The plays of Shakespeare

Front matter

SHAKESPEARE'S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

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The death on October 13, 1917, of Dr. Frederick Henry Sykes, chief editor of the Scribner English Classics, is accountable for two names on the title page of this volume and for this second prefatory note.

I was associated with Dr. Sykes in the preparation of Julius Ccesar and Macbeth for this series and, though without any expectation whatever of taking active part in that of The Merchant of Venice, I had discussed the play with him and had seen most of the Introduction in manuscript.

When, therefore, the very sudden ending to this and many other activities came, it seemed fitting that I should complete the work by writing the notes, which Dr. Sykes had not touched. This I have done, in order that so interesting a piece of constructive criticism as the Introduction may be preserved among the all too scanty published records of a scholarship the range and finish of which were best known to those who had the opportunity of coming into close contact with it and of profiting by it.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE vii

Among them I gratefully count myself, and, deeply as I feel the responsibility of the work of annotation, I am no less deeply conscious of grave satisfaction that I may so close many years of friendship and scholarly association.

Lizette Andrews Fisher.

New York, June 1, 1919.

Contents

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Frontispiece

The Portrait of Shakespeare. From the painting in the Memorial Gallery in the Shakespeare Memorial Building, Stratford on Avon. Considered to be the original of the engraving by Martin Dreshout, frontispiece to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare, 1623

Index To Notes 147

BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY

Text:

Quarto 2 . The Most Excellent Historie of the Merchant of

Venice. 1600.

Pseudo-Quarto 1 . The Excellent History of the Merchant

Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Folio 1 ,

Folio 1 contains "The Merchant of Venice" on-pp. 163-184.

Text Edited :

The Plays of William Shakespeare. Edited by Edmond Malone. 10 vols. 1790.

Contains the notes of earlier editors — Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Farmer, Johnson, Steevens. A revised edition was issued, 1803, by Isaac Reed.

The Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by William

Aldis Wright. "The Cambridge Shakespeare." 9 vols.

2nd ed., 1891.

Gives a modern critical text.

The Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by William

Aldis Wright and William George Clark. The "Globe"

edition.

Reprints in one volume the text of the Cambridge Shakespeare. Its line numbers are standard for reference.

Text with Annotations :

Malone. See above.

Furness, H. H. A N?w Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. Vol. VII. The Merchant of Venice. 1892.

Clark and Wright. Clarendon Press Series. 1877.

Verity, A. W. The Pitt Press edition.

Pooler, Charles Knox. The Arden Shakespeare. 1905. Sources of the Stories Incorporated in "The Merchant of Venice."

See Introduction, VIII.

History of Venice:

Brown, Horatio. The Venetian Republic. The Temple

Cyclopaedic Primers.

Molmenti, Pompeo, Venice: Pt. I, Venice in the Middle Ages; Pt. II, Venice in the Golden Age; Pt. Ill, The Decadence of Venice. Translated by H. F. Brown.

xii THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

History of the Jews :

Graetz, Heinrich. History of the Jews. 6 vols. 1891. Abrahams. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

Shakespeare's Life :

Life of Shakespeare.

Brandes, William. William Shakespeare. Lee, Sidney. A Life of William Shakespeare. New ed.

enlarged, 1915.

Raleigh, Walter. Shakespeare. ("English Men of Letters "

series.) Neilson and Thorndike. The Facts about Shakespeare.

General Criticism :

Coleridge. Essays and Lectures on Shakespeare. ("Everyman's Library.")

Hazlitt. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. ("Everyman's Library.")

Gervinus. Commentaries on Shakespeare. Translated by Miss Burnett. With Introduction by Frederick J. Furnivall.

Dowden, Edward. Shakespere. ("Literature Primers" series.)

Hudson, Henry M. Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters.

Structure of the Drama :

Freytag, Gustav. The Technique of the Drama. Translated by McEwan.

Woodbridge, Elizabeth. The Drama, Its Law and Technique. Moulton, Richard. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. Matthews, Brander. The Development of the Drama.

Grammar :

Abbott, Edwin Abbott. A Shakesperian Grammar. A new edition.

Dictionaries :

Murray, James. The Oxford English Dictionary. A New English Dictionary Founded on Historical Principles. (N. E. D.)

