Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

14. Love's Labor's Lost

There are fifteen of Shakespeare's plays which deal with English history or English legend. If I adhered to strict chronological sequence, these would follow here. If I did that, however, the division between the two volumes of this book would fall inconveniently in the middle of those plays. I am consequently leaving the fifteen English plays to make up in toto the second volume.

We will conclude this first volume then with a dozen romances which are placed in Renaissance Italy and surrounding regions, and which are, for Shakespeare, contemporary. There is no clear historical background and even where some reference can be pinpointed to this or that year, this is not significant and will not do as a method of deciding the order in which the plays should be presented.

In this final part of the volume, then, the plays that remain will be placed in the order in which (it is thought) Shakespeare wrote them.

And of these Love's Labor's Lost is possibly the earliest. Along with The Comedy of Errors it has sometimes been dated as early as 1588, though dates as late as 1593 are possible.

The play doesn't seem to have been intended for wide public popularity, and may have been written for private performance. One possibility is that it was intended for a celebration at the home of the Earl of Southampton (see page I-3). If so, the play must have been an astounding success, for Southampton then became Shakespeare's generous patron.

If Love's Labor's Lost were indeed written primarily for the entertainment of a coterie of men interested in art, that would explain the over-elaboration of much of the style. The play was a satire on pedantry, and its complicated verbiage and intrusive Latinity would appeal to the sense of humor of the educated. Both the elaborateness and the Latinity have tended to diminish the popularity of the play considerably in later times.

The play opens with a King and his three companions on stage. The King is announcing his decision to retire for three years (along with his companions) to a sober and austere study of philosophy. He is very optimistic about the effect this will have, for he says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 12-13

The speaker is, according to the cast of characters, Ferdinand, King of Navarre.

Navarre does not exist as an independent kingdom on our maps today (or on the maps of Shakespeare's time, for that matter), and most people would be at a loss to point out where it might ever have existed. It is not a mythical land, however; it is no Ruritania. It once did exist indeed, and in medieval times it constituted a sizable region about the western end of the Pyrenees. Mostly, it lay to the south and west of that range in what is now north-central Spain, but some of its territory lay to the north in what is now southwestern France.

Through the Middle Ages, it maintained an increasingly precarious independence between France on the north and the growing strength of the other Christian kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula. In 1474 Aragon and Castile (the two most important of those kingdoms) were bound together when Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Aragon, married Isabella, Queen of Castile. In 1479 Ferdinand succeeded to the crown of Aragon, and under the united rule of himself and Isabella, modern Spain was formed. (The two monarchs were the parents of Catherine, the ill-fated first wife of Henry VIII, see page II-754.)

Navarre could not stand against the union of the kingdoms. The portion of Navarre south of the Pyrenees was occupied by Ferdinand in 1512 and made an integral part of the Spanish crown in 1515.

The part of the kingdom north of the Pyrenees was under the rule of Catherine de Foix, who married Jean d'Albret (a descendant of the Constable of France, who had died at the Battle of Agincourt, see page II-475). Jean d'Albret called himself King of Navarre and his son succeeded to the title, as Henry II of Navarre, in 1517, when his mother died.

Naturally, Ferdinand of Spam claimed the rule of all Navarre, but in order to establish that claim he would have had to fight France, which held the actual control of northern Navarre. This Ferdinand never tried to do, and Henry II remained titular King of Navarre. That is, he had the title but no more; in actual fact, he was merely a French nobleman and had none of the power of an independent monarch.

Henry II married Margaret (or Marguerite, in the French spelling), who was sister to King Francis I (see page II-747). She is consequently known in history books as Margaret of Navarre, and it was she who, before this marriage, had been thought of by Wolsey as a possible second wife for Henry VIII (see page II-69).

Henry had a daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who was Queen of Navarre from 1562 to 1572. Her son was another Henry, who in 1572 became Henry III of Navarre, but is known to history simply as Henry of Navarre because, first, he was by far the most important ruler Navarre ever had, and second, because in his time the King of France was also Henry III and to use the same Roman numeral for both would lead to confusion.

Through his father, Henry of Navarre was a member of the family of Bourbon, which, through a solid line of male ancestors, was descended from a younger son of King Louis IX (see page II-457) who had died in 1270. Now, three centuries later, only one male descendant remained of the older lines and he was Henry III of France, who became king in 1574. If Henry III died without surviving sons (and he was a homosexual who never had children), Henry IV (who was thoroughly and spectacularly heterosexual) was the next in line to the throne.

