It need not be said that Shylock dabbles in those bills which Venetian swells of the fifteenth century, in common with those of a later age and more western land, will manipulate, in spite of all the political economy from Confucius down to Mr. Mill; and in this particular instance and prologue the names of the improvidents are Leone and Ubaldo, neither of which, if my memory serve me, is Shakspearian. These gentlemen considerably shake my traditional respect for sixteenth-century Venetian _Aristos_, for they insult that Jew till I wonder where a count and a duke have learnt such language: but they serve a purpose; they trot Shylock out, so to speak, and give our author an opportunity of doing his best with A 1. Shylock's great speech. Here is the apostrophe:--
"But yesterday--no later past than yesterday--thou didst bid thy mistress call at me from her balcony; thy servants by thy will did cast mud on me, and thy hounds sped snapping after me,'"--whereby we may infer they went hunting in Venice, in the fifteenth century. It must have been rather dangerous running. Nor could the Venetian nobles of that good old time have been very proper; for Leone and Ubaldo justify themselves by saying they were drunk.
It is after this pretty excuse that Shylock has a soliloquy as long as his beard,--and I hear really loud opposition to this didacticism in the pit; but, however, this slow work soon meets compensation in violent action. Shylock won't renew, and the nobles get indignant; so they propose to pay Shylock with more kicks than halfpence. Here the action begins; for Shylock protests he will bite a bit out of them; and though one of these long-sleeved swells warns him that all threats by Jews against Christians are an imprisonment manner, Shylock rashly prepares for a defence. Away fly the lords after Shylock, over go the chairs, down goes the table, and I suppose Shylock _does_ hit "one of them"; for the two lords go off quite triumphantly, with the intimation that he will be in prison in one hour from that.
Then the Jew calls for--Sarah; and this same comes in on tiptoe, for fear of waking the baby. This Shylock _fils_ Sarah proceeds to describe as equally beautiful with Abel and Moses, which seems to give Shylock _père_ great comfort,--though I am bound to admit the lowly whispered doubt on the part of a pit-neighbor of mine as to Sarah's capability of judging in the matter.