Onions, C. T. A Shakespeare Glossary. Founded on the Oxford Dictionary.

Concordance :

Bartlett, John. A New and Complete Concordance to Shakespeare.

Introduction

I — ENVIRONMENT OF THE ACTION I — Venice of the Renaissance

The incidents in the eventful history of The Merchant of Venice belong to Venice and to the second quarter of the sixteenth century. It was a romantic time and setting befitting a romantic story.

The Renaissance. The period of human history known as the Renaissance was in Italy a great era in the development of humanity. The increasing wealth of Italy, the establishment of prosperous commonwealths and states, the resurrection and absorption of the ancient literatures of Greece and Rome, freed and stirred men to realize a high and liberal civilization. The refinements of social life, the culture and ideals of humanity, beauty in life, in nature, in all works of brain or hand, were supremely valued and consciously sought. The Portia of our play is, for instance, a figure representative of the status, charm, and culture of noblewomen in the Renaissance .

Venice as an Empire. The Venice of our drama we must think of as both a city and an empire — a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people, but a world power by reason of her fleets, her commerce, and her dominion. The history of Venice was illustrious. A thousand years had seen the slow transformation of fisher villages on the mud banks and marshy islands of the Adriatic to a mercantile-marine state, whose sway, centring in Rialto, extended, before her, over the Adriatic, the iEgean, Crete, Cyprus, and, for a time, Constantinople ; and, behind her, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Friuli, to the Alps. The Venetians had founded their empire on the exploitation of the trade of Western Europe with the

xiii xiv MERCHANT OF VENICE

Orient, for which, by reason of her geographical situation, Venice was the natural port. They maintained a monopoly of that trade by controlling, through conquest, settlement, and war-ships (sea-power), the trade routes to Constantinople and the Black Sea, to the Levant and India ; their merchant ships (argosies) were "scattered abroad "in every sea; their agents were in every great port ; and they kept access open to Venice from Europe by controlling the communication by river and road with northern Italy and the passes of the Alps.

In government Venice was an oligarchy of hereditary aristocrats. The form of government was that of a republic, but the mass of the Venetians were without franchise and were ineligible for public office. The men of the old prominent families constituted (1) the Great Council. (In 1340 there were 1212 members.) This was the body of electors, legislating on home and foreign affairs, controlling finance. It chose the electors of the (2) Doge (Venetian for Ital. duca, Lat. dux), who was the nominal head for life of the Republic and presided at all meetings of all councils. It chose (3) the Senate of sixty, subsequently one hundred and twenty, members, to direct great affairs of state policy, of peace and war. The six quarters of the city elected the six members of (4) the Lesser Council, who supervised all the acts of the Doge. The supreme judiciary was (5) the Council of Forty, who also had charge of the Mint and Arsenal. To these were added (6) the Council of Ten, for extraordinary criminal and political affairs, and (7) the College, or cabinet, made up of the seven executive heads of the state departments. It was a constitution that eliminated the tyranny of an hereditary prince and used in government the joint action of constituted groups of leading citizens. It was a constitution that " for its stability and efficiency became the admiration of every statesman of Europe." (Okey.)

In Shakespeare's day Venice as a world power had ceased to exist. A long and wearing warfare with Genoa for the trade of the East ; a long-enduring and losing struggle with the growing empire of the Turk, with whom her Eastern trade routes brought her into disastrous conflict ; above all, the dis-

INTRODUCTION xv

covery of a new route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope (1486 and 1497-8), which broke her trade monopoly in favor of the new commercial nations — Portuguese, Dutch, English ; the alignment of the powers of Europe, the Papal States, Spain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungry, against her land power in the League of Cambray ; — because of these things her power had declined. She lost trade and she lost dominion — Constantinople (1453) and Cyprus 1 (1571) to the Turk ; and was worn out with warfare. But her day waned with many splendors. She led in geographical knowledge and map-making, and, through the University of Padua which she controlled, in science (physics, anatomy, medicine) ; she was still the chief mart of Italy ; her ships were still prominent in the carrying trade; she had great revenues from customs, exchange, and her salt monopoly. Her wonderful prestige remained, the beauty and glamour of Venice " throned on her hundred isles."

