Q2Ff | ill Qi. 9. Via : away 1 go ahead ! An Italian exclamation of encourage- ment, sometimes of impatience, used in Elizabethan. London by teamsters and watermen. 10. for the heavens. A petty oath. To make the fiend conjure Launcelot to do a thing for heaven's sake, is a bit of that "acute nonsense " which Barrow makes a species of wit. 15. something grow to. "A household phrase applied to milk when burnt to the bottom of the saucepan, and thence acquiring an unpleas- ant taste." — Clar. This expression, which suggests dishonesty, is still in common use in country districts in Scotland and the North of England. 20-21. God bless the mark. Like * God save the mark,' an apolo- getic phrase. How these phrases grew into such use or acquired such a meaning is not very clear. Bible expressions such as " The Lord set a mark on Cain," " set a mark on the foreheads of the men," and the many similar phrases in the Apocalypse, may have had their influence. Certain congenital marks on the person were regarded as ominous or ill-boding. So in A Midsummer NighVs Dream^ V, i, 418. "Never mole, hare lip, nor scar. Nor mark prodigious." And so the phrases may have meant, " May God avert the evil omen I " or, " May God render the token auspicious 1 " SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 37 the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself. Certainly the Jew 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 coun- sel : I will run, fiend ; my heels are at your commandment ; I will run. 28 Enter Old Gobbo, with a basket GoBBO. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the way to master Jew's? 30 Launcelot. \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. Gobbo. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to master Jew's ? 35 24. incarnal Qi | incarnation Q2 27-28. commandment QaFf | com- Ff. mand Qi. 22-23. saving your reverence. Another apologetic expression. This phrase usually introduced something coarse or profane ; it is like the modem " If you will allow me to say so." 24. incarnal. The Folios read * incarnation,' but the First Quarto reading, adopted in the text, is the more delicious Gobboism ; as the Folio ' commandment ' in 1. 27 is for the same reason preferable to the First Quarto 'command.* 32. sand-blind. Launcelot's degrees of comparison — sand-blind, high-gravel-blind, stone-blind ! * Sand,* probably a popular corruption of Anglo-Saxon sdm^ half. Of course, Launcelot makes it the turn- ing-point of a quibble. 33. try confusions. To * try conclusions * is the old phrase for to * try experiments.* It is not quite clear whether Launcelot's * con- fusions ' is a blunder for * conclusions,* or whether it is an intentional parody on the old phrase, by way of joke. 38 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii Launcelot. 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. 39 GoBBO. By God's sonties, 'twill be a hard way to hit. Can you tell me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with him, dwell with him or no? 42 Launcelot. Talk you of young Master Launcelot ? — l^Aside^ Mark me now ; now will I raise the waters. — Talk you of young Master Launcelot? 45 GoBBO. No master, sir, but a poor man's son : his father, though I say 't, is an honest exceeding poor man, and, God be thank'd, well to live. 48 36. up on Qq 1 upon Ff. 39. to Ff | unto Qi. 37. marry. Continually used as a colloquial intensive, having the force of 'verily,' 'indeed,' or 'forsooth': like the Latin hercule and edepol. It grew from a custom of swearing by the Virgin Mary. 40. sonties. Most likely a corruption either of ' saints ' or of 'sanc- tity.' Saunctes is an old form of ' saints,' and a pronunciation very similar to that suggested in the text is still to be heard in Scotland. 44. raise the waters : come it over him, have some sport with him. Cf. the colloquial expression, "get a rise out of one." The explanation, " raise the waters in old Gobbo's eyes," seems strained and out of place, though 11. 59-66 may seem to favor it. 46. master. This word formerly meant something as a title of re- spect. "Whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth liberal sciences ; and, to be short, who can live idly, and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called 'master.'" — The Coin- monivealtk of England, 161 2. Old Gobbo shrinks from giving his son the title, though he keeps calling him ' master,' not knowing who he is. 48. well to live. While this expression may mean ' sure of a long life,' the common use of the phrase and the spirit of the passage rather suggest ' well to do.' The old man is thus humorously made to contradict himself. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 39 Launcelot. Well, let his father be what a will, we talk of young Master Launcelot. 5^ GoBBO. Your worship's friend, and Launcelot, sir. Launcelot. But, I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk you of young Master Launcelot? GoBBO. Of Launcelot, an't please your mastership. 54 Launcelot. