"He hates our sacred nation." It is this national feeling which, when carried in a right direction, makes a patriot and a hero, that assumes in Shylock the aspect of a grovelling and fierce personal revenge. He has borne insult and injury "with a patient shrug;" but ever in small matters he has been seeking retribution: "I am not bid for love; they flatter me: The mask is at length thrown off-he has the Christian in his power; and his desire of revenge, mean and ferocious as it is, rises into sublimity, through the unconquerable energy of the oppressed man's wilfulness. “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, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and, if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that." It is impossible, after this exposition of his feelings, that we should not feel that he has properly cast the greater portion of the odium which belongs to his actions upon the social circumstances by which he has been hunted into madness. He has been made the thing he is by society. In the extreme wildness of his anger, when he utters the harrowing imprecation,-" I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! 'would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin," the tenderness that belongs to our common humanity, even in its most passionate forgetfulness of the dearest ties, comes across him in the remembrance of the mother of that execrated child :-" Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor." It is in the conduct of the trial scene that, as it appears to us, is to be sought the concentration of Shakspere's leading idea in the composition of this drama. The merchant stands before the Jew a better and a wiser man than when he called him "dog:""I do oppose My patience to his fury; and am arm'd To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, The very tyranny and rage of his." Misfortune has corrected the influences which, in happier moments, allowed him to forget the gentleness of his nature, and to heap unmerited abuse upon him, whose badge was sufferance. The Jew is unchanged. But, if Shakspere in the early scenes made us entertain some compassion. for his wrongs, he has now left him to bear all the indignation which we ought to feel against one capable of pity." But we cannot despise the Jew. His intellectual vigour rises supreme over the mere reasonings by which he is opposed. He defends his own injustice by the example of as great an injustice of every-day occurrence—and no one ventures to answer him : “un "You have among you many a purchas'd slave, Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them:-Shall I say to you, Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates Be season'd with such viands? You will answer, The slaves are ours:-So do I answer you. If you deny me, fie upon your law !" the Merchant to have escaped from the power of the obdurate man, so strong in the letter of the law, and so resolute to carry it out by the example of his judges in other matters, had not the law been found here, as in most other cases, capable of being bent to the will of its administrators. Had it been the inflexible thing which Shylock required it to be, a greater injustice would have been committed than the Jew had finally himself to suffer. Mrs. Jameson has very justly and ingeniously described the struggle which Portia had to sustain in abandoning the high ground which she took in her great address to the Jew ;-" She maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end: yet the painful heartthrilling uncertainty in which she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two objects in view: to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her husband's honour by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe the safety of Antonio to anything rather than the legal quibble with which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock, in the first instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and feelings. She must be understood, from the beginning to the end, as examining with intense anxiety the effect of her own words on his mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion."* been a true picture of society in the six- But how artistically has the poet restored the balance of pleasureable sensations! Throughout the whole conduct of the play, what may be called its tragic portion has been relieved by the romance which belongs to the personal fate of Portia. But, after the great business of the drama is wound up, we fall back upon a repose which is truly refreshing and harmonious. From the lips of Lorenzo and Jessica, as they sit in the "paler day" of an Italian moon, are breathed the lighter strains of the most playful poetry, mingled with the highest flights of the most elevated. Music and the odours of sweet flowers are around them. Happiness is in their hearts. Their thoughts are lifted by the beauties of the earth above the earth. This delicious scene belongs to what is universal and eternal, and takes us far away from those bitter strifes of our social state which are essentially narrow and temporary. And then come the affectionate welcomes, Had Shylock relented after that most the pretty, pouting contests, and the happy beautiful appeal to his mercy, which Shak-explanations of Portia and Nerissa with spere has here placed as the exponent of the higher principle upon which all law and right are essentially dependent, the real moral of the drama would have been destroyed. The weight of injuries transmitted to Shylock from his forefathers, and still heaped upon him even by the best of those by whom he was surrounded, was not so easily to become light, and to cease to exasperate his nature. Nor would it have * Characteristics of Women, vol. i. p. 75. Bassanio and Gratiano. Here again we are CHAPTER V. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' was first "The story is taken from Ariosto," says printed in 1600. It had been entered at Pope. To Ariosto then we turn; and we Stationers' Hall on the 23rd of August of are repaid for our labour by the pleasure of the same year: The first edition is not reading that long but by no means tedious divided into acts; but in the folio of 1623 story of Genevra, which occupies the whole we find this division. There was no other of the fifth book, and part of the sixth, separate edition. The variations between of the Orlando Furioso.' 6 "The tale is a the text of the quarto and that of the folio pretty comical matter," as Harrington are very few. There is a remarkable pecu- quaintly pronounces it. The famous town liarity, however, in the text of the folio, of St. Andrew's forms its scene; and here which indicates very clearly that it was was enacted something like that piece of printed from the playhouse copy. In the villainy by which the Claudio of Shakspere second act (Scene 3) we find this stage- was deceived, and his Hero "done to death direction:-"Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, by slanderous tongues." In Harrington's and Jack Wilson." In the third act, when good old translation of the 'Orlando' there the two inimitable guardians of the night are six-and-forty pictures, as there are sixfirst descend upon the solid earth in Messina, and-forty books; and, says the translator, to move mortals for ever after with un- "they are all cut in brass, and most of them extinguishable laughter, they speak to us by the best workmen in that kind that have in their well-known names of Dogberry and been in this land this many years: yet I Verges; but in the fourth act we find the will not praise them too much because I names of mere human actors prefixed to gave direction for their making." The witty what they say: Dogberry becomes Kempe, godson of Queen Elizabeth-"that merry and Verges Cowley. Here, then, we have a poet, my godson"-adds, "the use of the piece of the prompter's book before us. picture is evident, which is, that having Balthazar, with his "Sigh no more, ladies, read over the book you may read it as it sigh no more," is identified with Jack Wilwere again in the very picture." He might son; and Kempe and Cowley have come have said, you may read it as it were before; down to posterity in honourable association and if we had copied this picture,—in which with the two illustrious "compartners of the whole action of the book is exhibited at the watch." We could almost believe that once in a bird's eye view, and where yet, as the play-editors of the folio in 1623 pur- he who gave "direction for its making" posely left these anomalous entries as an truly says, "the personages of men, the historical tribute to the memory of their shapes of horses, and such like, are made fellows. Kempe, we know, had been dead large at the bottom and lesser upward,”— some years before the publication of the our readers would have seen at a glance how folio; and probably Cowley and Jack Wil- far "the story is taken from Ariosto." For son had also gone where the voice of their here we have, "large at the bottom," a fair merriment and their minstrelsy was heard one at a window, looking lovingly upon a man who is ascending a ladder of ropes, whilst at the foot of the said ladder an unhappy wight is about to fall upon his sword, from which fate he is with difficulty arrested by one who is struggling with him. no more. The chronology of this comedy is sufficiently fixed by the circumstance of its publication in 1600, coupled with the fact that it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. We here see at once the resemblance between | in Ariosto; nor is slain by her furious lover, the story in Ariosto and the incident in as in Spenser; but she is rejected, believed 'Much Ado about Nothing' upon which both to be dead, and finally married in disguise, the tragic and comic interest of the play as in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' hinges. But here the resemblance ceases. As we ascend the picture, we see the King of Scotland seated upon a royal throne, but no Dogberry; his disconsolate daughter is placed by his side,—but there is no veiled Hero; King, and Princess, and courtiers, and people, are looking upon a tilting-ground, where there is a fierce and deadly encounter of two mailed knights,-but there is no Beatrice and no Benedick. The truth is, that Ariosto found the incident of a lady betrayed to suspicion and danger, by the personation of her own waiting-woman, amongst the popular traditions of the south of Europe-this story has been traced to Spain; and he interwove it with the adventures of his Rinaldo as an integral part of his chivalrous romance. The lady Genevra, so falsely accused, was doomed to die unless a true knight came within a month to do battle for her honour. Her lover, Ariodant, had fled, and was reported to have perished. The wicked duke, Polinesso, who had betrayed Genevra, appears secure in his treachery. But the misguided woman, Dalinda, who had been the instrument of his crime, flying from her paramour, meets with Rinaldo, and declares the truth; and then comes the combat, in which the guilty duke is slain by the champion of innocence, and the lover re-appears to be made happy with his spotless princess. The motive which influences the Polinesso of Ariosto is the hope that by vilifying the character of Genevra he may get rid of his rival in her love. Spenser has told a similar story in the 'Faerie Queene' (Book II., Canto IV.), in which Phedon describes the like treachery of his false friend Philemon. The motive here was not very unlike that of Don John in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' The European story, which Ariosto and Spenser have thus adopted, has formed also the groundwork of one of Bandello's Italian novels. And here the wronged lady has neither her honour vindicated in battle, as Ariosto made this story a tale of chivalry; Spenser a lesson of high