This would not ordinarily have made much of a stir except that France had been involved in a religious civil war for a dozen years, one in which a sizable and militant Protestant minority was stanchly withstanding the Catholic majority. As it happened, Henry of Navarre was a Protestant and, in view of his position as prospective heir to the throne, the leader of the Protestant faction. There were many Frenchmen, on the other hand, determined that no Protestant should ever be King of France, regardless of his descent.

This standoff was the situation when Love's Labor's Lost was written. England, as it happened, had just defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and had heroically foiled a vast Spanish-Catholic attempt to subvert the Protestant character of the island kingdom. England was consequently all on fire with the picture of itself as the Protestant David hacking down the great Catholic Goliath of Spain. Since Spain was the chief support of the French Catholics against the possible succession of Henry of Navarre, there was much warmth and admiration for Henry in England.

It would be natural, then, for Shakespeare to write a play in which the King of Navarre was a hero and in which he was presented in the most favorable light. In order to make the situation not too pointed and topical, it was inadvisable to use the name "Henry," so he used "Ferdinand" instead. This was a favorite name during the Italian Renaissance and might have been inspired by the fact that Ferdinand II of Spain had taken over southern Navarre.

In early 1589 Henry III of France was assassinated by a fanatic monk who felt the King wasn't Catholic enough, and Henry of Navarre succeeded to the throne as Henry IV of France. Unfortunately for the new king, the title he gained was not accepted by the Catholic party and he remained king only over his own minority. The Catholics controlled much of France, including the all-important city of Paris, and the civil war grew fiercer. Henry IV was a good general and won important victories, but against the sheer weight of Catholic intransigence he could not prevail.

In 1591 the Earl of Essex, the great friend of Southampton and Shakespeare, even led an army in support of Henry of Navarre, but Essex was a poor soldier and failed in this, as in all his military efforts (see page II-508).

Finally, in 1593, Henry of Navarre, with a sigh and a shrug, agreed to turn Catholic. Then, and only then, did Paris accept him. Henry entered the capital, was hailed as king, was eventually crowned, and became Henry IV in truth. ("Paris is worth a mass," said Henry.)

Of course, this made him a traitor to the Protestant cause and Englishmen must have reflected sardonically over the proverbial (to them) faithlessness of the French nature. It is doubtful if Love's Labor's Lost could possibly have been written in its present form after 1593, for that reason.

No action in the play has any but the very faintest and most distant association with the real Henry of Navarre, of course, but Shakespeare continues to use reality as the source of inspiration for names at least.

Thus, the King turns to the three with him and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 15-17

The name Berowne may have been inspired by Armand de Gontaut, Baron de Biron, who was a close associate of Henry of Navarre and who in 1589 gained the leadership of his armies. He won victories for Henry and was killed in battle in 1592.

Biron had been closely associated with the expeditionary force led by Essex. This made Biron specially popular in England and it is not surprising that Shakespeare makes Berowne the most attractive person in the play.

Longaville is a version of Longueville and there was a Due de Longueville also among Henry's generals.

Dumaine is not so easy to place. That name may have been inspired by Charles, Duc de Mayenne, who was associated with Henry IV, but not as a friend. Mayenne was the leader of the Catholic opposition to Henry. To be sure, after Henry's conversion Mayenne was reconciled to the King and from 1596 on remained completely loyal to him. This, however, certainly took place well after the play was written.

Berowne is the one companion who doesn't think the King's plan will work. He doubts that they can successfully make themselves strict and austere philosophers for three years. He particularly doubts they can really forswear female company, as the King plans to have them do. In fact, that would be impossible, for Berowne says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 132-35

This too has a glancing resemblance to the real-life career of Henry of Navarre. In 1572 young Henry (only nineteen at the time) was married to Marguerite de Valois (also nineteen). At that time Henry III's older brother, Charles IX, was still on the throne (he didn't die till 1574) and Marguerite was sister to both of them. All three of them, Henry III, Charles LX, and Marguerite (plus an earlier short-lived monarch, Francis II), were children of King Henry II of France, who had died in 1559.

The continuing religious civil war made the marriage no idyll, but in 1578 there was a well-publicized visit of Marguerite (along with her mother, Catherine de' Medici) to the court of Navarre. It may well have been this visit which was in Shakespeare's mind.

If the visit was intended to improve the state of the marriage, by the way, it failed miserably. Henry was interested in many ladies and Marguerite bore him no children. Finally, in 1599, their marriage was annulled and Henry was able to marry again and beget an heir to the throne. This, however, was well after Love's Labor's Lost was written.