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Mas- ter 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, deceas'd ; or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven. 59 GoBBO. Marry, God forbid ! the boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop. Launcelot, \^Asi{/e'] Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel- post, a staff or a prop ? — Do you know me, father ? 63 GoBBO. Alack the day, I know you not, young gentle- man : but, I pray you, tell me, is my boy — God rest his soul ! — alive or dead ? Launcelot. Do you not know me, father? 67 GoBBO. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind ; I know you not. Launcelot. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me : it is a wise father that knows 51. sir Qq | omitted in Ff. 49. a : he. For Chaucer's use of ' a,' see Kittredge's Troilus^ p. 152. 52. ergo : therefore. Schmidt catalogues Launcelot's foreign words. 63. Do you know me. Dyce thought a 'not' necessary here — a suggestion adopted in early editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 67. It was customary for young people to address any old man or woman as father or mother. Hence old Gobbo does not recognize his son on being called father by him. So, in King Lear^ Edgar, while leading the eyeless Gloucester, addresses him repeatedly as * father,' without stirring any suspicion of the relationship between them. 40 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii 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, in the end, truth will out. 74 GoBBO. Pray you, sir, stand up : I am sure you are not Launcelot, my boy. Launcelot. 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. 79 GoBBO. I cannot think you are my son. Launcelot. I 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. 83 GoBBO. Her name is Margery, indeed : I '11 be sworn, if thou be Launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood. Lord worshipp'd 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. 88 Launcelot. It should seem, then, that Dobbin's tail grows backward : I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I have of my face, when I last saw him. 73-74. in the end Q2Ff | at the length Qi. 72. give me your blessing. After 'blessing' Dyce inserted the direction, "Kneels, with his back to Gobbo." Quartos and Folios have no such direction, but Gobbo's amusing mistake about hair and beard, 11. 86-87, shows that when Launcelot knelt to receive the blessing he did so with his back to his father. 79. Launcelot probably means " your child that was, your boy that is, your son that shall be." 85. thou. As soon as Gobbo recognizes his son, the ' you ' of respect is changed to the ' thou * of familiarity. 87. fill-horse : a horse that works in shafts. * Fill ' is a dialect form of * thill.' SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 41 GoBBO. Lord, how art thou chang'd ! How dost thou and thy master agree? I have brought him a present. How 'gree you now? 94 Launcelot. 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 famish'd 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. 104 Enter Bassanio, with Leonardo and other followers Bassanio. 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. 108 \Exit a Servant] Launcelot. To him, father. GoBBO. God bless your worship ! Bassanio. Gramercy ! would st thou aught with me ? in 96. set up my rest. A phrase in frequent use for making up one's mind. Said to be taken from the old game of primero, where it meant determination to stand upon the cards you held in your hand. 102. A humorous expression from any one, but with additional edge and flavor from a Venetian. In Venice proper it was not easy to find ground enough to run away upon. III. Gramercy : many thanks. Fr. grand merci. But the word is often used as an interjection of surprise. 42 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii GoBBO. Here 's my son, sir, a poor boy, — 112 Launcelot. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew's man ; that would, sir, — as my father shall specify, — GoBBO. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve, — 116 Launcelot. Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, and have a desire, — as my father shall specify, — GoBBO. His master and he — saving your worship's rever- ence — are scarce cater-cousins, — 120 Launcelot. 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, — GoBBO. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon your worship ; and my suit is, — 125 Launcelot. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to my- self, as your worship shall know by this honest old man ; and, though I say it, though old man, yet, poor man, my father. Bassanio. One speak for both. — What would you? 115. infection. A Gobboism for 'affection,' i.e. 'desire.' 