[What man is there so much unreasonable,
If you had pleas'd to have defended it
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
To urge the thing held as a ceremony?]
This is a very licentious expression. The sense is, _What man
could have so little modesty_ or _wanted modesty so much_, as to
urge the demand of a thing kept on an account in some sort
religious. (see 1785, 1,476,7)
V.i.249 (212,4) [I once did lend my body for his wealth]
For his advantage; to obtain his happiness. _Wealth_ was,
at that time, the term opposite to _adversity_, or _calamity_.
V.i.294 (213,5) [_Lor_. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way Of
starved people] [Shakespeare is not more exact in any thing, than
in adapting his images with propriety to his speakers; of which
he has here given an instance in making the young Jewess call
good fortune, _manna_. Warburton.] The commentator should have remarked,
that this speech is not, even in his own edition, the
speech of the Jewess.
V.i.307 (214,6) [_Exeunt omnes_] It has been lately discovered, that
this fable is taken from a story in the Pecorope of Ser Giovauni
Fiorentino, a novellist, who wrote in 1378. The story has been
published in English, and I have epitomised the translation.
The translator is of opinion, that the choice of the caskets is
borrowed from a tale of Boccace, which I have likewise abridged,
though I believe that Shakespeare must have had some other novel
in view.
(223) General Observation. Of The MERCHANT of VENICE the stile is
even and easy, with few peculiarities of diction, or anomalies
of construction. The comick part raises laughter, and the serious
fixes expectation. The probability of either one or the other
story cannot be maintained. The union of two actions in one
event is in this drama eminently happy. Dryden was much pleased
with his own address in connecting the two plots of his Spanish
Friar, which yet, I believe, the critick will find excelled by
this play.