I'll tell thee more of this another time; But fish
not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool's gudgeon, this
opinion.
Gratiano's speech on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit
in taking off the force of passion, is as full of spirit and good
sense. The graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, after
the tragic business is dispatched, is one of the happiest instances
of Shakespeare's knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not
mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa and their
husbands about the rings, which is amusing enough, but the
conversation just before and after the return of Portia to her own
house, begining 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank', and
ending 'Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, and would not be
awaked'. There is a number of beautiful thoughts crowded into that
short space, and linked together by the most natural transitions.
When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock we expected to see,
what we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age and
ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the
venom of his heart congealed in the expression of his countenance,
sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of
his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his
revenge.
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