120. cater-cousins. Attempts have been made in recent years to connect the word 'cater' etymologically with 'cate,' food, and with quHeur. Johnson's suggestion that it is from quatre^ which would make 'cater-cousins' mean 'fourth cousins,' is certainly wrong. Old Gobbo's meaning is clear: his son and Shylock are not on friendly terms. His expression carries an apology with it. 123. frutify. A Gobboism for 'fructify,' which appears to have been a sort of cant term for ' holding forth ' (in speech). It has been suggested that * frutify ' may balance ' specify ' (' spicify,' spice and fruit), 1. 114. 124. "A present thus given, and in our days too, and of doves, is not uncommon in Italy. I myself have partaken there, with due relish, in memory of poor old Gobbo, of a dish of doves, presented by the father of a servant." — C. A. Brown. SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 43 Launcelot. Serve you, sir. 130 GoBBO. That is the very defect of the matter, sir. Bassanio. I know thee well ; thou hast obtain 'd thy suit : Shylock thy master spoke with me this day, And hath preferred thee, if it be pareferment To leave a rich Jew's service, to become 135 The follower of so poor a gentleman. Launcelot. The old proverb is very well parted between my master Shylock and you, sir : you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough. 139 Bassanio. 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. 143 Launcelot. 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 134. * To prefer ' is, in Elizabethan English, * to recommend * as well as 'to promote.' Bassanio plays upon the two senses of the word. 137. The old proverb. Clark and Wright cite here, " The grace of God is geir enough" {Ray^s Proverbs^ 1670). The use of 'gear' in 1. 153 of this scene may strengthen this identification of the proverb. 142. After 'out' some editions introduce the direction, 'To his followers.' 143. guarded : trimmed with braid. See Murray. 145. After ' Well ' some editions introduce the direction, * Look- ing on his palm.' 145-146. Launcelot, applauding himself for his success with Bassanio, and looking into the palm of his hand, which by fortune- tellers is called the ' table,' breaks out into reflection : " Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, which not only promises, but offers to swear upon a book, that I shall have good fortune." 44 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii 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 ! aleven 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 '11 take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling of an eye. 154 \_Exeunt Launcelot and Old Gobbo] Bassanio. I pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this : 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. 158 Leonardo. My best endeavours shall be done herein. 154. of an eye Qi | omitted in Q2Ff. 147-148. The line in the palm passing round the ball of the thumb, technically known as the Mount of Venus, was called by sixteenth century palmists, the line of life ; that which runs from the forefinger below the other fingers to the side of the hand, was the line of for- tune. " Long and deep lines from the Mount of Venus towards the line of life signifieth so many wives . . . These lines, visible and deep, so many wives the party shall have." — Saunders, Chiromancie. Launcelot, like Subtle in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist (cf. the speech beginning ' The thumb, in chiromancy, we give Venus'), was an adept in the art of chiromancy, which in his time had its learned profes- sors and practitioners no less than astrology. "A simple line of life " written in the palm was cause of exultation to wiser ones than young Gobbo, though * simple ' here is doubtless ironical, and balances the * simple' in 1. 149. 149. aleven. "A vulgarism (and archaism) for eleven." — Dyce. The expression appears in Q2 and Fi as 'a leven,' suggesting the analogy of ' a dozen.' 151. the edge of a feather-bed. This is a humorous variation of the phrase, " the edge of the sword." SCENE II THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 45 Enter Gratiano Gratiano. Where is your master? Leonardo. Yonder, sir, he walks. Gratiano. Signior Bassanio, — L J Bassanio. Gratiano ! 162 Gratiano. I have a suit to you. Bassanio. You have obtained it. Gratiano. You must not deny me : I must go with you to Belmont. 165 Bassanio. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano : Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice, — Parts that become thee happily enough. And in such eyes as ours appear not faults ; But where thou art not known, why, there they show 170 Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain To allay with some cold drops of modesty Thy skipping spirit ; lest, through thy wild behaviour, I be misconstru'd in the place I go to. And lose my hopes. Gratiano. Signior Bassanio, hear me : i75 If I do not put on a sober habit, 160. Scene III Pope. 174. misconstru'd | mlsconstred 170. thou art Qq I they are Ff. Qq | misconsterd Fi. 173. lest Q1F4 I least Q2F1. 