"The quality of mercy is not strain'd; When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, The deeds of mercy." all the remaining elements of this drama. | right first receive their value and signifiThe arbitrary will of her father, which fetters cancy. Shakspere indicates this in the Portia's inclination, and robs her of all following beautiful verses :— participation in the choice of a husband, rests certainly upon paternal right; but even this right, when carried to an extreme, becomes the highest injustice. The injustice which lies in the enforcement of this paternal right would have fallen with tragical weight, if chance had not conducted it to a fortunate issue. The flight and marriage of Jessica, against her father's will, comprehends a manifest injustice. Nevertheless, who will condemn her for having withdrawn herself from the power of such a father? In the sentence laid upon the Jew, by which he is compelled to recognise the marriage of his daughter, is again reflected the precept― Summum jus, summa injuria; right and unright are here so closely driven up into the same limit, that they are no longer separated, but immediately pass over one to the other. Thus we see that the different, and apparently heterogeneous, events unite themselves in the whole into one point. They are only variations of the same theme. All human life is a great lawsuit; where right is received as the centre and basis of our being. From this point of view proceeds the drama. But, the more this basis is built upon, the more insecure does it exhibit itself. Unquestionably, right and law ought to uphold and strengthen human life. But they are not its basis and true centre. In them the whole truth of human existence does not lie inclosed. In their one-sidedness right becomes unright, and unright becomes right. Law and right have their legality and truth, not through and in themselves; but they rest upon the higher principles of the true morality, from which they issue only as single rays. Man has in and for himself no rights, but only duties. But, at the same time, against others his duties are rights; and there is no true living right that does not include, and may be itself indeed, a duty. Not upon right, then, but upon heavenly grace, rests the human being and life. The union of the human with the Divine will is the true animating morality of mankind-through which right and un We have thus very briefly, and, therefore, somewhat imperfectly, exhibited the views of Dr. Ulrici, with reference to the idea in which this drama is conceived. They belong to that philosophy which, whether for praise or for blame, has been called transcendental. We cannot avoid expressing our opinion that, although Shakspere might not have proposed to himself so systematic a display of the contest that is unremittingly going forward in the world between our conventional and our natural being, he did intend to represent the anomalies that have always existed between the circumstances by which human agents are surrounded and the higher motives by which they should act. And this idea, as it appears to us, is the basis of the large toleration which belongs to this drama, amidst its seeming intolerance. Men are to be judged upon a higher principle than belongs to mere edicts,-by and through all the associations amidst which they have been nurtured, and by which they have been impelled. We select a case or two in point. Antonio is one of the most beautiful of Shakspere's characters. He does not take a very prominent part in the drama: he is a sufferer rather than an actor. We view him, in the outset, rich, liberal, surrounded with friends; yet he is unhappy. He has higher aspirations than those which ordinarily belong to one dependent upon the chances of commerce; and this uncertainty, as we think, produces his unhappiness. He will not acknowledge the forebodings of evil which come across his mind. Ulrici says, "It was the over-great magnitude of his earthly riches, which, although his heart was by no means dependent upon their amount, unconsciously confined the free flight of his soul." We doubt if Shakspere meant this. He has addressed the reproof of that state of mind to Portia, from the lips of Nerissa :"Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary of this great world. Ner. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.” Antonio may say "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad;" but his reasoning denial of the cause of his sadness is a proof to us that the foreboding of losses "Enough to press a royal merchant down,”— is at the bottom of his sadness. It appears to us a self-delusion, which his secret nature rejects, that he says, "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 merchandize makes me not sad." When he has given the fatal bond, he has a sort of desperate confidence, which to us looks very unlike assured belief:— "Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it; Within these two months, that's a month before This bond expires, I do expect return Of thrice three times the value of this bond." And, finally, when his calamity has become a real thing, and not a shadowy notion, his deportment shows that his mind has been long familiar with images of ruin:"Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare you well! Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you; For herein fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom: it is still her use, To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view, with hollow eye and wrinkled brow, An age of poverty; from which lingering penance Of such misery doth she cut me off." The generosity of Antonio's nature unfitted him for a contest with the circumstances amid which his lot was cast. The Jew "In low simplicity, says He lends out money gratis." He himself says "I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures Many that have at times made moan to me." Bassanio describes him as "The kindest man, The best condition'd and unwearied spirit To such a spirit, whose "means are in supposition "—whose ventures are "squander'd abroad"-the curse of the Jew must have sometimes presented itself to his own prophetic mind : This is the fool that lends out money gratis." Antonio and his position are not in harmony. But there is something else discordant in Antonio's mind. This kind friend, this generous benefactor, this gentle spirit, this man "unwearied in doing courtesies," can outrage and insult a fellow-creature, because he is of another creed : "Shy. Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last; You spurn'd me such a day; another time You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much monies. Ant. I am as like to call thee so again, To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too." Was it without an object that Shakspere made this man, so entitled to command our affections and our sympathy, act so unworthy a part, and not be ashamed of the act? Most assuredly the poet did not intend to justify But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs." Here, to our minds, is the first of the lessons of charity which this play teaches. Antonio is as much to be pitied for his prejudices as the Jew for his. They had both been nurtured in evil opinions. They had both been surrounded by influences which more or less held in subjection their better natures. The honoured Christian is as intolerant as the despised Jew. The one habitually pursues with injustice the subjected man that he has been taught to loathe; the other, in the depths of his subtle obstinacy, seizes upon the occasion to destroy the powerful man that he has been compelled to fear. The companions of Antonio exhibit, more or less, the same reflection of the prejudices which have become to them a second nature. They are not so gross in their prejudices as Launcelot, to whom "the Jew is the very devil incarnation." But to Lorenzo, who is about to marry his daughter, Shylock is a "faithless Jew." When the unhappy father is bereft of all that constituted the solace of his home, and before he has manifested that spirit of revenge which might well call for indignation and contempt, he is to the gentlemanly Solanio "the villain Jew," and "the dog Jew." When the unhappy man speaks of his daughter's flight, he is met with a brutal jest on the part of Salarino, who, within his own circle, is the pleasantest of men ;—" I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal." We can understand the reproaches that are heaped upon Shylock in the trial scene as something that might come out of the depths of any passion-stirred nature: but the habitual contempt with which he is treated by men who in every other respect are gentle and good-humoured and benevolent is a proof to us that Shakspere meant to represent the struggle that must inevitably ensue, in a condition of society where the innate sense of justice is deadened in the powerful by those hereditary prejudices which make cruelty virtue; and where the powerless, invested by accident with the means of revenge, say with Shylock, "The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." The climax of this subjection of our higher and better natures to conventional circumstances is to be found in the character of the Jew's daughter. Young, agreeable, intelligent, formed for happiness, she is shut up by her father in a dreary solitude. One opposed to her in creed gains her affections; and the ties which bind the father and the child are broken for ever. But they are not broken without compunction: "Alack! what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father's child !" This is nature. But when she has fled from him, robbed him, spent fourscore ducats in one night, given his turquoise for a monkey, and, finally, revealed his secrets, with an evasion of the ties that bound them which makes one's flesh creep,— "When I was with him," we see the poor girl plunged into the most wretched contest between her duties and her pleasures by the force of external circumstances. We grant, then, to all these our compassion; for they commit injustice ignorantly, and through a force which they cannot withstand. Is the Jew himself not to be measured by the same rule? We believe that it was Shakspere's intention so to mea sure him. When Pope exclaimed of Macklin's performance of Shylock,— "This is the Jew That Shakspere drew!" the higher philosophy of Shakspere was little appreciated. Macklin was, no doubt, from all traditionary report of him, perfectly capable of representing the subtlety of the Jew's malice and the energy of his revenge. But it is a question with us whether he perceived, or indeed if any actor ever efficiently represented, the more delicate traits of character that lie beneath these two great passions of the Jew's heart. example, at the extraordinary mixture of the personal and the national in his dislike of Antonio. He hates him for his gentle manners : Look, for | 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." "How like a fawning publican he looks!' He hates him, "for he is a Christian ;"-he hates him, for that "he lends out money gratis ;"--but he hates him more than all, because "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 "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. 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 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 : 66 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, Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates answer, The slaves are ours:-So do I answer you. The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, Is dearly bought; 't is mine, and I will have it: If you deny me, fie upon your law!" It would have been exceedingly difficult for 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." Had Shylock relented after that most beautiful appeal to his mercy, which Shakspere 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. been a true picture of society in the sixteenth century had the poet shown the judges of the Jew wholly magnanimous in granting him the mercy which he denied to the Christian. We certainly do not agree with the Duke, in his address to Shylock, that the conditions upon which his life is spared are imposed— "That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit." Nor do we think that Shakspere meant to hold up these conditions as anything better than examples of the mode in which the strong are accustomed to deal with the weak. There is still something discordant in this, the real catastrophe of the drama. It could not be otherwise, and yet be true to nature. 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, the pretty, pouting contests, and the happy explanations of Portia and Nerissa with Bassanio and Gratiano. Here again we are removed into a sphere where the calamities of fortune, and the injustice of man warring against man, may be forgotten. The poor Merchant is once more happy. The "gentle spirit" of Portia is perhaps the happiest, for she has triumphantly concluded a work as religious as her pretended pilgrimage "by holy crosses." To use the words of Dr. Ulrici," the sharp contrarieties of right and unright are played out." |