THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

Venice. A street.

Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO.

Ant. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad :
It wearies me; you say it wearies you ;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 't is made of, whereof it is born,

1-7. With this speech of Antonio compare that with which Portia opens the next scene. These two speeches“ strike the key-note” of the play, which, although it is called a comedy and comes to a pleasing issue, is in the main sad, and verges closely upon the tragic. The cause of Portia's weariness she soon reveals. Why Antonio is sad is not so clear. You can see what weighs on his mind by noting what he first speaks of when he is alone with Bassanio. See also Act II., Sc. viii. Perhaps the poet merely wishes to represent Antonio as having a mysterious presentiment of coming woe.

2-4. The pronoun it, occurring so often in these lines, may refer to the idea of sadness set forth in the first line of the speech. Antonio says he cannot understand his own melancholy, that he is annoyed by it, and is chagrined to see that his friends notice it ; but that, after all, he is powerless to resume bis usual mood of cheerful friendliness. Notice how little Antonio says until he can talk privately with Bassanio.

3, 4. Note the exuberance of phrase employed to express one and the same idea. This is a peculiar Shakespearian trait. Be on the watch for other instances of it.

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I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

Salar. Your mind is tossing on the ocean;
There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curtsy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.

Salan. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;
And every object that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt
Would make me sad.

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5. I am to learn. A standard expression in the poet's time, with a meaning very different from what the words would have to-day. What this meaning is you may infer from a comparison of this passage with Henry VI., Part III., iv. 4, 2. — Lines of only two or three accents will often be met with. Make a collection of these and see if you can deduce any principle that shall seem to have governed the poet in their use.

8. Be careful to give the verse its five accents. Compare King John, II., 1, 24, and 340.

11. The word pageant has an interesting history, which can be looked up in the dictionaries. For its meaning in Shakespeare see its use in other plays, as in Temp., IV., 1, 155, As you Like it, II., 7, 138, Mid. N. Dream, III., 2, 14, and elsewhere.

14. The line has a grave rhetorical defect. Decide to what antecedents the pronouns they and them refer.

17. The French word toujours, which usually has the meaning that still has here, sometimes expresses just the idea to which we limit the word still at present. The two meanings are akin.

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35

Salar.

My wind cooling my broth Would blow me to an ague, when I thought What harm a wind too great at sea might do. I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, But I should think of shallows and of flats, And see my wealthy Andrew docked in sand, Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs To kiss her burial. Should I go to church And see the holy edifice of stone, And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, Which touching but my gentle vessel's side, Would scatter all her spices on the stream, Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks, And, in a word, but even now worth this, And now worth nothing ? Shall I have the thought To think on this, and shall I lack the thought That such a thing bechanced would make me sad ? But tell not me; I know, Antonio Is sad to think

upon

his merchandise. Ant. Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it, 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 merchandise makes me not sad.

Salar. Why, then you are in love.
Ant.

Fie, fie ! Salar. Not in love neither? Then let us say you

are sad, 27. Andrew, a merchant ship; possibly so called in memory of Andrea Doria, the great Genoese admiral. (White.)

35. The word this, being a pronoun apparently without ante.cedent, is of course unmeaning, unless we suppose the actor here to make a gesture which shall somehow indicate great wealth.

44. Yet see his letter to Bassanio, Act III., Sc. 2. 47. Note in this line and in 178, this scene, a dissyllabic word

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Because you are not merry: and 't were as easy
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they 'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO.
Salan. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble

kinsman, Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well : We leave you now with better company. Salar. I would have stayed till I had made you

merry,
If worthier friends had not prevented me.

Ant. Your worth is very dear in my regard.
I take it, your own business calls on you
And you embrace the occasion to depart.

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that has to be scanned as one syllable. Yet this word sometimes has the value of two syllables, as in scene 3, line 59.

50. Find the one other character, also a Venetian, whom the poet represents as using the oath By Janus.

54. Discuss the peculiarity of vinegar as an epithet of aspect. – The word aspect is in Shakespeare (and Milton) always accented as in this verse. See II., 1, 8.

56. Nestor figures largely in one other of the poet's plays. What Nestor stood for to him must be learned from that play. Do this rather than consult the classical dictionary.

61. The present meaning of the word prevent is derived from the original one, which appears here, as it frequently does in our older literature. See, e. g., Cæsar, V., 1, 105. See the adjective prevenient, Par. Lost, xi., 3.

62–64. Notice the urbanity with which Antonio dismisses Salanio and Salarino.

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Salar. Good morrow, my good lords.
Bass. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh ?

say, when ? You grow exceeding strange : must it be so? Salar. We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

[Exeunt Salarino and Salanio. Lor. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found

Antonio,
We two will leave you : but at dinner-time,

70 I pray you,

have in mind where we must meet. Bass. I will not fail you.

Gra. You look not well, Signior Antonio; You have too much respect upon the world : They lose it that do buy it with much care: Believe me, you are marvellously changed.

Ant. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
Gra.

Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ?
Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks —

66–71. Bassanio cordially and merrily greets the two departing friends, but does not ask them to stay. Evidently all four of these gentlemen, who are thus being got rid of, are represented as being the social inferiors of Antonio and Bassanio.

70, 71. What is the appointment made here? Be on the watch for further mention of it.

82. Be careful about the meaning of mortifying.

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