175. lose Qi | loose Q2Ff. 164. Hanmer and Capell inserted ' Nay * at the beginning of Gratiano's speech and printed it as verse — an arrangement followed in the earlier editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 166. hear thee. See Abbott, § 212. Professor Gummere declares Abbott's explanation to be "certainly wrong," and refers to "the excellent discussion of the substitution of * thee ' for * thou ' " given by Jespersen in Progress in Language. 176. habit: demeanor. 46 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii Talk with respect, and swear but now and then, 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 '; i8o Use all the observance of civility. Like one well studied in a sad ostent To please his grandam, never trust me more. Bassanio. Well, we shall see your bearing. 184 Gratiano. Nay, but I bar to-night: you shall not gage me By what we do to-night. Bassanio. 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. 190 Gratiano. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest : But we will visit you at supper- time. l£xei/;i/'] Scene IIL T/ie same. A room in Shylock's house Enter Jessica and Launcelot Jessica. I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so : Our house is hell ; and thou, a merry devil. Scene III Capell I Scene IV Pope. I Enter Jessica and the Clown Qq Enter Jessica and Launcelot Ff. 180. People of rank used to keep their hats on while eating dinner. While grace was being said they were expected to take the hat off and hold it over the eyes. 181. civility: good breeding. " Civilization, refinement.*' — Clar. 182. sad ostent : serious appearance. " Show of staid . . . be- haviour." — Johnson. SCENE III THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 47 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 S 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 Launcelot. Adieu ! tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew ! if a Christian do not play the knave and get thee, I am much deceiv'd. But, adieu : these foolish drops do something drown my manly spirit : adieu. 14 Jessica. Farewell, good Launcelot. — [_Exit Launcelot] Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be asham'd to be my father's child ! But though I am a daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, 20 Become a Christian, and thy loving wife ! \_Exit] 9. me in talk Qq | me talk Ff. 13. something Qq | somewhat Ff. 11. do QqFi I did F2F3F4. 5. soon at. Here ♦ soon ' has the effect of emphasis, as in The Comedy of Errors^ I, ii, 26; III, ii, 179 ; Richard III^ IV, iii, 31. 10. exhibit. Most probably a Gobboism for ' inhibit ' or as Halli- well suggested, ' prohibit.' But the meaning may be, as Eccles put it : " My tears express what my tongue should, if sorrow would permit it." 11. The spirit of this scene, Jessica's reference to Lorenzo when giving Launcelot the letter, and the closing words of her soliloquy, sufficiently justify the reading of all the Quartos and the First Folio. 16. alack. See Skeat for an interesting note as to derivation. 48 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act n Scene IV. The same. A street Enter Gratiano, Lorenzo, Salarino, and Salanio Lorenzo. Nay, we will slink away in supper-time, Disguise us at my lodging, and return All in an hour. Gratiano. We have not made good preparation. Salarino. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers. 5 Salanio. 'T is vile, unless it may be quaintly order'd, And better in my mind not undertook. Lorenzo. '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 ? Launcelot. And it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem to signify. n Lorenzo. I know the hand : in faith, 't is a fair hand ; And whiter than the paper it writ on Is the fair hand that writ. Gratiano. Love-news, in faith. Launcelot. By your leave, sir. 15 Scene IV Capell | Scene V Pope. 5. us QqFiF2F8 I as F4. 2-3. Printed as prose QqFf. lo-ii. it shall Qq | shall it Fi. 5. us. Ethical dative, if not a misprint for *as/ The line means, we have not yet bespoken torch-bearers. 6. quaintly: noticeably — not derived from compUis^ but, through Old Fr. coint^ from cognitusy and connotes the idea of attracting attention. 10. And. See note, p. 19, 1. 80. — break up : break the seal of. 13. paper it writ. Hanmer suggested the emendation ' paper that it writ,' and this reading was adopted in early editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. SCE>NE IV THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 49 Lorenzo. Whither goest thou? Launcelot. Marry, sir, to bid my old master the Jew to sup to-night with my new master the Christian. Lorenzo. Hold here, take this : tell gentle Jessica I will not fail her ; speak it privately ; 20 Go. — Gentlemen, \_Extt Launcelot] Will you prepare you for this masque to-night? I am provided of a torch-bearer. Salarino. Ay, marry, I 41 be gone about it straight. Salanio. And so will I. Lorenzo. Meet me and Gratiano 25 At Gratiano^s lodging some hour hence. Salarino. T is good we do so. \_Exeunt Salarino and Salanio] Gratiano. Was not that letter from fair Jessica? Lorenzo. 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, 35 Unless she do it under this excuse. 