JESSICA.
[THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.]
WHEN I saw this piece played in Drury Lane
there stood behind me in the box a pale British
beauty who, at the end of the fourth act, wept
passionately, and many times cried out, "The
poor man is wronged ! " It was a countenance of
noblest Grecian cut, and the eyes were large and
black. I have never been able to forget them,
those great black eyes which wept for Shylock !
When I think of those tears I must include the
Merchant of Venice among the tragedies, although
the frame of the work is a composition of laughing
masks and sunny faces, satyr forms and amorets,
as though the poet meant to make a comedy.
Shakespeare perhaps intended originally to please
the mob, to represent a thorough going wehr-wolf,
a hated fabulous being who yearns for blood, and
pays for it with daughter and with ducats, and is
over and above laughed to scorn. But the genius
of the poet, the spirit of the wide world which
ruled in him, was ever stronger than his own will,
and so it came to pass that he in Shylock, despite
the glaring grotesqueness, expressed the justifica-
tion of an unfortunate sect which was oppressed
by providence, from inscrutable motives, with the
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