Isab. I have a brother is condemned to die ; I do beseech you, let it be his fault,

And not my brother.

Ang. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault's condemned ere it be done;
Mine were the very cipher of a function,

To find the faults, whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.

Isab. O just but severe law!

I had a brother, then ;-must he needs die?
Ang. Maiden, no remedy.

Isab. Yes; I do think you might pardon him,
And neither Heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.
Ang. I will not do't.

Isab.

But can you, if you would? Ang. Look; what I will not, that I can not do.

Isab. But might you do't, and do the world no wrong, If so your heart were touched with that remorse,

As mine is to him?

Ang.

He's sentenced; 'tis too late.

Isab. Too late? Why, no; I, that do speak a word,
May call it back again; well, believe this,
No ceremony that to the great belongs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon,' nor the judge's robe,
Becomes them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does. If he had been as you,

And you as he, you would have slipt like him ;
But he, like you, would not have been so stern.
Ang. Pray you, begone.

Isab. I would to Heaven I had your potency,'
And you were Is'abel; should it then be thus?
No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge,
And what a prisoner.

3

Ang. Your brother is a forfeit of the law, And you but waste your words.*

1 Truncheon, (trůn' shun), a short staff; a club; a baton, or military staff of command.

9 Pō' ten cy, power; authority.

3

3 For feit, that which is lost by a crime, offense, neglect of duty, or breach of contract. 4 Words, (wordz).

Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once;
And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgmènt, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Ang.

Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I, condemns your brother.

Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,

It should be thus with him; he dies to-morrow.

Isab. To-morrow? oh! that's sudden. Spare him, spare him. Good, good my lord, bethink you :

Who is it that hath died for this offense?

There's many have committed it.

Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept; Those many had not dared to do that evil,

2

If the first man that did the edict' infringe,
Had answered for his deed. Now, 'tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet,
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
Or new, or by remissnèss new conceived,

And so in progress to be hatched and born,
Are now to have no successive degrees;

But ere they live, to end.

Isab.

Yět show some pity.

Ang. I show it most of all, when I show justice; For then I pity those I do not know,

Which a dismissed offense would after gall;

And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,

Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;

Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.

Isab. So you must be the first that gives this sentence:
And he, that suffers: oh! 'tis excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous.
To use it like a giant. -Merciful Heaven!
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splittest the unwedgeable and gnarlèd oak,

1 E' dict, proclamation; law.

? In fringe, break; encroach upon.

Than the soft myrtle : Oh, but man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,
As make the angels weep.

We can not weigh our brother with yourself :
Great men may jest with saints,-'tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.'

That in the captain's but a choleric2 word,
Which in the soldier is flat blăs'phemy.

Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me?
Isab. Because authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o' the top: go to your bosom ;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltinèss, such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

Ang. She speaks, 'tis such sense,

That my sense bleeds with it. Fare you well.

Isab. Gentle my lord, turn back.

Ang. I will bethink me; come again to-morrow.

Isab. Hark, how I'll bribe you; good my lord, turn back. Ang. How! bribe me?

Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that Heaven shall share with you. Not with fond shekels* of the tested gold,

Or stones, whose rate is either rich or poor,

As fancy values them; but with true prayers,
That shall be up at Heaven, and enter there,
Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

Ang. Well, come to-morrow.

Isab. Heaven keep your honor safe.

1 Pròf`a nā′ tion, a violation of something sacred; irreverent or too familiar treatment of what is sacred. 2 Choleric, (kol' er ik), passionate. " Blǎs' phe my, irreverent or con

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

temptuous words uttered wickedly against God.

4

Shekel, (shek' 1), a Jewish coin of the value of about sixty-two and one-half cents.

W

II.

175. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

HAT then remains to Shakspeare? and what is there to show that he is not a plagiarist1? Every thing that makes The Merchant of Venice what it is. The people are puppets, and the incidènts are all found in old stories. They are mere bundles of barren sticks that the poet's touch causes to bloom like Aaron's' rod: they are heaps of dry bones till he clothes them with human flesh and breathes into them the breath of life.

3

2. Antō'niö, grave, pensive, prudent, save in his devotion to his young kinsman, as a Christian hating the Jew, as a loyal merchant despising the usurer; Bassanio, lavish yet providènt, a generous gentleman although a fortune seeker, wise although a gay gallant, and manly though dependent;

5

3. Gratiano,' who unites the not too common virtues of thorough good nature and unselfishness with the sometimes not unserviceable fault of talking for talk's sake; Shylock, crafty and cruel, whose revenge is as mean as it is fierce and furious, whose abuse never rises to invective, or his anger into wrath, and who has yet some dignity of port as the avenger of a nation's wrongs, some claim upon our sympathy as a father outraged by his only child; 4. And Pōrtia, mătchless impersonation of that rare woman who is gifted even more in intellect than in loveliness, and yet who stops gracefully short of the offense of intellectuality; these, not to notice minor characters no less perfectly arranged or completely developed after their kind, these, and the poetry which is their atmosphere, and through which they beam upon us, all radiant in its golden light, are Shakspeare's only. 5. And these it is, and not the incidents of old, and, but for these, forgotten tales, that make The Merchant of Venice a pricelèss and imperishable dower to the queenly city that sits enthroned upon the sea;—a dower of romance more bewitching than that of her moonlit waters and beauty-laden bal'co

2

1 Plagiarist, (plà' ji a rist), one who Aaron, (år' un). purloins the writings of another, and puts them off as his own a thief in literature.

3 Bassanio, (bås så′ nỉ o).
'Gratiano, (grå`she å′ no).
' Portia, (pór′ shỉ å).

Lies, of adornment more splendid than that of her pictured palaces, of human interèst more enduring than that of her blood-stained annals, more touching even than the sight of her faded grandeur. RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

III.

173. THE TRIAL SCENE.'

Present the GRAND DUKE, SENATORS, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, GRATIANO, SOLANIO, and others.

D

UKE. What, is Antonio here?

Antonio. Ready, so please your grace.

Duke. I am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch

Uncapable of pity, void and empty

From any

Ant.

dram of mercy.

I have heard,

Your grace hath ta'en great pains to qualify

His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate,
And that no lawful means can carry me

Out of his envy's reach, I do oppose
My patience to his fury; and am armed
To suffer, with a quietness of spirit,

The věry tyranny and rage of his.

Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court.
Solan. He's ready at the door: he comes, my lord.
Enter SHYLOCK.

Duke. Make room, and let him stand befōre our face.

Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,
That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice
To the last hour of act; and then, 'tis thought
Thou❜lt show thy mercy and remorse, mōre strange
Than is thy strange apparent cruelty:"

1 The Trial Scene, from the play of "the Merchant of Venice," in which the merchant, Antonio, goes security for his friend Bassanio in the sum of three thousand ducats borrowed from Shylock. On failure to repay this sum, he is bound to

forfeit a pound of flesh to Shylock, to be cut from his (Antonio's) body. After the forfeiture of the bond, owing to the merchant's heavy losses, this scene occurs in the fourth act of the play.

2

Cruelty, (kro' el tî).