The City of Venice. As a city, Venice was the most romantic of cities of Europe. As early as 809 the Venetians had established their stronghold in the little group of islands called Rialto (rivo alto, high bank), in the lagoon of Venice. There they built, channelled, and fortified, with unique devotion to the state. There what came to be called the city of Venice arose, of unequalled splendor. The name Rialto still continued to signify the commercial quarter. There in the goodly colonnaded square the merchants most did congregate, meeting twice daily. At one end of the square was the hunchback figure (Ital. gobbo) of stone supporting the standing-place from which the laws of Venice were proclaimed. Near by was San Giacomo, the oldest church in Venice. Near by, also, were the landing-places of the regular ferries to the mainland, to Chioggia and Padua. On the north side of Rialto the way passed over the great bridge (changed from wood to stone, 1588-1592) that spanned the Great Canal ; thence it led to the two chief architectural glories of Venice, the Ducal Palace and the Cathedral of St. Mark.

Venice had risen like Aphrodite from the waves, and the mystery of ocean hung round her. Palaces adorned with the xvi MERCHANT OF VENICE

richest Gothic detail or designed with the exuberant art of the Venetian Renaissance lined her canals. St. Mark's united Gothic and Byzantine genius and was an amethystine marvel of color. Gorgeous mosaics and fabrics of the East decorated her buildings. Their walls were adorned with the paintings of Giorgione, Titian, the Bellinis, Tintoretto, Veronese, Carpaccio.

In the height of the Renaissance men turned to Venice for her grandiose architecture, for her most glorious group of painters, for the best printers (Aldus), whose editions of the classics spread through Europe, for her religious and civil liberty. Strangers found in Venice, " the revel of the world, the masque of Italy," a unique expression of the joy of life.

Elizabethan Impressions of Venice. The Elizabethans knew Venice well, as a city rivalling their own London. Impressions of Venice were fully recorded in the literature of England accessible to the Elizabethans ; such as, William Thomas's History of Italy, 1549; Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589, and, though the translation is later than our play, Lewkener's version (1599), with additions, of Contarini's Commonwealth and Government of Venice. To these must be added the impressions of travelled Englishmen, of English students in Italian universities, especially the university of Padua, references in contemporary drama and story, especially such as were drawn from the Renaissance literature of Italy. From these it is possible to recover the point of view of the Elizabethans with respect to the famous city and to confirm the impression implicit in The Merchant of Venice.

These records speak of Venice as Queen of the Sea; of her marvellous situation, built on piles, on the islands of the Adriatic ; a city full of people, rich in treasure and buildings, with two hundred palaces fit to lodge any king ; of her oceanstreets, the great canal and innumerable lesser channels, full of gondolas to pass up and down the city or serve as ferries (traghetti) across the canals, of her merchandise brought from all realms and countries, both by land and sea; of her cosmopolitan character — the concourse of strange people,

INTRODUCTION xvii

drawn even from the remotest nations, as if Venice were a general market to the whole world ; of her empire over land and sea ; of her government, as a free commonwealth. Men spoke with wonder of the religious and civil liberty of Venice : " // thou be a Jew, or Turk, or believest in the devil — thou art free from all controlment. ... So (provided) thou offend no man privately, no man shall offend thee: which is one principal cause that draweth strangers thither." — T. Nash. Her spell was upon all. " To have swum in a gondola " was for Englishmen synonymous with travel (As You Like It, IV, i, 38) ; Spenser felt her glamour, apostrophizing her as

" Fair Venice, flower of the world's last delight."

As a scene for a play no setting could be more romantic or more fascinating.

II — Christian and Jew

Christendom and the Jews. The interpretation of The Merchant of Venice is conditioned not only by the Elizabethan point of view as respects Venice but also by the older attitude of Christendom towards the Jews. The play in many situations records the antipathies of race, religion, and social status which are now happily extinct in most parts of the world.

