villainy, you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction. Enter a Servant. SERV. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house, and desires to speak with you both. SALAR. We have been up and down to seek him. Enter TUBAL. SALAN. Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. [Exeunt SALAN. SALAR. and Servant. SHY. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa ? hast thou found my daughter? TUB. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her. SHY. Why there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now :-two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels.-I would, my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! 'would she were hears'd at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them?-Why, so:-and I know not what's* spent in the search: Why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no ill luck stirring, but what lights o' my shoulders: no sighs, but o' my breathing; no tears, but o' my shedding. TUB. Yes, other men have ill luck too; Antonio, as I heard in Genoa, SHY. What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? TUB. hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis. *First folio, how much is. SHY. I thank God, I thank God: Is it true? is it true? TUB. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck. SHY. I thank thee, good Tubal ;-Good news, good news: ha! ha!-Where? in Genoa ? TUB. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, one night, fourscore ducats. SHY. Thou stick'st a dagger in me:-I shall never see my gold again: Fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats! TUB. There came divers of Antonio's creditors in my company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break. SHY. I am very glad of it: I'll plague him; I'll torture him; I am glad of it. TUB. One of them showed me a ring, that he had of your daughter for a monkey. SHY. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkies. * Old copies, heere. 3 it was my TURQUOISE; I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor:] A turquoise is a precious stone found in the veins of the mountains on the confines of Persia to the east, subject to the Tartars. As Shylock had been married long enough to have a daughter grown up, it is plain he did not value this turquoise on account of the money for which he might hope to sell it, but merely in respect of the imaginary virtues formerly ascribed to the stone. It was said of the Turkey-stone, that it faded or brightened in its colour, as the health of the wearer increased or grew less. To this Ben Jonson refers, in his Sejanus: "And true as Turkise in my dear lord's ring, Again, in The Muses Elysium, by Drayton : "Is often kept from peril." Again, Edward Fenton, in Secrete Wonders of Nature, bl. 1. 4to. 1569: "The Turkeys doth move when there is any perill prepared to him that weareth it." P. 51, b. TUB. But Antonio is certainly undone. SHY. Nay, that's true, that's very true: Go, Tubal, see me an officer, bespeak him a fortnight before: I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandize I will: Go, go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal. [Exeunt. SCENE II. Belmont. A Room in PORTIA'S House. Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, Nerissa, But lest you should not understand me well, But Leah (if we may believe Thomas Nicols, sometimes of Jesus College in Cambridge, in his Lapidary, &c.) might have presented Shylock with his turquoise for a better reason; as this stone "is likewise said to take away all enmity, and to reconcile man and wife." Other superstitious qualities are imputed to it, all of which were either monitory or preservative to the wearer. The same quality was supposed to be resident in coral. So, in The Three Ladies of London, 1584: "You may say jet will take up a straw, amber will make one fat, "Coral will look pale when you be sick, and chrystal will stanch blood." Thus, Holinshed, speaking of the death of King John: "And when the King suspected them (the pears) to be poisoned indeed, by reason that such precious stones as he had about him cast forth a certain sweat as it were bewraeing the poison," &c. STEEVENS. I could teach you, Before you venture for me. But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, I speak too long; but 'tis to peize the time"; 4 Beshrew your eyes, They have o'er-look'd me.] An anonymous correspondent in a newspaper suggests that o'erlooked may be a term in witchcraft, in which sense it is used by Glanvilli Sadducismus Triumphatus, p. 95. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V. Sc. V: "Vile worm, thou wast o'er-look'd even from thy birth." MALONE. 5 And so all YOURS:] The latter word is here used as a dissyllable. In the next line but one below, where the same word occurs twice, our author, with his usual licence, employs one as a word of two syllables, and the other as a monosyllable. MALONE. 6 And so, though yours, not yours.-Prove it so,] It may be more gramatically read: And so though yours I'm not yours. JOHNSON. 7 Let fortune go to hell for it,-not I.] The meaning is, "If the worst I fear should happen, and it should prove in the event, that I, who am justly yours by the free donation I have made you of myself, should yet not be yours in consequence of an unlucky choice, let fortune go to hell for robbing you of your just due, not I for violating my oath." HEATH. 8 to PEIZE the time;] Thus the old copies. To peize is from peser, Fr. So, in King Richard III.: "Lest leaden slumber peize me down to-morrow." To peize the time, therefore, is to retard it by hanging weights upon it. The modern editors read, without authority, -piece. STEEVENS. To peize, is to weigh, or balance; and figuratively, to keep in suspense, to delay. So, in Sir P. Sydney's Apology for Poetry :-"not speaking To eke it, and to draw it out in length, BASS. Let me choose; For, as I am, I live upon the rack. POR. Upon the rack, Bassanio? then confes What treason there is mingled with your love.s BASS. None, but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: There may as well be amity and life 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. POR. Ay, but, I fear, you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak any thing. BASS. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. POR. Well then, confess, and live. BASS. Confess, and love, Had been the very sum of my confession : O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance! But let me to my fortune and the caskets. POR. Away then: I am lock'd in one of them; If you do love me, you will find me out.Nerissa, and the rest, stand all aloof. Let musick sound, while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in musick that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream, And wat❜ry death-bed for him: He may win; words as they changeably fall from the mouth, but peyzing each sillable." HENLEY. |