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Sal. May this be possible? may this be true?

Mel. Have I not hideous death within my view,

Retaining but a quantity of life,

Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?
What in the world should make me now
deceive,

Since I must lose the use of all deceit ?
Why should I then be false, since it is true
That I must die here and live hence by truth?
I say again, if Lewis do win the day,

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He is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours
Behold another day break in the east:
But even this night, whose black contagious
breath

Already smokes about the burning crest
Of the old, feeble and day-wearied sun,
Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire,
Paying the fine of rated treachery

Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives,
If Lewis by your assistance win the day.
Commend me to one Hubert with your king:
The love of him, and this respect besides, 41
For that my gransire was an Englishman,
Awakes my conscience to confess all this.
In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence
From forth the noise and rumor of the field,
Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts
In peace, and part this body and my soul
With contemplation and devout desires.

Sal. We do believe thee; and beshrew my soul

But I do love the favor and the form
Of this most fair occasion, by the which
We will untread the steps of damned flight,
And like a bated and retired flood,

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Leaving our rankness and irregular course, Stoop low within those bounds we have

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Where is my prince, the Dauphin?
Here: what news?

The Count Melun is slain; the English lords

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By his persuasion are again fall'n off,
And your supply, which you havewish'd so long,
Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.
Lew. Ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy
very heart!

I did not think to be so sad to-night

As this hath made me. Who was he that said
King John did fly an hour or two before
The stumbling night did part our weary
powers?

Mess. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord. Lew. Well; keep good quarter and good care to-night:

The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.

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[Exeunt

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Bast. Who thou wilt: and if thou please, Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets.

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Hub. Unkind remembrance! thou and eye

less night

Have done me shame: brave soldier, pardo

me,

That any accent breaking from thy tongue Should 'scape the true acquaintance of min

ear.

Bast. Come, come; sans compliment, wha news abroad?

Hub. Why, here walk I in the black bro of night, To find you out. Bast.

news?

Brief, then; and what's th

Hub. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to th night,

Black, fearful, comfortless and horrible. 20 Bast. Show me the very wound of this ill

news:

I am no woman, I'll not swoon at it.

Hub. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk :

I left him almost speechless; and broke out
To acquaint you with this evil, that you might
The better arm you to the sudden time,
Than if you had at leisure known of this.

Bast. How did he take it? who did taste to him ?

Hub. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain, Whose bowels suddenly burst out the king Yet speaks and peradventure may recover. 31 Bast. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?

Hub. Why, know you not? the lords are all come back,

And brought Prince Henry in their company; At whose request the king hath pardon'd them, And they are all about his majesty.

Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,

And tempt us not to bear above our power! I'll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night, Passing these flats, are taken by the tide ; 40 These Lincoln Washes have devoured them; Myself, well mounted, hardly have escaped. Away before conduct me to the king ;

I doubt he will be dead or ere I come. [Exeunt.

SCENE VII. The orchard in Swinstead Abbey. Enter Prince HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. Hen. It is too late the life of all his blood

Is touch'd corruptibly, and his pure brain, Which some suppose the soul's frail dwellinghouse,

Doth by the idle comments that it makes
Foretell the ending of mortality.

Enter PEMBROKE.

Pem. His highness yet doth speak, and holds belief

That, being brou ht into the open air,

It would allay the burning quality

Of that fell poison which assaileth him.

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P. Hen. Let him be brought into the orchard here. Doth he still rage? Pem

[Exit Bigot. He is more patient Than when you left him; even now he sung. P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes

In their continuance will not feel themselves. Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds

With many legions of strange fantasies, Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,

Confound themselves. 'Tis strange that death should sing.

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

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Who chants a doleful hyran to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.

Sal. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born

To set a form upon that indigest
Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.
Enter Attendants, and BIGOT, carrying KING
JOHN in a chair.

K. John. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;

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It would not out at windows nor at doors.
There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust :
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
P. Hen. How fares your majesty?
K. John. Poison'd,-ill fare-dead, for-
sook, cast off:

And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw,

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course Through my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north

To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you

much,

I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

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THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

(WRITTEN ABOUT 1596.)

ef usurers."

INTRODUCTION.