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\ 23. provided of. " We still retain ' of ' with verbs of construction and adjectives of fulness; but the Elizabethans retained 'of with verbs of fulness also." — Abbott, § 171. Cf. V,i,297; Macbeth^l.n, 13; Henry V, III, vii, 9. In Bacon's The Advancement of Learning we have : " He is invested of a precedent disposition to conform himself thereunto." 37. faithless: unbelieving. Cf. "O faithless generation!" — Marky ix, 19. so THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act n Scene V. The same. Before Shylock's house Enter Shylock and Launcelot Shylock. Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge. The diiference of old Shylock and Bassanio : — What, Jessica ! — thou shalt not gormandize, As thou hast done with me, — what, Jessica ! — And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out. — 5 Why, Jessica, I say ! Launcelot. Why, Jessica ! Shylock. Who bids thee call? 1 do not bid thee call. Launcelot. Your worship was wont to tell me I could do nothing without bidding. Better Jessica Jessica. Call you? what is your will? ro Shylock. 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 '11 go in hate, to feed upon The prodigal Christian. — Jessica, my girl, 15 Look to my house. — I am right loth to go : There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest. For I did dream of money-bags to-night. Scene V Capell I Scene VI Pope. 8-g. Prose in Qi | verse in Q2Ff. 14-15. In I, ill, 33, Shylock says, " I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you." Did Shakespeare make a slip, or did he mean to put the Jew at odds with himself out of hatred to the Christian ? Cf. the oversight noted on p. 21, 1. 114. 18. to-night : last night. See Abbott, § 190. Qi. Julius Ctssar^ II, ii, 76; III, iii, I. In 1. 36 * to-night' is used in the modem sense. SCENE V THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 51 Launcelot. I beseech you, sir, go : my young master doth expect your reproach. 20 Shylock. So do I his. Launcelot. 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 i' the morning, falling out that year on Ash-Wednesday was four year in the afternoon. 26 Shylock. 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 ; 27. you omitted in Qi. 29. squealing Q2Ff | squeaking Qi. 20. reproach. A Gobboism for* approach.' Shylock chooses to take it in the sense of 'reproach.* And he expects Bassanio's reproach through the bankruptcy of Antonio. This may have some bearing on the question whether Shylock has any hand in getting up the reports of Antonio's " losses at sea." 24-25. Black-Monday : Easter-Monday. The origin of the name is thus explained by Stow: " In the 34th of Edward III, the 14th of April, and the morrow after Easter-day, King Edward, with his host,, lay before the city of Paris: which day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold, that many men died on their horses' backs with the cold. Wherefore unto this day it hath been called the Black Mo7tday** 29. wry-neck'd fife. There has been some dispute whether this means the instrument or the musician. Boswell cited a passage from Bamabe Rich's Aphorisms^ 161 8, which appears to settle the matter: "A fife is a wry-neckt musician, for he always looks away from his instrument." 32. vamish'd faces. This alludes probably to the painted masks,, but contains also an insinuation of duplicity, or double-facedness. 52 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act it But stop my house's ears, — I mean my casements : Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter My sober house. — By Jacob's staff, I swear 35 I have no mind of feasting forth to-night : But I will go. — Go you before me, sirrah ; Say I will come. Launcelot. I 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. [^jExiY\ Shylock. What says that fool of Hagar's offspring, ha? Jessica. His words were, * Farewell, mistress ' ; nothing else. Shylock. The patch is kind enough ; but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day 46 More than the wild-cat : drones hive not with me ; Therefore I part with him ; and part with him 42. Jewess* Pope Camb [ Jewes 46. and he Qq | but he Fi | but QqFiF2 I Jew's F3F4. F2F3F4 Rowe. 35. Jacob's staff. Genesis, xxxii, 10; Hebrews, xi, 21. 39-40. In Quartos and Folios this speech of Launcelot^s is printed: I will go before sir. Mistress look out at window for all this. Walker suggested the emendation, " I '11 go before you, sir," adopted in previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. 42. Pope suggested * Jewess' ' as the reading here ; but the Quartos and First Folio have * Jewes,' which may mean either * Jewess' ' or * Jew's.