—Act I, scene i, lines 136-37

The matter of Aquitaine is pure invention, of course. Even at its most powerful, Navarre never controlled that large section of southern France called Aquitaine (see page II-209). The name, however, would be a familiar one to Englishmen if only because Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most famous of English queens.

The real Marguerite de Valois had no living father at the time of her marriage to Henry. She had been only six years old when her father died. However, the French royal family, at the time the play was written, seemed indeed decrepit, sick, and bed-rid. In 1588 Henry III of France had reigned fourteen years and though only thirty-seven was prematurely aged, and exhausted by the crises of the time and his personal excesses. Two older brothers had reigned briefly and died, one at sixteen and one at twenty-four. A younger brother was already dead at thirty, and none of the brothers left descendants.

It seems that the Princess must be greeted and entertained despite all ascetic arrangements. The cynical Berowne, delighted, inquires if there is any other and more reliable entertainment allowed the scholars than the occasional visit of a princess.

The King informs him that there is an eccentric and euphuistic Spaniard at the court who can be very entertaining, albeit unconsciously so. He refers to him as:

—Act I, scene i, line 169

If the play were written in the aftermath of the great defeat of the Spanish fleet in 1588, a Spaniard would be a natural butt for the play, and his name, Armado (Don Adriano de Armado in full, according to the cast of characters), is a none too subtle recall of the defeated Armada.

There has been a tendency for some people to find satirical representations in all the characters of this play. If it were written for a small "in group" rather than for the general public, it might well contain "in jokes" against the personal enemies of the group in the audience.

Thus, the Earl of Essex had become Queen Elizabeth's favorite in the very years of the Armada (and this play) after her previous favorite, the Earl of Leicester, died. Essex's great rival was Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been Leicester's protege and whose nose had been put out of joint by the handsome Essex's greater success with the Queen. Some people therefore think that Armado was intended as a satire on Raleigh for the amusement of the Essex coterie. However, there seems little one can point to in what Armado says or does that has "Raleigh" written on it. (There are other candidates for the role of real-life Armado too, but none are really convincing.)

Armado at once enters the plot, indirectly, to lend humor to it. He has spied a country bumpkin, Costard, making love to a young country girl, Jaquenetta, in defiance of the published edict against association with womankind, and has reported the matter to the authorities. Costard is arrested by Constable Dull and is turned over to the custody of Armado.

It turns out, of course, that Armado is himself in love with Jaquenetta, and he displays this in the approved manner of the puling stage lover. He uses his page as a sounding board for his melancholy and says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-2

The page is of the smallest possible size and is named Moth (pronounced "mote" in Shakespeare's day with the obvious pun). It is his function to be witty in Shakespearean fashion, so he answers:

—Act I, scene ii, line 3

Some people have attempted to equate Moth with Thomas Nashe, a pamphleteer who was contemporary with Shakespeare and who engaged in battles of wits in polemical style with other controversialists. He was coarse, pretentious, and arrogant.

By those who think this, Armado is equated with Gabriel Harvey, another controversialist of the time who was an opponent of Nashe's. The Armado-Moth quibbling might therefore be taken to represent, with satiric inadequacy, the Homeric polemics of Harvey and Nashe.

Armado pictures himself as a warlike hero unmanned for love and demands of Moth that he give him examples of great men in love:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 68-69

Moth had already named Hercules as an example, and rightly, for he was described in the numerous myths that clustered about his name to have lain with innumerable women. Once, according to legend, he lay with fifty women in one night, impregnated them all, and ended by having fifty sons-a feat far greater, really, than all his twelve usual labors put together.

At the mention of "good repute and carriage," Moth adds, however:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 70-72

The twist on the word "carriage," from carrying oneself to carrying external objects, refers to a time when Samson was visiting a harlot in Gaza. The Philistines, knowing the town gates were locked, waited for morning to deal with him, but Samson rose at midnight "and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill" (Judges 16:3) so that he got away when his enemies confidently thought he was trapped. At the time of this feat he was in love (if you can dignify the relation between himself and the woman by that word).

Later on, Armado meets Jaquenetta, confesses his love to the unimpressed girl, and soliloquizes afterward on the great men of the past who had been in love. To Hercules and Samson, he adds one more, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 172-73

The biblical writers felt that Solomon's numerous wives seduced him away from perfect love of God. "And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods" (1 Kings 11:3-4).

The Princess arrives and she has with her, symmetrically enough, three ladies: Maria, Catherine, and Rosaline.