This play takes a place by itself, midway between the group of Shakespeare's early comedies and that more brilliant group of comedies which clusters about the year 1600. With the early comedies it is allied by the frequent rhymes, the occasional doggerel verse, and the numerous classical alluOs; with the later group it is connected by its centring the interest of the drama in the develophat of character, and by the variety, depth, and beauty of the characterization. No person deted in any preceding comedy can compare in vigor of drawing and depth of color with Shylock; Portia is the first of Shakespeare's women who unites in beautiful proportion, intellectual power, high and refined, with unrestrained ardor of the heart. The story of the caskets and the ory of the pound of flesh had been told separately many times and in various countries. The forLer is first found in the mediaval Greek romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, by Joannes Damasets (about A.D. 800); in another form it is told by the English poet Gower, and the Italian Dovelist Boccaccio. But points of resemblance are most striking between Shakespeare's version of the casket incident and that given in the collection of stories so popular in the Middle Ages, the Gesta Romanorum. The incident of the pound of flesh also appears in the Gesta; it is found in a long religious poem, written in the Northumbrian dialect about the end of the thirteenth Catury, the Cursor Mundi, in an old ballad, "showing the crueltie of Gernutus a Jew," and sewhere; there are Persian and Egyptian versions of the tale, which itself perhaps originally came from the East. The form in which we have it in Shakespeare is most closely conBacted with the version found in a collection of tales, Il Pecorone, written by Ser Giovanni, a notary of Florence, about A. D., 1378. Here, and only here, the incident of the ring, which forms the subject of the fifth act of The Merchant of Venice, is given; and here the Dane Belmont appears. It is probable, however, that Shakespeare to become acquainted With these stories had not to go to Il Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum. Stephen Gosson writing In 179, in his Schoole of Abuse, about plays which were "tollerable at sometime," mentions "the Jew. showne at the Bull... representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes The greediness of worldly choosers seems to point to the casket incident, and the Boody minds of usurers to that of the pound of flesh; we therefore infer that a pre-Shakespearian day existed which combined these two incidents. And it is highly probable that Shakespeare's task In the case of The Merchant of Venice, as afterwards in that of King Lear, consisted in creating from i and worthless dramatic material found among the crude productions of the early English theatre these forms of beauty and of majesty with which we are familiar. Although the play is named after e merchant, Antonio, he is not the chief dramatic person; he forms, however, a centre around hich the other characters are grouped: Bassanio, his friend; Shylock, his erring and would-be orderer; Portia, his savior. Antonio's part is rather a passive than an active one; he is to be an bject of contention and a prize; much is to be done against him and on his behalf, but not much is be done by him; and therefore, although his character is very firmly conceived and clearly inated, his part is subdued and kept low, lest it might interfere with the exhibition of the two chief of the play-the cruel masculine force of Shylock, which holds the merchant in its reless, vice-like grip; and the feminine force of Portia, which is as bright as sunlight, and as benefFt. Yet Shakespeare is careful to interest us in Antonio, and to show us that he was worth exertion to save. The distinction of Portia among the women of Shakespeare is the union in nature of high intellectual powers and decision of will with a heart full of ardor and susceptibilto romantic feelings. She has herself never known trouble or sorrow, but prosperity has left * generous and quick in sympathy. Her noble use of wealth and joyous life, surrounded with wers and fountains and marble statues and music, stands in contrast over against the hard, sad, contracted life of Shylock, one of a persecuted tribe, absorbed in one or two narrowing and inse passions-the love of money-bags he clutches and yet fails to keep, and his hatred of the man ho had scorned his tribe, insulted his creed, and diminished his gains. Yet Shylock is not like arlowe's Jew, Barabas, a preternatural monster. Wol-like as Lis revenge shows him, we pity his less, solitary life; and when, ringed round in the trial scene with hostile force, he stands firm on his foothold of law, there is something subline in his tenacity of passion and resolve. But we that it is right that his evil strength should be utterly crushed and quelled, and when Shylock s the court a broken man, we know it is needful that this should be so. The date of the play is ertain. Perhaps 1596 is as likely a date as we can fix upon; but the precise year matters little if remembered that the play occupies an intermediate place between the early and the middle ap of comedies.

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Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO.
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.

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Salar. 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 curtsy to them, do them reverence, As they fly by them with their woven wings. Salan. 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 20 Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt Would make me sad.

Salar. My wind cooling my broth Would blow me to an ague, when I thought What harm a wind too great at sea might do. 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,

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OLD GOBBO, father to Launcelot. LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio. BALTHASAR,

STEPHANO

servants to Portia

PORTIA, a rich heiress.

NERISSA, her waiting-maid. JESSICA, daughter to Shylock.

Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Gaoler, Servants to Portia, and other Attendants.

SCENE: Partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont, the seat of Portia, on the Continent.

Ant. Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate Upon the fortune of this present year: Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. Salar. Why, then you are in love.

Ant.

Fie, fie! Salar. Not in love neither? Then let us

say you are sad,

Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy For you to laugh and leap and say you are

merry,

Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed

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Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: [eyes Some that will evermore peep through their And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, And other of such vinegar aspect

That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO,
Salan. Here comes Bassanio, your most
noble kinsman,

Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well:
We leave you now with better company.
Salar. I would have stay'd till I had made

you merry,

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If worthier friends had not prevented me.
Ant. Your worth is very dear in my regard.
I take it, your own business calls on you
And you embrace the occasion to depart.
Salar. Good morrow, my good lords,
Bass. Good signiors both, when shall we
laugh? say, when?

You grow exceeding strange : must it be so? Salar. We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

[Exeunt Salarino and Salanio Lor. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

We two will leave you but at dinner-time.7 I pray you, have in mind where we must meet Bass. I will not fail you.

Gra. You look not well, Signior Antonio You have too much respect upon the world They lose it that do buy it with much care;

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