* The worth of a Jew's eye was the price with which the Jews used to buy themselves off from mutilation. The expression became proverbial, and was kept up after its original meaning was lost. 45. This use of ' patch ' sprang from the motley or patched dress worn by professional fools. Hence a general term of contempt. So used in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, IH, ii, 9 ; The Comedy of Errors, III, i, 32 ; III, i, 36, etc. Cf. * cross-patch.' SCENE VI THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 53 To one that I would have him help to waste His borrow'd purse. — Well, Jessica, go in : 5^ 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. [^£xtY\ Jessica. Farewell ; and if my fortune be not crost, 55 I have a father, you a daughter, lost. [Exit] Scene VL Tke same Enter Gratiano and Salarino, masqued Gratiano. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo Desir'd us to make stand. Salarino. His hour is almost past. Gratiano. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, For lovers ever run before the clock. Salarino. O, ten times faster Venus' pigeons fly 5 To seal love's bonds new-made than they are wont. To keep obliged faith unforfeited ! Gratiano. 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 52-53. One line in Q2Ff. a. make stand Qq | make a stand Ff. Scene VI Capell | Scene Vll Pope. 6. seal Qq | steal Ff. Scene VI. In Halliwell, in Dyce, and in previous editions of Hud- son's Shakespeare, there was no new scene here. 5. In classic fable Venus rode the air in a chariot drawn by doves. Cf. The Tempest, IV, i, 94. 9. For the omission of the preposition in relative sentences, see Abbott, § 394. 54 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii 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, 15 Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind ! How like the prodigal doth she return, With over-weather'd ribs, and ragged sails. Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind ! 19 Salarino. Here comes Lorenzo : more of this hereafter. Enter Lorenzo Lorenzo. 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, I '11 watch as long for you then. Approach ; Here dwells my father Jew. Ho 1 who 's within? 25 Enter Jessica, above, in bofs clothes Jessica. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty, Albeit I '11 swear that I do know your tongue. Lorenzo. Lorenzo, and thy love. Jessica. Lorenzo, certain ; and my love, indeed ; For who love I so much? And now who knows 30 But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours? 14. younker Rowe | younger Qq 17. the prodigal Qq I a prodigal I yonger F1F2. Ff. 15. scarfed : decked with flags. Cf. All 's Well that Ends IVglL II, iii, 214. 21. abode: stay, delay. So in Cymbeline, I, vi, 53: "My man's abode where I did leave him." SCENE VI THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 55 Lorenzo. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art. Jessica. Here, catch this casket ; it is worth the pains. I am glad 't is night, you do not look on me, For I am much asham'd of my exchange : 35 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. Lorenzo. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer. 40 Jessica. 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 obscur'd. Lorenzo. So are you, sweet, Even in the lovely garnish of a boy. 45 But come at once ; For the close night doth play the runaway, And we are stay'd for at Bassanio's feast. Jessica. I will make fast the doors, and gild myself With some more ducats, and be with you straight. 50 \_Exit above\ Gratiano. Now, by my hood, a Gentile, and no Jew. 44. are you Qq | you are Ff. 51. Gentile Q1Q8Q4F2F3F4 I gentle 50. more Ff | mo Q1Q2. Q2F1. 35. exchange : change of dress. Referring to her masculine attire. 42. light. Used here punningly in a material and a moral sense. 43. A torch-bearer's office is to discover. 51. Gratiano is disguised with a mask, and in swearing by his hood he implies a likening of himself to a hooded monk swearing by his monastic character. There is also a play on the word * Gentile,' which, as Johnson pointed out, signifies both a heathen and one well-bom. 56 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act u Lorenzo. 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 prov'd herself; 50 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 Antonio. Who 's there ? 60 Gratiano. Signior Antonio ! Antonio. 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 : 65 I have sent twenty out to seek for you. Gratiano. I am glad on *t : I desire no more delight Than to be under sail and gone to-night. \Exeunt'\ 66. Omitted in Qi. 67-68. Given to Antonio in Qi. 52. Beshrew me : curse me. So Chaucer uses shrewe in this sense, as in The Nonne Preestes Tale : " Nay than," quod he, " I shrewe us bothe two, And first I shrewe my-self, bothe blood and bones." After such an expression as * beshrew me,* ' but ' is not adversative, but means 'if not.' See Abbott, § 126. 66. " The omission of a whole line here in Qi, and continuing Gratiano's speech to Antonio, is an inexcusable defect." — Furness. SCENE VII THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 57 Scene VII. Belmont. A room in Portia's house Flourish of cornets. Enter Portia, with the Prince of Morocco, and their trains Portia. Go draw aside the curtains, and discover The several caskets to this noble prince. — Now make your choice. Morocco. