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Or Shylock's? Or Benedick's? Or Macbeth's? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take a single example, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses?
"It won't cost me much trouble to get it up," said Mr. Geoffrey Langford; "Shylock's growls stick in one's memory better than finer speeches." "Then will you really be so very kind?"
Shylock's astonishment at getting four times what he would have taken was equalled only by his regret that he had not asked twice as much. "Can you pack it so that I can take it to New York safely?" "Sicuro, signor," and Shylock agreed to have the precious object boxed with all possible care and despatch, and delivered at the hotel that afternoon.
Shylock's mantle rested on his hated shoulders, and Judas Iscariot was spoken of with less abhorrence than William W. Blithers by the Christian country of Graustark. He was coming to get better acquainted with his daughter's future subjects. Earlier in the week certain polite and competent gentlemen from Berlin had appeared at the Castle gates, carrying authority from the dauntless millionaire.
They would, perhaps, have favoured the public with a repetition of Shylock's trial the next evening, but that, to the great consternation, and, perhaps, indignation of Beatrice, when she came down to breakfast in the morning, she found their tiring-room, the study, completely cleared of all their various goods and chattels, Portia's wig in its box, the three caskets gone back to the dressing-room, the duke's throne safe in its place in the hall, and even Shylock's yellow cap picked to pieces, and rolled up in the general hoard of things which were to come of use in seven years' time.
Everybody in the East Side, every denizen of the underworld, and many who posed on a far higher plane knew old Isaac fence to the most select clientele of thieves in New York, unscrupulous, hand in glove with any rascality or crime that promised profit, a money lender, a Shylock without even a Shylock's humanity as a saving grace!
And Shakespeare, in giving this aspect to the last exhibition of Shylock's vindictiveness, cancels the original appeal to possible sympathy for his previous wrongs, and presents him as a dangerous maniac or wild beast, from whose fury no one is safe, and whom it is every one's interest to strike down; so that at the miserable Jew's final defeat the whole audience gasps with a sense of unspeakable relief.
Macklin, Kean, Cooke, and the elder Booth, each must have been terrific at that point. Henry Irving's method was that of the intense passion that can hardly speak the passion that Kean is said to have used so grandly in giving the curse of Junius Brutus upon Tarquin. But, there was just as much of Shylock's nature in Henry Irving's performance as in any performance that is recorded.
You may spit upon Shylock's gaberdine, but the day comes when he demands his pound of flesh; every blow, every insult, not without a certain satisfaction, he adds to the account running up against you in the day-book and ledger of his hate which at the proper time he will ask you to discharge. Every way we look we see even-handed nature administering her laws of compensation.
The red wig gives a hint of low comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of Shakespeare's piece, turned Shylock into farce.
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