The essential business of the mediaeval Jews was money-lending — a trade long forbidden by the Christian Church to its own members. Their precarious status in Christendom naturally led them to hold property in a form easiest to carry or to hide — gold and jewels. Held together by the community of race, religion, and language, the Jews dispersed throughout Europe had unconsciously constituted a system of international banking. Their prime occupation was created by the very restrictions put on their existence in Christendom : in Germany they could not hold land ; throughout Europe the crafts guilds were for the most part closed to them. This isolation due to a difference of race and religion told against them in law and social life, and the money-lender is never loved. The religious passions stirred up by the Crusades reacted against the Jews ; they had put Christ xviii MERCHANT OF VENICE

to death and were getting the Christian's money. Their ceremonial of the Passover bred, in the mind of the mob, strange myths of ritual murder (the Hugh of Lincoln story, for example, c. 1400; see also the Prioress's Tale in Chaucer). All Christendom through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance held the attitude to the Jews that to-day lingers only in some parts of Russia. Every nation shows a uniform record of persecution, extortion, massacre, expulsion. Nevertheless Jews lived on everywhere, but lived as a pariah race, outside the pale of law and even humanity, dependent on the favor of the mob, and, when protected at all, on the dangerous favor of the crown. By order of Innocent III (1198-1216) they were obliged to wear " the badge of all their tribe." On the Continent this was usually square or round, of saffronyellow or some other color, on the hat or mantle. In England the badge was established by law (1222) as a woolen strip on the breast, of a different color to the dress, four fingers long and two broad (Graetz, History of the Jews, III, 527-531). Under Edward I the law required the badge to be yellow.

Usually, too, the Jews had to live in assigned, restricted quarters, known as the Ghetto (Italian) or Jewry (English). From 1500 their residence in the Ghetto was mandatory under stringent church law. The Ghetto in Venice (the first dates from 1516) was on the site of the foundries of the arsenal, between the churches of San Geremia and San Girolamo, up the east bank of the Cannareggio. It was surrounded by a high wall. The Jews were shut in from sunset to sunrise, and also on certain feasts of the Christian calendar. (Molmenti, Venice, I, i, 195.)

Throughout all, the Jews made it their rule to conform to the laws of the country in which they lived, and retained pure their home life, their blood, and their religion. In Spain and Portugal at one great period of freedom, they grew eminent in culture, scientific knowledge, and statesmanship.

The Jews in England. In England the Jews appear as the first money-lenders. The persecution of the Jews in England began as a part of the obsession of the Crusades.

INTRODUCTION xix

The custom of ill-treatment once established, it was continued — by needy kings who kept the Jews dependent on them as a handy prey, by people who could rid themselves of debt and imaginary terrors by pillage and massacre. The Jews were massacred under Richard I, plundered under John (see Scott's Ivanhoe), fined under Henry III ; their synagogues in London were destroyed by the Church (1285) ; under Edward I the Jews were forbidden to lend money, hundreds were hanged, and the great mass, about fifteen thousand, banished (1290). A few contrived to remain or to return.

About the time that The Merchant of Venice was written, it was said that " a store of Jews we have in England — a few in court ; many in the City (London), more in the country-" (Quoted by S. Lee, Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1880; in Furness, Var., 395.) The most famous Jew "in the court of Queen Elizabeth " was Roderigo Lopez, a Spanish Jew inheriting the scientific skill of his branch of the race, who was physician to Queen Elizabeth. Lopez was drawn into a Spanish plot against Antonio Perez, who aimed to establish himself on the throne of Portugal. This plot developed into another Spanish plot against Queen Elizabeth. The two plots were divulged; Lopez, threatened with the rack, confessed; he was tried for treason, and though probably innocent of real complicity in the conspiracy against Elizabeth, was found guilty by the jury, and hanged at Tyburn, May, 1594. The Earl of Essex led the prosecution of Lopez ; the Earl of Southampton was Essex's friend and Shakespeare's patron. Shakespeare's knowledge of all these events and the popular excitement that attended them may be taken as assured. And The Merchant of Venice (Frederick Hawkins, Theatre, November, 1879) in the Trial Scene has echoes of this affair.

