Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer ; Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.But let me hear the letter of your friend.

BASS. [Reads.] Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death: notwithstanding, use your pleasure: if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.

POR. O love, despatch all business, and be gone. BASS. Since I have your good leave to go away, I will make haste: but, till I come again, No bed shall e'er be guilty of my stay,

Nor* rest be interposer 'twixt us twain.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt.

Venice. A Street.

Enter SHYLOCK, SALANIO, ANTONIO, and Gaoler. SHY. Gaoler, look to him;-Tell not me of mercy;

This is the fool that lent* out money gratis ;-
Gaoler, look to him.

ANT.

Hear me yet, good Shylock. SHY. I'll have my bond; speak not against my

bond;

*So folio and quarto, H.; quarto, R. no.

+ So quartos; folio, lends.

S - cheer;] i. e. countenance.

So, in A Midsummer

Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. I. :

“That liv'd, that lov'd, that lik'd, that look'd, with cheer." See note on that passage. STEEVENS.

6 — and I,] This inaccuracy, I believe, was our author's. Mr. Pope reads-and me. MALONE.

I have sworn an oath, that I will have my bond: Thou call'dst me dog, before thou had'st a

cause:

But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs :
The duke shall grant me justice.-I do wonder,
Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond'
To come abroad with him at his request.

ANT. I pray thee, hear me speak.

SHY. I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak :

I'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.
I'll not be made a soft and dull-ey'd fool,
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors. Follow not;
I'll have no speaking; I will have my bond.
[Exit SHYLOCK.
SALAN. It is the most impenetrable cur,
That ever kept with men.

ANT.
Let him alone;
I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers.
He seeks my life; his reason well I know;
I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures

Many that have at times made moan to me;
Therefore he hates me.

SALAN. I am sure, the duke Will never grant this forfeiture to hold. ANT. The duke cannot deny the course of law;

7 SO FOND] i. e. so foolish. Mother Bombie, 1594, by Lyly: "fair cheeks, may be enamoured before

So, in the old comedy of that the youth seeing her they hear her fond speech." STEEVENS.

DULL-EY'D fool,] This epithet dull-ey'd is bestowed on melancholy, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. STEEVENS.

8

9 The duke cannot deny, &c.] As the reason here given seems a little perplex'd, it may be proper to explain it.. to explain it. If, says he, the duke stop the course of law, it will be attended with this inconvenience, that stranger merchants, by whom the wealth and power of this city is supported, will cry out of injustice. For the known stated law being their guide and security, they will never

*

For the commodity that strangers have
With us in Venice, if it be denied1,
Will much impeach the justice of the state;
Since that the trade and profit of the city
Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go:
These griefs and losses have so 'bated me,
That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh
To-morrow to my bloody creditor.
Well, gaoler, on :-Pray God, Bassanio come
To see me pay his debt, and then I care not!

SCENE IV.

Belmont. A Room in PORTIA'S House.

Enter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA, and BALTHAZAR.

LOR. Madam, although I speak it in your pre

sence,

[Exeunt.

You have a noble and a true conceit

Of god-like amity; which appears most strongly
In bearing thus the absence of your lord.

But, if you knew to whom you show this honour,
How true a gentleman you send relief,

How dear a lover of my lord your husband,

* Quarto R, his.

bear to have the current of it stopped on any pretence of equity whatsoever. WARBURTON.

For the COMMODITY that strangers have

With us in Venice, if it be denied, &c.] i. e. for the denial of those rights to strangers, which render their abode at Venice so commodious and agreeable to them, would much impeach the justice of the state. The consequence would be, that strangers would not reside or carry on traffick here; and the wealth and strength of the state would be diminished. In The Historye of Italye, by W. Thomas, quarto, 1567, there is a section On the libertee of straungers at Venice. MALONE.

VOL. V.

H

I know, you would be prouder of the work,
Than customary bounty can enforce you.

POR. I never did repent for doing good,
Nor shall not now: for in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love 2,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners3, and of spirit ;

'Whose souls do bear an EQUAL yoke, &c.] The folio, 1623, reads-egal, which, I believe, in Shakspeare's time was commonly used for equal. So it was in Chaucer's:

"I will presume hym so to dignifie "Yet be not egall." Again, in Gorboduc:

Prol. to the Remedy of Love.

"Sith all as one do bear you egall faith." STEEVENS. 3 Of lineaments, of manners, &c.] The wrong pointing has made this fine sentiment nonsense. As implying that friendship could not only make a similitude of manners, but of faces. The true sense is,-lineaments of manners, i. e. form of the manners, which, says the speaker, must needs be proportionate.

WARBURTON.

The poet only means to say,-that corresponding proportions of body and mind are necessary for those who spend their time together. So, in King Henry IV. P. II. :

66

'Dol. Why doth the prince love him so then?

"Fal. Because their legs are both of a bigness," &c.

Every one will allow that the friend of a toper should have a strong head, and the intimate of a sportsman such an athletic constitution as will enable him to acquit himself with reputation in the exercises of the field. The word lineaments was used with great laxity by our ancient writers. In The learned and true Assertion of the Original, Life, &c. of King Arthur, translated from the Latin of John Leland, 1582, it is used for the human frame in general. Speaking of the removal of that prince's bones, -he calls them "Arthur's lineaments three times translated; and again, “all the lineaments of them remaining in that most stately tomb, saving the shin bones of the king and queen," &c.

Again, in Greene's Farewell to Follie, 1617: "Nature hath so curiously performed his charge in the lineaments of his body," &c.

Again, in Chapman's version of the fifth Iliad:

11

took the weariness of fight

"From all his nerves and lineaments,

Which makes me think, that this Antonio,
Being the bosom lover of my lord',
Must needs be like my lord: If it be so,
How little is the cost I have bestow'd.
In purchasing the semblance of my soul
From out the state of hellish cruelty *?
This comes too near the praising of myself;
Therefore, no more of it: hear other things
Lorenzo, I commit into your hands
The husbandry and manage of my house,
Until my lord's return: for mine own part,
I have toward heaven breath'd a secret vow,
To live in prayer and contemplation,
Only attended by Nerissa here,

* Quarto R. misery.

Again, in the thirteenth Iliad :

66

5

the course

"Of his illustrious lineaments so out of nature bound,
"That back nor forward he could stir,-"

Again, in the twenty-third Iliad :

66

so overlabour'd were

"His goodly lineaments with chase of Hector," &c. Again, in the twenty-fourth Iliad :

66

"I tell thee, fellow,

"Thy general is my lover."

Those throes that my deliverers were

"Of his unhappy lineaments ;-" STEEVENS.

- the bosom LOVER of my lord,] In our author's time this term was applied to those of the same sex who had an esteem for each other. Ben Jonson concludes one of his letters to Dr. Donne, by telling him: "he is his true lover." So, in Corio

lanus:

Many more instances might be added. See our author's Sonnets, passim. MALONE.

5 — HEAR Other things.] In former editions:

This comes too near the praising of myself;
Therefore no more of it; HERE other things,
Lorenzo, I commit, &c.

Portia finding the reflections she had made came too near selfpraise, begins to chide herself for it; says, She'll say no more of that sort; but call a new subject. The regulation I have made in the text was likewise prescribed by Dr. Thirlby. THEOBALD.