The symmetry proves even neater when each of the ladies evinces an interest in one of the King's followers, each different lady with a different man. What's more, each has met her man before. With Maria it's Longaville, with Katherine it's Dumaine, and with Rosaline it's Berowne. Thus, Katherine says of Dumaine:

—Act II, scene i, lines 61-62

If we stick to the time of Henry of Navarre, there was a Duc d'Alencon who was well known to the English of the time. He was the fourth and youngest of the four sons of Henry II, and he had watched his three older brothers become kings of France, one after the other: Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. He died in 1584, while his brother Henry was reigning.

Alencon was known to the English as a persistent wooer of Queen Elizabeth I, which was rather pathetic, for Alencon was quite worthless and Elizabeth (one of the most remarkable women in history) could not have endured him an hour. However, Elizabeth was incapable of a clear no at any tune, but had a genius for temporization, so that the poor simpleton pursued the golden prize uselessly from 1579 to 1582.

When the King and his followers arrive to receive the ladies, the men are as intrigued by the women as vice versa, and, as luck would have it, each man is interested in the particular woman who is interested in him.

It works out beautifully, for Berowne (the wittiest of the men) is at once involved with Rosaline (the wittiest of the women), and, eager to break the ice, he uses a device not unknown today, when he says to her:

—Act II, scene i, line 114

Brabant was a duchy located in what is now central Belgium. In the time of Shakespeare it was part of the Spanish dominion in what was then known as the Spanish Netherlands.

As it turns out, the two had indeed danced together in Brabant, and there follows a typical Shakespearean game of wordplay.

There is some business to be done, of course-the matter of Aquitaine. The King of Navarre does not wish to return it to France until he is paid a sum that the King of France owes him for expenses incurred by Navarre's father. The Princess, however, claims payment has already been made and orders her male attendant, Boyet, to produce the receipts, saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 160-62

The father of the real Henry of Navarre was not named Charles. His name was Anthony, Duc de Vendome.

On the other hand, Henry of Navarre had an uncle, the younger brother of his father, who was a Charles. He was Charles de Bourbon and was a cardinal. He was a Catholic, of course, and the next in line for the throne after Henry of Navarre, if the latter died without surviving sons. Indeed, when Henry III was assassinated in 1589 and Henry of Navarre declared himself the new king as Henry IV, the intransigent Catholics proclaimed Charles instead and called him Charles X. However, Charles was already in his middle sixties and he died in 1590.

There were other Charleses too in the Bourbon ancestry. The most famous Bourbon of all, prior to Henry of Navarre himself, was Charles, Duc de Bourbon and Constable of France. He was made Constable (that is, commander of the armies) in 1515 under King Francis I, but achieved his greatest fame by quarreling with the King and defecting to the national enemy, the Emperor Charles V (see page II-747) in 1523. The Constable died, while still fighting against his King, in 1527, sixty years before his distant cousin, Henry of Navarre, succeeded to the throne.

The receipts the Princess speaks of are not actually on hand. They are on the way, however, and must be waited for.

This means that business can be temporarily forgotten and the gentlemen and ladies can continue their business of pairing off and indulging in their wit duels. Berowne is particularly chagrined at finding himself in love and at being beaten by:

—Act III, scene i, line 182

The term "Dan Cupid" does not signify that Cupid's first name was conceived to be Daniel. Rather, it means "Lord Cupid." The Latin word for "Lord" is Domitius. This is shortened to "Don" by the Spaniards and, in turn, distorted to "Dan" by the English.

In his disgust, Berowne inveighs against women and tries, but fails, to dismiss them with hard words. He even scouts their morality, saying:

—Act III, scene i, lines 200-1

The reference is to Argus Panoptes ("all eyes"), who had a hundred eyes set all over his body. At any given moment only fifty of them slept, so that there were always fifty awake. Juno set Argus to watching Io, the illicit love of her straying husband, Jupiter.

The only way Jupiter could rescue Io (in heifer's disguise at the time) was to send Mercury to tell Argus a droning tale that put all hundred eyes to sleep at once. Mercury then killed him and all Juno could do was save the hundred eyes and put them in the tail of the peacock, a bird sacred to her.

Berowne, despite his brave words, finds that love drives him to write a letter to Rosaline (strictly against the King's rules) and to have it delivered to her secretly by Costard the clown. Armado, however, is also using Costard as delivery boy, sending a letter by way of the clown to Jaquenetta.