Ill — The Question of Money-lending

Money-lending. The Elizabethans came to a play like The Merchant of Venice with a strong traditional antipathy to the money-lender. The money-lender, because of the xx MERCHANT OF VENICE

cruelty that so frequently characterized the type, had been held up to scorn by the poets from Hesiod down. In ancient Greece bankruptcy would be followed by the slavery of the debtor. In Rome the money-lenders brought about the destruction of the free farmers of the state : Cato classed together the murderer and the usurer. Dante found a place for usurers in the sixth circle of Inferno. The evils of money-lending were so well known to antiquity that the mediaeval Church, with the Jewish law as authority (Deuteronomy, xxiii, 19 f.), prohibited the practice of it by canon law. In England the taking of interest was made illegal in 1235, though subsequent acts modified the law to permit the taking of interest but not of usury (excessive interest) .

In spite of the teaching of the Church, the economic advantage that attends the lending of money at interest was gradually recognized. Indeed the Lombards, including the Venetians, with their well-established independence in religious affairs, held that Christians could be money-lenders. Hence the vogue of the arms of Lombardy as the pawnbroker's sign. English Christians gradually stood the odium and took interest, and under the guise of " damages " the law gradually supported them. The taking of interest was openly legalized in 1516, the maximum legal rate being ten per cent (J. Noorthouck), and this continued to be the maximum legal rate through the Elizabethan period. Bacon, who represents the transition to modern usage, takes the ground, in his essay on usury, that while men's hearts are bad there will be borrowing and lending for interest ; he advocated that there should be a general rate of five per cent, and that only those could exact a higher rate who were specially licensed.

The opposition of the Christian Church throughout the Middle Ages gave the Jews a practical monopoly of money-lending. If Deuteronomy forbade usury to a " brother " it said nothing about lending to a Gentile. It was as money-lenders that the Jews incurred the hatred and persecution that mark their history in Christendom. Shylock embodies in a typical figure the popular conception of the Jewish money-lender.

INTRODUCTION xxi

II — THE THEME OF "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE"

The Question of Money. The title The Merchant of Venice suggests a play that concerns itself in a significant way with wealth. And no other play of Shakespeare's refers to money with anything like the frequency that this play does. Property in an elementary form means " that which is mine own," the materials and tools possessed that make living possible. In a developed society both the materials of living and living itself become highly complex. The wealthy command the services of others in business and in household establishments; they possess the means of culture and the enjoyment of the arts. From the rights of property arise credit, borrowing and lending, bonds and penalties, testaments and dowries. Property is not only a chief goal of human effort but a prolific source of human conflict. An ever-increasing mass of law strives to define the rights of property and the obligations of contract. In such a field there is a mine of dramatic material.

That the story of life presented in The Merchant of Venice touches in manifold ways the question of money is beyond doubt. The play opens with a picturesque vision of the wealth of the Venetian merchant, scattered in argosies on all routes of trade, yet a precarious wealth, exposed to all the vicissitudes of weather, navigation, piracy. The scene changes to a glimpse of the heiress of landed property, station, and culture, with the accompaniments of attendants, musicians, host of suitors. The scene changes again to the wealth of the Venetian money-lender — his loans, with the accompaniments of interest, bonds, forfeits, bankruptcy, debtors' prison, courts of justice. A prodigal noble hopes to achieve love and money by marriage with a great heiress, but he must have money to prosecute his suit successfully. We see the merchant using his credit to borrow the money his noble kinsman needs from a Jewish money-lender, on dangerous terms, a three-months' bond, with the forfeit of a pound of flesh. So the plot is woven ; and so it continues — the caskets xxii MERCHANT OF VENICE

of gold, silver, lead; the betrothal speech of Portia; the flight of Jessica with gold and jewels; the lamentations of Shy lock ; the arrest and trial of the delinquent debtor. Without doubt, property has its place in the texture of the play.

The Theme of Love. The love motive is equally present — love in a broad sense — sex passion, family ties, friendship, social helpfulness, even love of money for itself, avarice, the root of all the evil force in the play. The story of Bassanio and Portia and the minor stories of Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, Morocco, Arragon, have the love themes. The helpful actions of the play have their motive in love; the hurtful actions have their source in avarice thwarted, which turns to hatred and revenge.

The two motives of money and love are constantly associated throughout the play, though no romanticist would admit that there is any inherent connection between the two. The lover needs money to express and attain his desire. The friend provides the money out of friendship ; Shylock pretends to lend it out of kindness. The lady with many wooers is an heiress; at a supreme moment she shows how love regards wealth in relation to the man who has " rightly loved." With one character wealth is a means to express love, with another it is an end in itself, so abused that home life becomes "hell," and man is changed to the semblance of a jungle beast.

