we come at once to an exclamation of the the verge of madness. But from this moment deepest pathos and simplicity:her love has become heroism. She sees 66 "No pity sitting in the clouds"she rejects her Nurse—she resolves to deceive her parents. This scene brings out her character in its strongest and most beautiful relief. The Nurse, in the grossness of her nature, has dared to talk to the wife of Romeo-the all-loving and devoted wife-of the one passion of Juliet-the sense raised the green eye of Paris! The Nurse mistook into soul-for a grovelling quality that her lofty imagination would utterly despise. most wicked fiend!" Not so Juliet's other counsellor. The Friar estimated her con "Oh, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!" The transition from her reproach of Tybalt's murderer, to a glorious trust in the integrity of her lord, is surpassingly beautiful. Not less beautiful is the passion which Romeo exhibits in the Friar's cell. Each of the lovers in these scenes shows the intensity of their abandonment to an overmastering will. stancy, and he did "spy a kind of hope” that it might be rewarded. He saw that They see only themselves in the universe." Juliet would, at all hazards, put away "the That is the true moral of their fate. But, shame" of marrying Paris. Well had the even under the direst calamity, they catch Friar reckoned upon her "strength of will." at the one joy which is left the short The scene in his cell, and the subsequent meeting before the parting. And what a scene when she swallows the draught, are parting that is! Here, again, comes the triumph of the beautiful over the merely yet we never lose sight of the highest poetry, amongst the most powerful in the play; and tragic. They are once more calm. Their mingling what is grand with what is beaulove again breathes of all the sweet sights tiful. When Juliet is supposed to be dead, and sounds in a world of beauty. They are nature again asserts her empire over the parting—but the almost happy Juliet says-tetchy and absolute father, and the mother "It is not yet near day :- Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." Romeo, who sees the danger of delay, is not deceived: "It was the lark, the herald of the morn." Then what a burst of poetry follows!"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountains' tops." The scene closes with that exquisite display of womanly tenderness in Juliet, which hurries from the forgetfulness of joy in her husband's presence to apprehension for his safety. After this scene we are almost content to think, as Romeo fancied he thought, 66 I come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy." The sorrow does come upon poor Juliet with redoubled force. The absolute father, the unyielding mother, the treacherous Nurse, all hurrying her into a loathed marriage,—might drive one less resolved to weeps over the "One, poor one, one poor and loving child." Here, again, the gentle poetry of common feelings comes to the relief of the scene; and the Friar brings in a higher poetry in the consolations of divine truth. As we approach the catastrophe, the poetical cast of Romeo's mind becomes even more It was first fanciful, then imaginative, then clearly defined than in the earlier scenes. impassioned-but when deep sorrow has been added to his love, and he treads upon the threshold of the world of shadows, it puts on even a higher character of beauty. As to the celebrated speech of the 'Apothecary,' we refuse to believe that it forms an exception to the general character of the beauty that throws its rich evening light over the closing scenes. The criticism of the French school has not spared this famous passage. Joseph Warton, an elegant scholar, but who belonged to this school, has the following observations in his | earthen pots; and he had looked at the 'Virgil' (1763, vol. i. p. 301):— "It may not be improper to produce the following glaring instance of the absurdity of introducing long and minute descriptions into tragedy. When Romeo receives the dreadful and unexpected news of Juliet's death, this fond husband, in an agony of grief, immediately resolves to poison himself. But his sorrow is interrupted, while he gives us an exact picture of the apothecary's shop from whom he intended to purchase the poison: 'I do remember an apothecary,' &c. I appeal to those who know anything of the human heart, whether Romeo, in this distressful situation, could have leisure to think of the alligator, empty boxes, and bladders, and other furniture, of this beggarly shop, and to point them out so distinctly to the audience. The description is, indeed, very lively and natural, but very improperly put into the mouth of a person agitated with such passion as Romeo is represented to be." The criticism of Warton, ingenious as it may appear, and true as applied to many "long and minute descriptions in tragedy," is here based upon a wrong principle. He says that Romeo, in his distressful situation, had not "leisure" to think of the furniture of the apothecary's shop. What then had he leisure to do? Had he leisure to run off into declamations against fate, and into tedious apostrophes and generalizations, as a less skilful artist than Shakspere would have made him indulge in? From the moment he had said, "Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means," the apothecary's shop became to him the object of the most intense interest. Great passions, when they have shaped themselves into firm resolves, attach the most distinct importance