His heart doth thinke on many a wile, how to deceiue the poore: His mouth is almost ful of mucke, yet still he gapes for more. His Wife must lend a Shilling, for euery weeke a Penny; Yet bring a pledge that's double worth, if that you will haue any. And see (likewise) you keepe your day, or else you loose it all: This was the liuing of the Wife; Within that Citie dwelt that time, Desiring him to stand his friend, Whatsoeuer he would demand of him, No (quoth the Iew with flearing lookes) Sir aske what you will haue. No penny for the lone of it, for one yeare you shall pay : You may doe me as good a turne, before my dying day: But we will haue a merry iest, for to be talked long: You shall make me a Band (quoth he) that shall be large and strong. And this shall be the forfeyture, With right good-will the Marchant sayd, When twelue month and a day drew on, The Marchants Ships were all at Seas, Which way to take, or what to doe, And to Gernutus straight he comes, My day is come, and I haue not With all my heart, Gernutus sayd, He goes his way, the day once past, To get a Sergiant presently, and clapt him on the backe: And layed him into Prison strong, and sued his Band withall. And when the iudgement day was come, for iudgement he did call. The Marchants friendes came thither fast, with many a weeping eye: For other meanes they could not find, 3 In the Pepysian copy curtesie' has a full stop after it. The Second part of the lewes crueltie, setting foorth the mercifulnesse of the Iudge towardes the Marchant. To the tune of Blacke and yellow. Some offered for his hundred Crownes, five hundred for to pay: And some a thousand, two, or three; yet still he did denay. And at the last, Ten thousand Crownes A pound of fleshe is my desire,* Then sayd the Judge, yet good my friend, To take the flesh from such a place, as yet you let him liue: Do so, and loe an hundred Crownes, No, no (quoth he) no iudgement here, For I will have my pound of flesh It grieued all the companie, his crueltie to see: For neither friend nor foe could helpe, but he must spoyled bee. The bloudy Iew now ready is, with whetted blade in hand, To spoyle the bloud of Innocent, by forfeit of his Band. And as he was about to strike in him the deadly blow: Stay (quoth the Judge) thy crueltie, So in the Pepysian copy. Percy reads 'demand.' Sith needes thou wilt thy forfeit haue, which is of flesh a pound: See that thou shed no drop of blood, For if thou doe, like murderer, For if thou take either more or lesse, Gernutus now waxt franticke mad, And so I graunt to set him free. At the last he doth demaund, but for to haue his owne. No quoth the Judge, doe as you list, thy Judgement shalbe showne. Either take your pound of flesh, quoth he, or cancell me your Band: O cruell Judge, then quoth the Iew, that doth against me stand. And so with griping grieued minde, he biddeth them farewell: All the people praysed the Lord, that euer this heard tell. Good people that doe heare this song, for trueth I dare well say, That many a wretch as ill as he, doth liue now at this day. That seeketh nothing but the spoyle From whom, the Lord deliver me, and every Christian too: And send to them like sentence eke, that meaneth so to doe. Finis. Imprinted at London for T. P. We will conclude with a reference to a different version of the same story, told by Gregorio Leti in his Life of Pope Sixtus V. and resting on very slight authority. In this, a Jew, Samson Ceneda, is the victim, and Paul Secchi, a Roman merchant, the inexorable creditor. The Pope is the judge, and the evasion of the bond is the same as in the play. Both merchant and Jew were condemned to death, the one for premeditated murder, the other for selling his life; but in the issue the sentence was commuted to that of the galleys, with the option of buying off that too by paying each two thousand crowns to the hospital lately founded by the Pope. In the composition of The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare, as we have said, in all probability worked upon the basis of the previously existing play, and, as in other cases, followed its plot with few alterations. Like other great masters of fiction, such as Goethe and Walter Scott, his genius showed itself more in the development of character than in the construction of a story, and besides, as we see in the case of children, the audience would prefer having no change made in the conduct of a tale with which they were already familiar. As to the time at which it was first produced, we have the testimony of Meres, who mentions it in his Palladis Tamia (fol. 282 a, 1598). In the same year it was entered at |