Richard II., Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI., Richard III., Henry VIII. (3) Comedies: Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, As you Like it, Winter's Tale. (4) Minor poems: Lucrece, Venus and Adonis, Sonnets.

2. Shakespeare's Grammar.-Shakespeare lived at a time when the grammar and vocabulary of the English language were in a state of transition. Various points were not yet settled; and so Shakespeare's grammar is not only somewhat different from our own, but is by no means uniform in itself. In the Elizabethan age 'almost any part of speech can be used as any other part of speech. An adverb can be used as a verb, "They askance their eyes; " as a noun, "the backward and abysm of time;” or as an adjective, "a seldom pleasure." Any noun, adjective, or neuter [intrans.] verb can be used as an active [trans.] verb. You can "happy" your friend, "malice or "foot" your enemy, or "fall" an axe on his neck. An adjective can be used as an adverb; and you can speak and act 61 easy," ‚” “free,” “excellent;" or as a noun, and you can talk of "fair" instead of "beauty," and "a pale" instead of " a paleness." Even the pronouns are not exempt from these metamorphoses. A "he" is used for a man, and a lady is described by a gentleman as "the fairest she he has yet beheld." In the second place, every variety of apparent grammatical inaccuracy meets us. He for him, him for he; spoke and took for spoken and taken; plural nominatives with singular verbs; relatives omitted where they are now considered necessary; unnecessary antecedents inserted; shall for will, should for would, would for wish; to omitted after " I ought," inserted after "I durst; double negatives; double comparatives ("more better," &c.) and superlatives; such followed by which [or that], that by as, as used for as if; that for so that; and lastly some verbs apparently with two nominatives, and others without any nominative at all.'—Dr. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar.

3. Shakespeare's Versification. Shakespeare's Plays are written mainly in what is known as unrimed, or blank verse; but they contain a number of riming, and a considerable number of prose lines. As a general rule rime is much commoner in

1 This is the usual classification, but it is purely artificial,

the earlier than in the later plays. Thus, Love's Labour Lost contains nearly 1,100 rhyming lines, whilst (if we except the songs) the Winter's Tale has none. The Merchant of Venice has 124.

In speaking we lay a stress on particular syllables: this stress is called accent. When the words of a composition are so arranged that the accent recurs at regular intervals, the composition is said to be metrical or rhythmical. Rhythm, or Metre, is an embellishment of language which, though it does not constitute poetry itself, yet provides it with a suitably elegant dress; and hence most modern poets have written in metre. In blank verse the lines consist usually of ten syllables, of which the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth are accented. The line consists therefore of five like parts, each of which contains an unaccented followed by an accented syllable, as in the word attend. Each of these five parts forms what is called a foot or measure; and the five together form a pentameter. 'Pentameter' is a Greek word signifying ‘five measures.'

This is the

usual form of a line of blank verse. But a long poem composed entirely of such lines would be monotonous, and for the sake of variety several important modifications have been introduced.

(a) After the tenth syllable one or two unaccented syllables are sometimes added; as

'Me-thought you said | you neither lend nor borrow?

(b) In any foot the accent may be shifted from the second to the first syllable, provided it be not done in two adjoining feet : Pluck' the young suck' | ing cubs' | from' the | she bear': \'

(c) In such words as 'yesterday,' 'voluntary,' 'honesty,' the syllables -day, -ta-, and -ty falling in the place of the accent, are, for the purposes of the verse, regarded as truly accented:

'Bars' me the right' | of vol'- | un- ta'- | ry choos' | ing? (d) Sometimes we have a succession of accented syllables: 'Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark? (e) Sometimes, but more rarely, two or even three unaccented syllables occupy the place of one; as

'He says he does, | be-ing then | most flat | ter-ed?

(f) Lines may have any number of feet from one to six.

Finally, Shakespeare adds much to the pleasing variety of his blank verse by placing the pauses in different parts of the line (especially after the second or third foot), instead of placing them all at the ends of lines as was the earlier custom.

N.B. In some cases the rhythm requires that what we usually pronounce as one syllable shall be divided into two, as fi-er (fire), su-er (sure), mi-el (mile), &c. ; too-elve (twelve), jaw-ee (joy), &c. Similarly, she-on (-tion or -sion).

It is very important to give the pupil plenty of ear-training by means of formal scansion. This will greatly assist him in his reading.

4. The Merchant of Venice is believed to have been written about the year 1596. It was entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company in 1598, and two editions of it, in quarto, were published in 1600.