to the minutest objects connected with the execution of their purpose. He had seen the apothecary's shop in his placid moments as an object of common curiosity. He had hastily looked at the tortoise and the alligator, the empty boxes, and the tattered weeds and overwhelming brows of their needy owner. But he had also said, when he first saw these things, "An if a man did need a poison now, Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him." When he did need a poison, all these documents of the misery that was to serve him came with a double intensity upon his vision. The shaping of these things into words was not for the audience. It was not to produce 66 a long and minute description in tragedy" that had no foundation in the workings of nature. It was the very cunning of nature which produced this description. Mischief was, indeed, swift to enter into the thoughts of the desperate man; but, the mind once made up, it took a perverse pleasure in going over every item of the circumstances that had suggested the means of mischief. All other thoughts had passed out of Romeo's mind. He had nothing left but to die ; everything connected with the means of his death was seized upon by his imagination with an energy that could only find relief in words. and Shakspere has exhibited the same knowledge of nature in his sad and solemn poem of "The Rape of Lucrece,' where the injured wife, having resolved to wipe out her stain by death, "calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy." She sees in that painting some fancied resemblance to her own position, and spends the heavy hours till her husband arrives in its contemplation. "So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow." It was the intense interest in his own resolve which made Romeo so minutely describe his apothecary. But, that stage past, came the abstraction of his sorrow:"What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet." Juliet was dead; and what mattered it to his "betossed soul” whom she should have married? "Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night," was the sole thought that made him re- his servant said as a "dream." The gentleness of Romeo is apparent, even while he says― "The time and my intents are savage-wild;" for he adds, with a strong effort, to his faithful Balthasar, elegy on the frailty of love, from its own nature and external circumstances,”* which Romeo sings before his last sleep. And how beautifully is the corresponding part sung by the waking and dying Juliet !— "What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end :- They have paid the penalty of the fierce Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good hatreds that were engendered around them, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 'THE MERCHANT OF VENICE,' like 'A Mid- | summer-Night'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 only a few variations from the quartos. '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. From the original entry at Stationers' Hall, in 1598, providing that it be not printed without licence first had of the Lord Chamberlain, it may be assumed that it had not then been acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants. We know, however, so little about the formalities of licence that we cannot regard this point as certain. 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." Mr. Skottowe somewhat leaps to a conclusion that this play contains the same plot as 'The Merchant of Venice:'-— "The loss of this performance is justly a subject of regret, for, as it combined within its plot the two incidents of the bond and the caskets, it would, in all probability, have thrown much additional light on Shakspeare's progress in the composition of his highly finished comedy." As all we know of this play is told us by Gosson, it is rather bold to assume that it combined the two incidents of the bond and the caskets. The combination of these incidents is perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of Shakspere's dramatic skill. “In the management of the plot," says Mr. Hallam," which is sufficiently complex without the slightest confusion or incoherence, I do not conceive that it has been surpassed in the annals of any theatre." The rude dramatists of 1579 were not remarkable for the combination of incidents. It was probably reserved for the skill of Shakspere to bring the caskets and the bond in juxtaposition. He found the incidents far apart, but it was for him to fuse them together. We cannot absolutely deny Mr. Douce's conjecture that the play mentioned by Gosson might have furnished our poet with the whole of the plot; but it is certainly an abuse of language to say that it did furnish him, because the Jew shown at the Bull deals with "worldly choosers," and the "bloody minds of usurers." We admit that the coincidence is curious. Warton first drew attention to a ballad which he considers was written before 'The Merchant of Venice,' 'A new Song, shewing the cruelty of Gernutus, a Jew, who, lending to a merchant an hundred crowns, would have a pound of his flesh because he could not pay him at the time appointed.' *Life of Shakspeare,' vol. i. p. 330. This curious production is printed in Percy's 'Reliques.' Warton's opinion of the priority of this ballad to 'The Merchant of Venice' is thus expressed :—" It may be objected that this ballad might have been written after, and copied from, Shakespeare's play. But, if that had been the case, it is most likely that the author would