Right son unto the right Vincentio; That have by marriage made thy daughter mine, Gre. Here's packing with a witness, to deceive us Vin. Where is that damned villain, Tranio, Bap. Why, tell me, is not this my Cambio? Luc. Love wrought these miracles. Bianca's love Made me exchange my state with Tranio, While he did bear my countenance in the town; Unto the wished haven of my bliss: What Tranio did, myself enforc'd him to; Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake. Vin. I'll slit the villain's nose, that would have sent me to the gaol. Bap. But do you hear, sir? [To LUCENTIO.] Have Kath. Husband, let 's follow, to see the end of this ado. Kath. No, sir; God forbid :—but ashamed to kiss. Kath. Nay, I will give thee a kiss: now pray thee, love, stay. Pet. Is not this well?-Come, my sweet Kate; Better once than never, for never too late. [Exeunt. SCENE II-A Room in Lucentio's House. Pet. Padua affords nothing but what is kind. Pet. You are very sensible, and yet you miss my I mean, Hortensio is afeard of you. Wid. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round. Kath. Mistress, how mean you that? Pet. Conceives by me!--How likes Hortensio that? I pray you, tell me what you meant by that. Wid. Your husband, being troubled with a shrew, And now you know my meaning. Right, I mean you. Kath. And I am mean, indeed, respecting you. Pet. To her, Kate! Hor. To her, widow! Pet. A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down. Pet. Spoke like an officer :-Ha' to thee, lad. [Drinks to HORTENSIO. Pet. Nay, that you shall not; since you have begun, Bian. Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush, hound, Which runs himself, and catches for his master. A banquet set out. Enter BAPTISTA, VINCENTIO, NIO, BIONDELLO, GRUMIO, and others, attending. Bap. Padua affords this kindness, son Petrucio. My cake is dough. This proverbial expression is used in 'Howell's Letters, to express the disappointment of the heirresumptive of France when Louis XIV. was born: "So that now Monsieur's cake is dough." Bap. Now, in good sadness, son Petrucio, I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all. Pet. Well, I say-no: and, therefore, for assurance, Let 's each one send unto his wife; And he, whose wife is most obe-lient To come at first, when he doth send for her, Pet. Twenty crowns! Twenty crowns. I'll venture so much on my hawk, or hound, Luc. A hundred then. Hor. Pet. Hor. Who shall begin? a The use of fear in the active and passive sense is here exem plified. Luc. That will I. Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me. [Exit. Bap. Son, I will be your half, Bianca comes. How now! what news? Bion. Sir, my mistress sends you word Gre. Ay, and a kind one too: Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse. Hor. Sirrah Biondello, go, and entreat my wife Pet. [Exit BIONDELLO. O, ho! entreat her! I am afraid, sir, Re-enter BIONDELLO. Now, where 's my wife? Bion. She says, you have some goodly jest in hand; She will not come; she bids you come to her. Pet. Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile, Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress; Pet. Katharine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women What duty they do owe their lords and husbands. Pet. Come on, I say; and first begin with her Pet. I say, she shall ;--and first begin with her. Kath. Fie, fie! unknit that threat'ning unkind brow, It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads; A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled, Hor. Enter KATHARINA. Bap. Now, by my holidame, here comes Katharina! Pet. Go, fetch them hither; if they deny to come, Bap. Now fair befall thee, good Petrucio Pet. Nay, I will win my wager better yet; Re-enter KATHARINA, with BIANCA and Widow. See, where she comes; and brings your froward wives [KATH. pulls off her cap, and throws it down. Bian. Fie! what a foolish duty call My hand is ready, may it do him ease! Pet. Why, there's a wench!-Come on, and kiss me, Luc. Well, go thy ways, old lad; for thou shalt ba 't. We three are married, but you two are sped. And, being a winner, God give you good night! [Exeunt PET. and KATH. Hor. Now go thy ways, thou hast tam'd a curst shrew.b Luc. "T is a wonder, by your leave, she will be a Hit the white-a term in archery. Shrew. It would appear from this couplet, and another in this scene, where shrew rhymes to woe, that shrou was the old pronunciation. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE,' like A Midsummer- | debtor is the Jew,-the revengeful creditor the ChrisNight's Dream,' was first printed in 1600; and it had a further similarity to that play from the circumstance of two editions appearing in the same year-the one bearing the name of a publisher, Thomas Heyes, the other that of a printer, J. Roberts. The play was not reprinted till it appeared in the folio of 1623. In that edition there are a few variations from the quartos. All these editions present the internal evidence of having been printed from correct copies. The Merchant of Venice' is one of the plays of Shakspere mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, and it is the last mentioned in his list. Stephen Gosson, who, in 1579, was moved to publish a tract called 'The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of the commonwealth,' thus describes a play of his time:-"The Jew, shown at the Bull, representing the greedyness of worldly choosers, and the bloody minds of usurers.' Whatever might have been the plot of 'The Jew' mentioned by Gosson, the story of the bond was ready to Shakspere's hand, in a ballad to which Warton first drew attention. He considers that the ballad was written before The Merchant of Venice.' But this ballad of Gernutus wants that remarkable feature of the play, the intervention of Portia to save the life of the Merchant; and this, to our minds, is the strongest confirmation that the ballad preceded the comedy. Shakspere found that incident in the source from which the ballad-writer professed to derive his history : "In Venice towne not long agoe, A cruel Jew did dwell, As Italian