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, * Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire; ' 5 The second, silver, which this promise carries, * Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves ; ' This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, * Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' How shall I know if I do choose the right? 10 Portia. The one of them contains my picture, prince : If you choose that, then I am yours withal. Morocco. Some god direct my judgment ! Let me see ; I will survey the inscriptions back again. What says this leaden casket? 15 * 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 I '11 then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. Scene VII Capell | Scene 10. This line is repeated in F1F2. VIII Pope I Scene VI Halliwell. 18. threatens. Men Rowe | threatens 5. many Qq | omitted in Ff. men QqFf. 4. who. Pope substituted * which.' But *who' and * which* were interchangeable in the sixteenth century. See Abbott, § 264. 58 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii 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 : 25 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. 30 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? 35 Let 's see once more this saying grav'd 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 ; 40 35. further | farther QqFf. mortal -breathing Dyce Walker 40. mortal breathing QqFf | Camb. 22. virgin. An allusion to the silver light of the moon, or rather to the virgin Diana, who was the moon goddess of old mythology. 26. be'st. See Abbott, § 298. 30. disabling : disparagement. Cf. Montrose's My Dear and Only He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all. 40. Christians often made long prilgrimages to kiss the shrine of a saint. And Portia, enshrining so much excellence, is compared to such a shrine. * Shrine,' however, was sometimes used for ' statue,* and so it may be here. Cf. Cymbeline^ V, v, 164. SCENE VII THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 59 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 45 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 50 To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. Or shall I think in silver she 's immur'd, Being ten times undervalu'd to tried gold ? O sinful thought ! Never so rich a gem Was set in worse than gold. They have in England 55 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 ! 60 41. vasty Qi | vaste F1F2 I vast F8F4. 45. spits Rowe | spets QqFf. 41. Hyrcanian deserts. A wilderness of indefinite extent south of the Caspian Sea, often mentioned in old writers as a habitat of tigers. Cf. Macbeth^ III, iv, loi ; Hamlet^ II, ii, 472. 51. Lead were unworthy to inclose even her cerements, or her shroud. 53. This is said to have been just the ratio of silver and gold toward the close of EUzabeth's reign. 56. The * angel ' was so called from its having on one side a figure of Michael piercing the dragon. It is said to have been worth about ten shillings. Shakespeare has other punning allusions to it ; as in The Merry Wives of Windsor^ I, iii, 59. 6o THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE Acr n Portia. There, take it, prince ; and if my form lie there, Then I am yours. \^He unlocks the casket] Morocco. O hell ! what have we here? A carrion Death, within whose empty eye There is a written scroll ! I '11 read the writing. , [Reads'^ All that glisters is not gold ; 65 Often have you heard that told : Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold : Gilded timber do worms infold. Had you been as wise as bold, 70 Young in limbs, in judgment old. Your answer had not been inscroU'd : Fare you well ; your suit is cold. Cold, indeed, and labour lost ; Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost ! 75 Portia, adieu. I have too griev'd a heart To take a tedious leave : thus losers part. \_Exiti with his train. Flourish of cornets] Portia. A gentle riddance. — Draw the curtains ; go : Let all of his complexion choose me so. \Exeunt'\ 62-64. hell ! what ... a written 69, timber do QqFf | tombs do scroll I printed as two lines in QqFf. Capell (Johnson conj.), — I '11 read the writing QqFi | omit- 77. Flourishof cornets tr2J\slQrrGd ted in F2F3F4. — No stage directions here from next scene by editors of in QqFf. Camb. 63. A carrion Death : a skull from which the flesh has decayed. 69. timber. " ' Timber * is here a plural noun, and the redundant syllable is no sufficient reason for adopting Johnson' s plausible alteration." — Halliwell. 77. part : depart. * Depart ' was also used for * part,' "... as in the Marriage Service * till death us do part * is a corruption of * till death us depart.' " — Clar. SCENE VIII THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 6l Scene VIII. Venice. A street Enter Salarino and Salanio Salarino. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail : With him is Gratiano gone along ; And in their ship I 'm sure Lorenzo is not. Salanio. The villain Jew with outcries raised the Duke ; Who went with him to search Bassanio's ship. 5 Salarino. 