plete by one speaker is frequently completed by another. The following, for example, is only one verse: “Would make | me sad. | My wind | cooling | my broth," | — I., i., 22. Variations in the Kind of Feet. - Variations also occur in the kind of feet; they are not all iambi. In the last quotation the fourth foot is a trochee (two syllables, of which the first is accented). Some commentators, however, choose to divide the last part of this verse thus: "My wind, | (pause) cool | ing my broth." Such a division substitutes, for the iambus in the last foot, an anapest (three syllables, of which the last is accented). In some cases the accent seems to waver between two successive syllables without settling strongly on either; occasionally, also, two successive syllables are both strongly accented. Finally, it must be remembered that the pronunciation of some words in Shakespeare's time differed from the usage of to-day. The question of pronunciation was not so well settled then as now, and some words were pronounced in more than one way. Thus, ocean is treated sometimes as of three syllables, the Latin being o-cé-a-nus. Occasionally a stanza is introduced containing a metre entirely different from the iambic pentameter. In the lyrics of The Merchant of Venice most of the lines are trochaic tetrameter (four trochees in a line) with the occasional substitution of an iambus, or of a dactyl (three syllables, of which the first is accented). "Often | have you | heard that toĺd: Many a man his | life hath | sold.” Sometimes an iambic line is substituted in one of the trochaic stanzas, as in II., vii., 72. In V., i., note also the amœbean verses, and the stichomythia; both of these terms are explained on p. 184, 11. 1-24 — note. SOURCES OF THE PLAY The Originality of Shakespeare. — Shakespeare was not an imitator nor a plagiarist, although he probably never devised the entire plot of any one of his dramas. But what need had he of original stories when in London libraries and bookstalls could be found translations of French and Italian romances, and when the history of his own country and of Scotland was full of the most thrilling tragedy? What time, moreover, had he in which to devise plots had he wished, since he was actor as well as playwright, and since, as Dr. Furness shows us from an exami nation of the diary of the stage-manager, Henslowe, the London public demanded "a new play, upon an average, every seventeen or eighteen days, including Sundays"? Shakespeare himself, as the same author computes, must have written on the average at least two plays a year. Above all it must be remembered that the story or old play that Shakespeare found ready made, was a mere outline, and that it had to be altered to suit nis taste, that it had sometimes to be combined with other stories, and that its shadowy characters had to be developed and made lifelike. The Merchant of Venice: (1) The Bond Story. - One reading of The Merchant of Venice will reveal two distinct stories, that usually spoken of as The Bond Story, and that known as The Three Caskets. In the Elizabethan age these were already old and had been told by many people in many tongues. The Bond story, with some variation in details, was known among the Hindus in India, among the Turks in Constantinople, and among the Persians. It is found in the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of legends and stories written in Latin by English monks of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It is written in English in the Cursor Mundi, a poem composed about 1320. Finally it appears in one of those Italian novels so popular in Shakespeare's time, Il Pecorone. In many respects the drama corresponds very closely to this novel. In the novel, as in Shakespeare, the merchant lends money to a friend (his godchild in fact), in order that the latter may win a fair lady for his wife. The generous lender is forgotten by the ardent lover and is in danger of losing his life, when he is rescued by the lady herself in the guise of a lawyer. Here, moreover, the mystery of the lady's disguise is solved by the episode of the rings, itself really a third narrative, and, except in this novel, not united with the story of the bond. In addition to the sources mentioned above, two English ballads have been found relating the story of the Jew and the pound of flesh. Possibly, however, these ballads may have been based upon the play; the date of their composition is uncertain. Although not in any sense a story, The Orator, a French work translated into English and printed in London just before The Merchant of Venice was published, may have had some effect upon Shakespeare's play. This book discusses various questions of science and law, among others "Of a Jew, who would for his debt have a pound of the flesh of a Christian." (2) The Three Caskets. In one or another form, The Three Caskets was also in Shakespeare's day an oft-told tale. As early as the year 800 it was written in Greek by a monk of Syria, and before 1200 was translated into Latin. Then the story seems to have passed from one group of narratives to another, appearing in Italian in the Decameron of Boccaccio, and later in the Golden Legend (a collection of the biographies of saints), and appearing again in English in the Confessio Amantis, a poem written by Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer. (3) The Jessica Story. The story of Jessica and of her elopement with Lorenzo is traced by some (Dunlop) to another old Italian tale. I give a quotation from the Variorum of Dr. Furness: "It is the story of a young gentleman of Messina, who becomes enamoured of the daughter of a rich Neapolitan miser. As the father keeps his child perpetually shut up, the lover has recourse to stratagem. Pretending to set out on a long journey, he deposits with the miser a number of valuable effects, leaving, among other things, a female slave, who prepossesses the mind of the girl in favour of her master, and finally assists in the elopement of the young lady, and the robbery of her father's jewels, which she carries along with her. . . . It is not improbable that the avaricious father in this tale, the daughter so carefully shut up, the elopement of the lovers managed by the intervention of a servant, the robbery of the father, and his grief on the discovery, which is represented as divided between the loss of his daughter and ducats, may have suggested the third plot in Shakespeare's drama, — the love and elopement of Jessica and Lorenzo.'" Gosson's Jew and Marlowe's Jew of Malta. There still remain two more probabilities to be considered. In a tirade upon the abuses of the stage, Stephen Gosson, a short time before The Merchant of Venice was published, refers to a play which he calls the "Jew," and in connection with it speaks of "the greediness of worldly chusers" and "the bloody mindes of usurers. Critics have thought it very likely that these words might refer to an older play than Shakespeare's, a play in which the several stories were already combined, and which was rewritten by Shakespeare, or which at least formed the outline of The Merchant of Venice. Marlowe, also, a dramatist second only to Shakespeare at that time, had written, about 1590, a play known as The Jew of Malta. There are lines in this play which almost surely suggested certain details of The Merchant of Venice. Dr. Lopez. In conclusion, one fact of contemporary history needs to be noted. Although, according to the law of England, the Jews were excluded from that country during the time of Shakespeare, yet some of them surely evaded the law. It is interesting to know that in 1594, probably two years before the composition of this play, a certain Dr. Lopez, an eminent Jewish physician of London, was publicly executed for treason. He had become implicated in certain court troubles by a Portuguese refugee, a man bearing the suggestive |