writers tell." 9 It was from an Italian writer, Ser Giovanni, the author of a collection of tales called' Il Pecorone,' written in the fourteenth century, and first published at Milan in 1558, that Shakspere unquestionably derived some of the incidents of his story, although he might be familiar with another version of the same tale. "It is well known," says Mrs. Jameson, "that "The Merchant of Venice' is founded on two different tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner, Shakspere has rejected altogether the character of the astutious lady of Belmont, with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel. With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized on with avidity, and made the best or the worst of it possible; and he has substituted the trial of the caskets from another source." That source is the Gesta Romanorum.' In dealing with the truly dramatic subject of the forfeiture of the bond, Shakspere had to choose between one of two courses that lay open before him. The 'Gesta Romanorum' did not surround the debtor and the creditor with any prejudices. We hear nothing of one being a Jew, the other a Christian. There is a remarkable story told by Gregorio Leti, in his Life of Pope Sixtus the Fifth,' in which the debtor and creditor of The Merchant of Venice' change places. The Characteristics of Women, vol. i. p. 72. tian; and this incident is said to have happened a Rome in the time of Sir Francis Drake. This, no doubt, was a pure fiction of Leti, whose narratives are by no means to be received as authorities; but it shows that he felt the intolerance of the old story, and endeavoured to correct it, though in a very inartificial manner. Shakspere took the story as he found it in those narratives which represented the popular prejudice. If he had not before him the ballad of 'Gernutus,' (upon which point it is difficult to decide,) he had certainly access to the tale of the 'Pecorone.' If he had made the contest connected with the story of the bond between two of the same faith, he would have lost the most powerful hold which the subject possessed upon the feelings of an audience two centuries and a half ago. If he had gone directly counter to those feelings, (supposing that the story which Leti tells had been known to him, as some have supposed,) his comedy would have been hooted from the stage. "The Prioress's Tale' of Chaucer belonged to the period when the Jews were robbed, maimed, banished, and most foully vilified, with the universal consent of the powerful and the lowly, the learned and the igno rant: "There was in Asie, in a gret citee, It was scarcely to be avoided in those times that even Chaucer, the most genuine and natural of poets, should lend his great powers to the support of the popular belief that Jews ought to be proscribed as― "Hateful to Crist, and to his compaguie." But we ought to expect better things when we reach the times in which the principles of religious liberty were at least germinated. And yet what a play is Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,'-undoubtedly one of the most popular plays even of Shakspere's day, judging as we may from the number of performances recorded in Henslowe's papers! That drama, as compared with The Merchant of Venice,' has been described by Charles Lamb, with his usual felicity:-" Marlowe's Jew does not approach so near to Shakspere's as his Edward II. Shylock, in the midst of his savage purpose, is a man. His motives, feelings, resentments, bave something human in them. If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' Barabas is a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose, to please the rabble. He kills in sport-poisons whole nunneries—invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as, a century or two earlier, might have been played before the Londoners, by the Royal command, when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet.” The Jew of Malta' was written essentially upon an intolerant principle. The Merchant of Venice,' whilst it seized upon the prejudices of the multitude, and dealt with them as a foregone conclusion by which the whole dramatic action was to be governed, had the intention of making those prejudices as hateful as the reaction of cruelty and revenge of which they are the cause. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. PERSONS REPRESENTED. DUKE OF VENICE. Appears, Act IV. sc. 1. SALARINO, friend to Antonio and Bassanio. GRATIANO, friend to Antonio and Bassanio. Old GOBBO, father to Launcelot LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio. BATHAZAR, servant to Portia. Appears, Act III. sc. 4. PORTIA, a rich heiress. Appears, Act I. sc. 2. Act II. sc. 1; sc. 7; sc. 9. Act ill. sc. 2; sc. 4. Act IV. sc. i; sc. 2. Act V. sc. I NERISSA, waiting-maid to Portia. Appears, Act I. sc. 2. Act II. sc. 1; sc. 7: sc. 9. Act III. sc. 2; sc. 4. Act IV. sc. 1; sc. 2. Act V. sc. 1. JESSICA, daughter to Shylock. Appears, Act II. sc. 3; sc. 5; sc. 6. Act III. sc. 2; sc. 4; sc. 5 Act V. sc. 1. Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice Gaoler, Servants, and other Attendants. SCENE,-PARTLY AT VENICE; AND PARTLY AT BELMONT, THE SEAT OF PORTIA, ON THE CONTINENT. SCENE I.-Venice. A Street. And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, Salar. Your mind is tossing on the ocean; ACT I. That curt'sy to them, do them reverence, Salar. What narm a wind too great might do at sea. b And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought Is sad to think upon his merchandize. Ant. Believe me, no; I thank my fortune for it, My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, a Wealthy Andrew. Johnson explains this (which is scarcely necessary) as "the name of the ship;" but he does not point out the propriety of the name for a ship, in association with the great naval commander, Andréa Doria, famous through al! Italy. Vailing her high-top. To vail is to let down: the nigh-top was shattered-fallen-when the Andrew was on the shallows. My ventures, &c. This was no doubt proverbial-something more elegant than all the eggs in one basket." |