The story of the lawsuit between Antonio and Shylock, and that of the three caskets, had been written in Italian long before Shakespeare's time. To these Shakespeare added the episode of the elopement of Jessica, and combined the whole so skilfully that we nowhere lose the thread, but the separate stories blend together into one organic whole,

5. The Scene of the Play alternates between Venice and Belmont. Venice,-for many years the capital of a celebrated republic, the first maritime and commercial power of the world, and one of the finest cities in Europe,—is built on eighty islands in the Adriatic, about thirty miles north of the mouths of the Po. The city is intersected by 147 canals, which form the highways of communication, as streets do in other towns, and are spanned by 450 bridges. The most famous of these is the superb bridge of the Rialto, which is built of white marble, and crosses the Grand Canal by one arch of ninety-one feet span. There are two rows of shops and three footways running along the bridge.1 Venice attained the height of its prosperity in the fifteenth century; it began to decline at the beginning of the -sixteenth, mainly owing to the discovery of America, and of

1

A picture of the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal will be found at P. 37. The gondolas in the picture are such as were formerly used. They are not now hung with rich curtains, as in the picture, but are draped and Fainted plain black.

the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The government of Venice was republican from 997 to 1797, when it was overthrown by Napoleon. The chief magistrate of the city had the title of Doge or Duke. Venice now belongs to the kingdom

of Italy.

Belmont seems to be located on the shore about twenty miles from Venice, possibly to the N.E., but more probably to the south. We have, however, no sufficient data for its identification.

6. Historic Relations of Jews and Christians.—It is impossible to understand this play without some idea of the relation in which Jews and Christians had stood to each other for many centuries prior to the time of Shakespeare.

The persecution of Jews by Christians began early in the fifth century, when Jews were excluded from civil and military service to the Roman state. Afterwards, groundless stories were invented against them, as, for example, that they stole Christian children in order to kill them for Passover. Then they were subjected to fearful persecutions: they were plundered, slaughtered, and burnt. They were forbidden to own land; their marriages were illegal without the blessing of a Christian priest; they could not indict a Christian for a crime committed against them; they were denied the right of emigration, and made the thralls of the landowners. They were bought and sold like objects of merchandise; they were forced to wear peculiar dress, and were, in some countries, branded on the chin. After being robbed of their lands they were excluded from all trades and all manual occupation, and so forced to become money-lenders. In England, during the Middle Ages, Jews had no rights: 'they were the mere chattels of the king; all they had was his.' The Jews were banished from England in 1290, and Holinshed relates how the captain who took away the richest of them drowned them all in the Thames; and he implies that this act was approved by many Englishmen, even in Elizabeth's time! "The Crusades were the signal for relentless carnage, pillage, and violation. We read of eight hundred Jews in one place, thirteen hundred in another, at the same time ruthlessly massacred; and of Jewish parents everywhere slaying their children and themselves to

escape the tortures of the fanatics.' Jews literally had no resting-place for the sole of their feet; if exiled from France, it was only to be slaughtered in England or Germany, in Spain or Italy.' And, as Dean Milman says, 'the breath of the clergy was never wanting to fan the embers of persecution.' And so it was that Antonio, 'the good Antonio-the honest Antonio,' 'the kindest man, the best conditioned and unwearied spirit in doing courtesies,' thought it not inconsistent with his character to call the Jew 'misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and to spit upon his Jewish gaberdine, and foot him, as you spurn a stranger cur over your threshold.' Even at the end, when rendering mercy to the Jew, he attaches to it the spiteful, hateful condition that he shall presently become a Christian.' Jewish enfranchisement began with the French revolution, when Jews were accorded full rights of citizenship in French territory, 1790. In 1858 they were first admitted to the British Parliament.

6

SECTION II.

STORY OF THE PLAY.

SHYLOCK, the Jew, lived at Venice: he had amassed an immense fortune by lending money at great interest to Christian merchants. Shylock, being a hard-hearted man, exacted the payment of the money he lent with such severity that he was much disliked, particularly by Antonio, a young merchant of Venice; and Shylock as much hated Antonio, because he used to lend money gratis. Whenever Antonio met Shylock on the Rialto (or Exchange), he used to reproach him with his usuries and hard dealings; which the Jew would bear with seeming patience, while he secretly meditated revenge.

Antonio was greatly beloved by his fellow-citizens; for, except to the Jew, he was the kindest man that lived, and had the most unwearied spirit in doing courtesies. But the friend who was nearest and dearest to his heart was his kinsman Bassanio, a noble Venetian, who, having but a small patrimony, had exhausted it by living in too expensive a manner. Whenever Bassanio wanted money Antonio assisted him; and it seemed as if they had but one heart and one purse between them.

One day Bassanio came to Antonio, and told him that he