We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from
other actors, not from the play. There is no proof there that
Shylock is old, but a single line, 'Bassanic and old Shylock, both
stand forth,'--which does not imply that he is infirm with age--and
the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not
imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to say that his
body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind,
which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion. That he
has but one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other
person in the piece: and if he is intense and inveterate in the
pursuit of his purpose, he shows the utmost elasticity, vigour, and
presence of mind, in the means of attaining it. But so rooted was
our habitual impression of the part from seeing it caricatured in
the representation, that it was only from a careful perusal of the
play itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in general the
best place to study our author's characters in. It is too often
filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, handed
down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of THE GREAT VULGAR
AND THE SMALL.--''Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and gross do
merely gender in it!' If a man of genius comes once in an age to
clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry,
"Tis a bad school: it may be like nature, it may be like
Shakespeare, but it is not like us.
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