Life and Obligation. There is evidence of still another element in the fabric. Portia's story up to her marriage is conditioned by her father's testament; her life's happiness is put into jeopardy by the tremendous chances of the choice of the caskets. How does she take this obligation? Out of friendship Antonio puts his life into jeopardy by the terms of the bond he enters into with Shylock. And unwitting, Shylock brings his own life into jeopardy of the statute law of Venice by the use he makes of Antonio's bond. Without doubt the entanglements that life chiefly meets in the story of the play take the form of obligations — some are legal in aspect, some are obligations that noble souls feel from their

INTRODUCTION xxiii

own nobility. And these obligations all involve more or less clearly the question of money.

Obligation may be expressed formally, by " will, " " oath," "bond," "ring," "forfeiture," "letter," "act," "statute." But there is, as well, obligation that is without other constraint than an inherent nobility of nature. Many things besides mercy are not strained — the bonds of family affection, the devotion of love, the fealty of friendship, the call of human helpfulness, the compelling idea of mercy ; all aspiration, in short, of the finer spirit of life. At the outset of the play we hear the note " what I owe in money and in love." In the Trial Scene the letter of obligation wars against the spirit, the Ghetto against Belmont. If the play rings with the sound of ducats, it evolves also a deeper music, the harmony that is in immortal souls.

Here is where we approach the dominant spirit of the play. Our play is a good story — interesting human characters entangled in a series of romantic incidents developing on to a satisfactory conclusion. But the various crises of the story have, we find, a certain unity of theme. The reactions of the persons of the story through the series of crises give us the ultimate material for the determination of the theme of the play. We see each character in succession tried by the touchstones of money and obligation — we see them reacting nobly or basely. The play is a spectacle of people brought into the struggle of life with others less noble, entangled, persevering, and ultimately emerging beautifully.

The Merchant of Venice is not a play of race antagonism, though the chief character of the counteraction is a Jew. Shylock is in the play as a type of life, not of race, though race made him of necessity a hated money-lender. Shakespeare aims to portray the conduct of life in a complex, developed society. He presents the story so that the free virtues of the spirit — love, friendship, mercy, beauty, social obligation — are asserted over self-seeking, avarice, enforced ob- j ligation. These free virtues of the human spirit are of the l essence of the Renaissance. In the conflict of conceptions of the aims of life in relation to money and obligation, Shakexxiv MERCHANT OF VENICE

speare here sides with the Renaissance. And he resolves the discords of the play, in the closing act, into life with higher human values realized in music, beauty, love, which are left supreme. In this sense The Merchant of Venice is a culture drama.

Ill — THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLAY

The Main Actions. The plot is woven of two main actions and many subordinate ones. The main actions are a love comedy centring in the winning of Portia and a serious comedy of the revenge-intrigue type centring in Shylock. The link figure of the two actions is Antonio, from whom in consequence the play takes its name. These two actions are carried on with beautiful interrelation, supporting and intensifying the interest one of the other, from the exposition to the catastrophe. The Bassanio-Portia action, the prime scene of which is Belmont, offers a sort of background action, of moderate but prolonged dramatic interest, highly embellished in diction and sentiment. Against this background is enacted the briefer Antonio-Shylock story, the scene of which is Venice, which abounds in highly dramatic situations, clash of personalities and passions, quick reversals of fortune, ending in the great, if melodramatic, catastrophe of the Trial Scene. The two actions are bound together by the friendship of Antonio and Bassanio, which on the one hand occasions the bond and on the other enables Bassanio to win Portia; and this same friendship moves Portia won to save her husband's friend from the penalty of the bond by which he is jeopardized. Thus the Belmont Story starts the Bond Story, the Bond Story complicates the Belmont Story, and the Belmont Story brings about the resolution of the Bond Story.

The Sub-plots. The sub-plots are many. Each of them has its own particular interest, but each contributes its part to the main theme and the main actions. The fortunes of Morocco and Arragon develop the climacteric suspense of the wooing of Portia. The Gratiano-Nerissa story lightly and gracefully parallels the main love comedy while it knits