a period after intermission. White and Staunton, in their editions, agree with this rendering. But the explanations that have been offered are so far from settling the matter that the most recent thoroughly edited and scholarly edition, Neilson's Cambridge, goes back to the rendering of Theobald. As for the original sources of the play, nothing can be positively determined by reference to them, because, with the usual loose punctuation of the early printers, there is a comma after intermission - neither a full stop to end the sense there nor yet a punctuation which would allow the sense to go uninterruptedly on. Shakespeare's meaning therefore we shall have to decide for ourselves.

My object will be to show that Shakespeare intended to have a full stop, a period or semicolon, after the word "intermission." If I am to settle the meaning so positively that there can be no more doubt in the matter, it is evident that I must go about it in a way somewhat different from the method of mere verbal conjecture. We shall not, therefore, start in by any quibbling over the word "intermission," what it might or might not mean. I shall simply place a period after it and then turn our attention to the sentence that follows "No more pertains to me, my lord, than you." If we find that this has a meaning which exactly fits the situation, and which is, upon further view, essential to the scene as a whole, we shall know positively that it is a sentence in itself

and that therefore a period must cut it off from what goes before. It will then be time to consider the sentence that goes before and which ends with "intermission." Here again we shall adopt the method of showing the meaning not merely in character and immediate circumstance, but by the requirements of the scene itself the very dramatic exigencies as viewed by Shakespeare himself in practical playwrighting. In short, we must go about these matters in a larger way; and if the meaning exactly fits all the requirements, there can be no doubt left.

First, then, let us ask - What does Gratiano mean by saying, "No more pertains to me, my lord, than you"?

This second scene of the third act shows us the happy outcome of the striving of several lovers for the hand of Portia. We have been held in great suspense as the suitors from various countries came and took their chances with the three closed coffers that decided their fate, and finally our solicitude is all for Bassanio whom we see that Portia loves. Bassanio chooses the casket of lead and is successful. Here Shakespeare brings the subordinate characters forward; it is a grand ensemble of happy people. Two happy households stand united through their master and mistress; the general atmosphere is that of graceful compliment.

At this happy climax in the fortunes of the principal characters, we now suddenly find, to fill the measure of marriage to overflowing,

that a love episode has been going on between the subordinate characters. Gratiano, a member of Bassanio's train, has wooed Portia's maid, Nerissa. But Nerissa has been very tantalizing in her reply. She is so utterly devoted to her mistress that she has refused to say "yes" to any proposal that might take her away from Portia's household; therefore she made her answer depend upon whether Bassanio chose the right casket. In short, if Bassanio wins Portia the two households will be united, in which case Nerissa will accept Gratiano.

When Bassanio wins, therefore, it is of great moment to Gratiano; and he immediately steps forward to ask his master's permission to be married at the same time. He receives most cordial assent:

Bassanio. With all my heart, so thou canʼst get a wife.

Bassanio has not known about this wooing; he does not now know who the lady is. Gratiano does not now tell him at once in a mere abrupt statement; he proceeds to break the news gradually, drawing to the point in the most beautiful general aspect of the situation. Bassanio has won him a wife at the same time he won Portia for himself; therefore Gratiano replies:

I thank your lordship, you have got me one.
My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours:
You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid;
You loved, I loved for intermission.

No more pertains to me, my lord, than you.

What Gratiano means by this last line must be evident enough. It is simply his way of saying, by way of graceful compliment, that he has not gone outside of Bassanio's household for a wife. When Bassanio won Portia, her household was annexed to his own, and this included the maid Nerissa; thus the one who pertains in so momentous a relation to Gratiano also pertains to Bassanio. Gratiano is allowing Bassanio to guess the truth while he approaches it with these general statements; and in his large point of view "No more pertains to me, my lord, than you," there is the fine implication that it has always been thus between them. Even in his marriage he has not gone outside of his master's circle of interests; they are now bound by a further tie. This way of looking at things gives the audience an added insight of how happily everything has turned out. And could anything surpass this in the way of happy and graceful compliment?

Gratiano has followed Bassanio faithfully and made Bassanio's interests paramount to his own. The remark, therefore, besides describing the immediate circumstances exactly, is in strict keeping with the speaker's character. It is this loyalty to another that Gratiano stands for in the play. The meaning being plain, it makes this line a statement by itself; and this being the case we see that the preceding line is a statement by itself with a full stop after "intermission."

We may now inquire into the meaning of this preceding line

"You loved, I loved for intermission."

Here Gratiano gracefully acknowledges that his own love affair is quite secondary, in importance, to that of his master. It is figuratively referred to as a mere time-filling or stopgap performance. Theobald, who could see no sense in this line as an independent statement, rather disdainfully challenged any one to explain how a person might be said to love "for intermission." Evidently Theobald was not aware that all through Shakespeare's plays there are lovers who love for intermission and clowns who clown for intermission. In recent times critics have become aware that all through Shakespeare's work there is a regular succession of light and serious moods in alternation, the former to give the mind an intermission from the latter. These clowns and lovers are secondary or subordinate to the main action; and in the present case Shakespeare seems to be using a word out of his own workshop. Gratiano, in suddenly obtruding his own affairs in the midst of his master's happy love scene, wishes to say that his little adventure in matrimony is a mere side-issue, quite subordinate, to the main event; he therefore speaks of his own wooing as if it were a thing which would be noted only during the intervals of the other by way of intermission.