and solemn morality; Bandello an interesting love-romance. It was for Shakspere to surround the main incident with those accessories which he could nowhere borrow, and to make of it such a comedy as no other man has made—a comedy not of manners or of sentiment, but of life viewed under its profoundest aspects, whether of the grave or the ludicrous. imagine-for, as a lover of Shakspere, thou canst imagine that thou wert extant in the year of grace 1600; and that on a fine summer's morning of that year, as thou wert We request thee, O gentle reader, to painfully guiding thy palfrey amongst the deep ruts and muddy channels of Cheapside, thou didst tarry in thy pilgrimage for a few minutes to peruse a small printed bill affixed upon a post, which bore something like the following announcement :— BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD AT THE GLOBE THEATRE AT Bankside, This day, being Tuesday, July 11, 1600, will be acted, MUCH ADOE ABOUT NOTHING, WRITTEN BY WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. This, thou seest-for thou art cognizant of the present time as well as imaginative of the past-is not a bill as big as a house, the smallest letters of which are afflicted with elephantiasis; nor is it a bill which talks of 66 prodigious hit" and "thunders of applause," nor in which you see Mr. William Kempe's name towering in red letters above all his fellows: but a modest, quiet, little bill-an innocent bill-which ought not to have provoked the abuse of the Puritans, that "players, by sticking of their bills in London, defile the streets with their infectious filthiness."* In reading this bill thou receivest especially into thy mind three ideas which set thee thinking—the company * Mirror of Monsters,' 1587. R of actors who perform the play, the name of | Ado;' the "objective reality" the 'about the play to be performed, the name of the Nothing.' The reviewer has given us clearly writer. Thou knowest that it is the best and concisely the results to which the incompany, and the best writer, of the day; quiry, pursued upon this principle, has conbut the play is the play a tragedy, or a ducted the German critic. The contradichistory, or a comedy? Thou opinest that it tion between life and its aspects "is set is a comedy. If the title were 'Much Ado' forth in an acted commentary on the title of thou wouldst be puzzled; but 'Much Ado the drama;-a series of incidents which, in about Nothing' lets thee into a secret. Thou themselves neither real, nor strange, nor knowest, assuredly, that the author of the important, are regarded by the actors as play will take the spectators into his con- being all these things. The war at the fidence; that he will show them the pre-opening, it is said, begins without reason paration, and the bustle, and the turmoil, and it may be the distress, of some domestic event, or chain of events,—the 'Much Ado' to the actors of the events, who have not the thread of the labyrinth; but, to the spectators, who sit with the book of fate open before them,-who know how all this begins and expect how it will all end,-it is 'Much Ado about Nothing.' It is a comedy, then; in which surprise is for the actors,expectation is for the audience. Thou wilt cross London Bridge and see this comedy; for, "as the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with expectation."* We have no wish to tutoyer the gentle reader any farther. We have desired only to show the significancy of the title of this play, by exhibiting it in slight connection with the circumstances under which it was published. For the title of this comedy, rightly considered, is the best expositor of the idea of this comedy. Dr. Ulrici, employing a dialect with which the English ear is not quite familiar, tells us that the fundamental idea lies in the antithesis which the play exhibits of the objective reality of human life to its subjective aspect. An able anonymous writer translates this for us into more intelligible language :- "He considers the play as a representation of the contrast and contradiction between life in its real essence and the aspect which it presents to those who are engaged in its struggle."+ The "subjective aspect," then, is the 'Much *Coleridge, Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 78. † Edinburgh Review,' July, 1840. and ends without result; Don Pedro seems to woo Hero for himself, while he gains her for his friend; Benedick and Beatrice, after carrying on a merry campaign of words without real enmity, are entrapped into a marriage without real love : the leading story rests in a seeming faithlessness, and its results are a seeming death and funeral, a challenge which produces no fighting, and a marriage in which the bride is a pretender; and the weakness and shadowiness of human wishes and plans are exposed with yet more cutting irony in the means that bring about the fortunate catastrophe,—an incident in which the unwitting agents-headed by Dogberry, the very representative of the idea of the piece-are the lowest and most stupid characters of the whole group." The reviewer adds—“ The poet's readers may hesitate in following his speculative critic the whole way in this journey to the temple of abstract truth." There are many of the poet's readers who will altogether reject this abstract mode of examining his works. To them the "abstract truth" appears but as a devious and uncertain glimmering—a taper in the sunshine. Have we not in Shakspere, say they, high poetry, sparkling wit, the deepest pathos ? are not the characters well defined, adroitly grouped; his plots interesting, his incidents skilfully evolved? True. And so, in nature, we have sky and water, and the forms and colours of leafy trees, and quiet dells, and fertile fields, and dewy lawns, and brilliant flowers; and we can understand the loveliness of separate objects, and we partly see how they form what the eye calls a picture. But there comes an artist, and |