The Merchant of Venice is justly distinguished among Shake speare's dramas for the beauty of particular scenes and passages For descriptive power, the opening scene between the Merchant and his friends is not easily rivalled, and can hardly fail to live in. the memory of any one that has an eye for such things. Equally fine in its way is the scene between 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 at sea. 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 noble gushes of friendship, is hardly surpassed in tragic power any where; and as it forms the catastrophe, so it concentrates the interest of the whole play. Scarce 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 discourse, followed by the grave moral reflections of Portia, as she approaches her home, and sees its lights, and hears its music. The bringing in this passage of ravishing lyrical sweetness, so replete with the most soothing and tranquillizing effect, close upon the intense dramatic excitement of the preceding scene, is such a transition as we may find nowhere but in Shakespeare, and shows his unequalled mastery over the mind's capacities of delight. The affair of the rings, with the harmless perplexities growing out of it, is a well-managed device for letting the mind down from the tragic height, whereon lately stood, to the merry conclusion which the play requires. Critics, indeed, may easily quarrel with this merry after-piece; but it stands justified by the tribunal to which criticism itself must bow, the spontaneous feelings of all such as are willing to be made happier and wiser, without beating their brains about the how and wherefore.

Before leaving this fruitful theme, it may be worth the while to consider, for a moment, what a wide diversity of materials are here drawn up and moulded into unity of life and impression. Ben Jonson, in his preface to The Alchemist, sets it down as "the disease of the unskilful to think rude things greater than polished, or scattered more numerous than composed." A principle very well illustrated in the play before us. One can hardly realize how many things are there brought together, they are ordered in such perfect concert and harmony; the greatness of the work being thus hidden in its fine proportions. In many of the Poet's dramas we are surprised at the great variety of character: here, besides this, we have also a remarkable variety of plot; and, admirable as may be the skill displayed in the characters, severally considered the interweaving of so many several plots, without the least con fusion or embarrassment, evinces a still higher mastership. For many and various as are the forms and aspects of life, they all

emphatically live together, as though they had but one circulation. So that the play is like a large, full-grown, fair-spreading tree, which we know is made up of divers smaller trees, all developed from and cohering in one common life.

Now, admitting the excellence of workmanship shown in the several plots and characters, there is a further question, namely, What business have they here? by what law or principle are they thus brought together? A question that has been handled with so much of ingenuity, or of something better, by Ulrici the German critic, as may well entitle his view to a place in this connection. He regards the whole play as a manifold working out of the principle, that all forms of right and justice, if pushed beyond a certain point, pass over into their opposites, so that extreme right becomes extreme wrong, thus verifying the old maxim, summum jus summa injuria. Which is best exemplified in Shylock, who has formal right on his side, in that he claims no more than Antonio has freely bound himself to pay; but in the strict rigid exacting of this claim he runs into the foulest wrong, because in his case justice is not justice unless it be tempered with mercy; that is, to keep its own nature, it must be an offshoot from the higher principle of charity. So, also, the tying up of Portia's hand to the disposal of chance, and robbing her of all share in the choice of a husband, rests ultimately on paternal right; yet this extreme right is an extreme wrong, because it might involve her in misery for life, but that chance, a lucky thought of the moment, leads to a happy result. Likewise in case of Jessica; her conduct were exceedingly wrong. but that she has good cause for it in the approved malignity of her father's temper; for justice cannot blame her for forsaking both the person and the religion of one, even though her father, whose character is so steeped in cruelty. Again, in the matter of the rings, the same principle is reflected, right and wrong being here driven to that extreme point where they pass over into each other only Portia understands or feels this truth, because her mind lives in the harmonies of things, and is not poisoned with any self-willed abstraction. Which yields a further justification of the fifth act: "it effaces the tragic impression which still lingers on the mind from the fourth act; the last vibrations of the harsh tones which were there struck here die away; in the gay and amusing trifling of love the sharp contrarieties of right and wrong are playfully reconciled." Thus while the several parts are disposed with clearness and precision, each proceeding so naturally of itself, and alongside the others, that we never lose the thread, at the same time a free living principle pervades them all, rounding them off into a perfect organic whole. And the several parts and persons not only cohere with one another, but with the general circumstances wherein they occur. Thus in the character of Portia, for example, the splendour of Italian skies, and scenery, and art, is reproduced; their spirit lives in her imagination, and is complicated with all she does and says.

LORENZO, in love with Jessica.

SHYLOCK, a Jew.

TUBAL, a Jew, his Friend.

LAUNCELOT GOBBO, a Clown, Servant to Shylock.

OLD GOBBO, Father to Launcelot.

SALERIO, a Messenger from Venice.

LEONARDO, Servant to Bassanio.

Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Jailors, Seryants, and other Attendants

SCENE, partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

ACT I

SCENE I. Venice. A Street.

Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SOLANIO.'
Ant. 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 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

In the old copies there is much confusion in the printing of these names, especially in this first scene; and as no list of the Persons is there given, we are not a little puzzled how to put them. In the folio the first stage-direction is, - Enter Antonio, Salarino, and Salanio. In the dialogue, however, the abbrevia. tion for Salanio presently becomes Sola., which is soon changed to Sol., and then comes the stage-direction, Exeunt Salarino, and Solanio. And the names are spelt the same way in several other stage-directions; and after the first scene the abbreviated prefixes to the speeches uniformly are Sal. and Sol. So that we have abundant authority for reading Solanio instead of Salanio, as it is in most modern editions. As to the distribution of the first few speeches, we have to go partly by conjecture, the names being so perplexed as to afford no sure guidance. The last two speeches before the entrance of Bassanio, which are usually assigned to Solanio, we agree with Knight and Verplanck in transferring to Salarino, not only because he is the more lively and talkative person, but as according best with the general course of the dialogue and with his avowed wish to make Antonio merry, and especially because the quartos favor that arrangement. H.

2

Sal. Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

That courtesy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.
Sol. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad.

I should be still
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind;
Peering in maps, for ports, and piers, and roads ;
And every object, that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt,
Would make me sad.

Sal.

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, But I should think of shallows and of flats; And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand, Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs, To kiss her burial. Should I go to church, And see the holy edifice of stone,

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, Which, touching but my gentle vessel's side,

2 Argosies are large ships either for merchandise or for war The name was probably derived from the classical ship Argo, which carried Jason and the Argonauts in quest of the golden fleece. Readers of Milton will of course remember the passage describing Satan's voyage through chaos:

"Harder beset

And more endanger'd than when Argo pass'd

Through Bosphorus betwixt the justling rocks." H.

3 To vail is to lower, to let fall: from the French ruler. The Venetian merchants, it would seem, were much used to name their ships for Andrew Doria, the great admiral.

H.