have preserved Shakespeare's name of Shylock for the Jew; and nothing is more likely than that Shakespeare, in copying from this ballad, should alter the name from Gernutus to one more Jewish... Our ballad has the air of a narrative written before Shakespeare's play; I mean, that, if it had been written after the play, it would have been much more full and circumstantial. At present, it has too much the nakedness of an original.' The reasoning of Warton is scarcely borne out by a new fact, for which we are indebted to the researches of Mr. Collier. Thomas Jordan, in 1664, printed a ballad, or romance, called 'The Forfeiture;' and Mr. Collier says-"So much does Shakespeare's production seem to have been forgotten in 1664, that Thomas Jordan made a ballad of it, and printed it as an original story (at least without any acknowledgment), in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie,' in that year. In the same scarce little volume he also uses the plot of the serious part of 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and of 'The Winter's Tale,' both of which had been similarly laid by for a series of years, partly, perhaps, on account of the silencing of the theatres from and after 1642. The circumstance has hitherto escaped observation; and Jordan felt authorized to take such liberties with the story of 'The Merchant of Venice,' that he has represented the Jew's daughter, instead of Portia, as assuming the office of assessor to the Duke of Venice in the trial-scene, for the sake of saving the life of the Merchant, with whom she was in love."+ Now, it is remarkable that this ballad by Jordan, which was unquestionably written after the play, is much less full and circumstantial than the old ballad of 'Gernutus;' so that Warton's 6 * Observations on the Fairy Queen,' 1807, vol. i. p. 182. New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' p. 36. argument, as a general principle, will not | is rescued from the forfeiture by the adroithold. It appears to us that 'Gernutus' is, in reality, very full and circumstantial; and that some of the circumstances are identical with those of the play. Compare, for example, "Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond; and in a merry sport,” &c. with "But we will have a merry jest, For to be talked long; You shall make me a bond, quoth he, And, again, compare "Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?" with "The bloudie Jew now ready is With whetted blade in hand." But the ballad of 'Gernutus' wants that remarkable feature of the play, the inter vention 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 balladwriter professed to derive his history: "In Venice towne not long agoe, As Italian writers tell." It was from an Italian writer, Ser Giovanni, the author of a collection of tales, called 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. An abstract of this chapter of the 'Pecorone' may be found in Mr. Dunlop's 'History of Fiction;' and a much fuller epitome of a scarce translation of the tale, printed in 1755, was first given in Johnson's edition of Shakspere, and is reprinted in all the variorum editions. In this story we have a rich lady at Belmont, who is to be won upon certain conditions; and she is finally the prize of a young merchant, whose friend, having become surety for him to a Jew, under the same penalty as in the play, ness of the married lady, who is disguised as a lawyer. The pretended judge receives, as in the comedy, her marriage ring as a gratuity, and afterwards banters her husband, in the same way, upon the loss of it. Some of the stories of 'Il Pecorone, as indeed of Boccaccio, and other early Italian writers, appear to have been the common property of Europe, derived from some Oriental origin. Mr. Douce has given an extremely curious extract from the English • Gesta Romanorum," a Manuscript, preserved in the Harleian Collection, No. 7333, written in the reign of Henry the Sixth," in which the daughter of "Selestinus, a wise emperor in Rome," exacts somewhat similar conditions, from a knight who loved her, as the lady in the 'Pecorone.' Being reduced to poverty by a compliance with these conditions, he applies to a merchant to lend him money; and the loan is granted under the following covenant:-" And the covenaunt shalle be this, that thou make to me a charter of thine owne blood, in condicion that yf thowe kepe not thi day of payment, hit shalle be lefulle to me for to draw awey alle the flesh of thi body froo the bone with a sharp swerde, and, yf thow wolt assent hereto, I shalle fulfille thi wille." In this ancient story the borrower of the money makes himself subject to the penalty without the intervention of a friend; and, having forgotten the day of payment, is authorised by his wife to give any sum which is demanded. The money is refused by the merchant, and the charter of blood exacted. Judgment is given against the knight; but, "the damysell, his love, whenne she harde telle that the lawe passid agenst him, she kytte of al the longe her of hir hede, and claddie hir in precious clothing like to a man, and yede to the palys." The scene that ensues in the 'Gesta Romanorum' has certainly more resemblance to the conduct of the incident in Shakspere than the similar one in the 'Pecorone. Having given a specimen of the language of the manuscript of Henry the Sixth's time, which Mr. Douce thinks was of the same period as the writing, we shall continue the story in orthography which will present fewer difficulties to many |