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 lo They were not with Bassanio in his ship. Salanio. I never heard a passion so confus'd, So strange, outrageous, and so variable, As the dog Jew did utter in the streets : * My daughter ! O my ducats ! O my daughter ! 15 Fled with a Christian ! O my Christian ducats ! Justice ! the law ! my ducats, and my daughter ! A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats. Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter I And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, 20 Stolen by my daughter ! Justice ! find the girl 1 She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats ! ' Scene VIII Capell | Scene IX 8. gondola | Gondylo Qq | Gon- Pope I Scene VII Dyce. dllo Ff I Gondalo Rowe. 6. came Qq | comes Ff. 8. In Shakespeare's time Venice was the common resort of all who went abroad to see the world. " ' To have swum in a gondola' was a phrase almost proverbial for having travelled." — Clar. 62 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act ii Salarino. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. Salanio. Let good Antonio look he keep his day, 25 Or he shall pay for this. Salarino. Marry, well remember'd. I reasoned 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. Salanio. You were best to tell Antonio what you hear ; Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him. Salarino. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth. 35 I saw Bassanio and Antonio part : Bassanio told him he would make some speed Of his return : he answer'd, * 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 : 39. Slubber QiFf | slumber Q2Q3Q4. 27. In Shakespeare the usual sense of ' to reason ' is ' to talk ' or *to converse.' Cf. I, ii, 19; Coriolanus^ I, ix, 58; IV, vi, 51. 33. You were best : it were best for you. * You' here is dative, the construction being impersonal. Cf. King Lear ^ I, iv, 109. 39. Here the word ' slubber ' means * to slur over,' as in Fuller's The Worthies of England : " Slightly slubbering it over, doing some- thing for show, and nothing to purpose." But the original meaning is * to soil ' or * to obscure,' as in Othello^ I, iii, 227. 42. mind of love : loving mind, or mind full of love. So Shake- speare uses * mind of honour ' for * honourable mind.* SCENE IX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 63 Be merry ; and employ your chiefest thoughts To courtship, and such fair ostents of love As shall conveniently become you there ; ' 45 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. Salanio. I think he only loves the world for him. 5° I pray thee, let us go and find him out. And quicken his embraced heaviness With some delight or other. Salarino. Do we so. \_Exeunt] Scene IX. Belmont, A room in Portia's house Enter Nerissa, with a Servitor Nerissa. 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 Portia. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince : If you choose that wherein I am contain'd, 5 Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized : Scene IX Capell I Scene X Flourish . . . omitted in Qq. Pope I Scene VIII Dyce. 6. rites Pope i rights QqFf. 52. Enliven the sadness which he clings to or cherishes. 64 THE NEW HUDSON SHAKESPEARE act n But if you fail, without more speech, my lord. You must be gone from hence immediately. Arragon. I am enjoin'd by oath to observe three things : First, never to unfold to any one lo 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. 15 Portia. To these injunctions every one doth swear That comes to hazard for my worthless self. Arragon. 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.' 20 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 I That * many ' may be meant By the fool multitude, that choose by show, 25 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. 7. you Qq I thou Ff. 27. pries F1F2 I payes F3 1 pays F4. 13. marriage. A trisyllable. See Abbott, § 479. 14. Lastly. An interjectional line in the Cambridge Shakespeare. Capell added it to the preceding line, making • marriage ' there a dissyllable — a reading followed in previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare. The present text follows the Quartos and Folios. 18. address'd : prepared. Cf. use of ' address * as a golf term. 25. By: for. See Abbott, § 145. 29. Where it is exposed to every accident or mischance. SCENE IX THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 6$ I will not choose what many men desire, 30 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/ 35 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 40 Were not deriv'd corruptly I and that clear honour Were purchas'd by the merit of the wearer 1 How many then should cover that stand bare ! How many be commanded that command ! How much low peasantry would then be glean'd 45 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, 50 And instantly unlock my fortunes here. [Zr