When Costard tries to deliver the letter to Rosaline, the Princess seizes it and behold, it turns out to be Armado's letter. She opens it and finds that the Spaniard is writing most grandiloquently to the peasant girl. He makes comparisons that are flattering to himself, if little likely to delight the girl, for he says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 65-68

King Cophetua, the hero of a ballad, was a completely fictional personage. He was an immensely rich king of Africa who disdained all womankind till he accidentally saw a beggar maid from his window. He had to have her, married her, and lived with her long and happily. The name given the beggar maid may have been Penelope to begin with. It varies from version to version of the story, however, and Zenelophon is a name as good as another.

As evidence for the very popular thesis that "love conquers all," the ballad grew famous and was particularly close to the hearts of any girl that dreamed of marrying above her station someday.

It is impossible to help but notice now and then that Armado is extraordinarily like Don Quixote in his consistent overestimate of himself and in Ms insistence on imagining himself a superhuman storybook hero. He ends the letter with some doggerel which begins:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 90-91

Armado represents himself as the Nemean lion (see page I-58) while Jaquenetta is the lamb. (And remember that Don Quixote tried to fight a lion in the cage and called himself, in consequence, "Knight of the Lions.")

There is something rather pleasant in the thought that Shakespeare might be borrowing from Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish author of the Don Quixote saga, since Cervantes was almost an exact contemporary of Shakespeare's (the former was three years younger and both died in the same year) and by all odds one of the few writers, on the basis of Don Quixote alone, worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare.

There is only one catch, but that is a fatal one. The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, a dozen years at least after Love's Labor's Lost was written.

When the Princess wonders about the identity of the man who wrote the unintentionally amusing letter, Boyet tells her he is:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 101-2

A "phantasime" is a man with a wild imagination (fantasy), and Monarcho was a harmless Italian madman who was tolerated at Elizabeth's court because he was found to be amusing, and who had died perhaps ten years before the play was written.

One can't help remembering that in the second part of Don Quixote, published in 1615, there is a long section in which the mad knight is humored by a kindly Duke and Duchess who keep him at their estate for the fun he affords them.

Could it be in reverse? Could Cervantes have come across Love's Labor's Lost and turned a small suggestion into a towering work of genius? I have never seen this stated even as a conjecture but I can't help wondering.

Boyet playfully rallies Rosaline on the letter Berowne has sent her, a letter she hasn't seen yet because of Costard's mix-up. She counters with:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 121-23

King Pepin (see page I-455) reigned in France in the eighth century, over eight hundred years before Shakespeare's time, and he was apparently considered the epitome of the dead-and-gone in French idiom.

The next scene introduces Holofernes, a most unbearable pedant, whose speech consists half of Latin and who spends all his time nit-picking the English language. He is a satire on what learning can come to if it is carried to extremes without even a modicum of good sense to go along with all the education.

Those who look for personal satire in Love's Labor's Lost suspect Holofernes to represent a gibe against John Florio, the London-born son of a Protestant refugee from Italy. Florio was a linguist who spent his life translating foreign works into English, notably Montaigne's Essays, and who compiled Italian-English dictionaries, collections of proverbs, grammars, etc. He was intensely learned and was probably pedantic enough to make it seem that Holofernes was a satiric reference to him.

Another possibility is Thomas Harriot, an English mathematician who was Raleigh's scientific adviser on an expedition to the New World (a position which would be alone sufficient to make him instant anathema to the Essex coterie, including Shakespeare). Harriot wrote a book on the voyage which was published in 1588 and which was pedantic enough, perhaps, to inspire the satire.

Holofernes is a pedant from his very name onward, for the name, though biblical, is not one that many would think of using. It occurs only in the apocryphal (but very popular) Book of Judith, accepted as canonical by the Catholics but by neither Jews nor Protestants. It deals with an invasion of Judea by an army of Assyrians under a general named Holofernes. The general was hoodwinked and assassinated by the Jewish heroine Judith, and as a villainous name it would scarcely be used except to signify someone who would find pleasure in obscure and unusual allusions.

Thus, Constable Dull tries to trap Holofernes with a riddle which he thinks is impossible to puzzle out-to wit, what was a month old when Cain was born, is still alive, but is not yet five weeks old. The answer is, of course, "the moon," since when it is four weeks old it starts all over again with another "new moon."

Holofernes knows the answer and gives it at once, but naturally would not dream of saying "the moon" or even using the more common classical terms such as "Diana," "Selene," "Artemis," or "Cynthia." Instead, he picks the most obscure allusion possible and says:

—Act IV, scene ii, line 37

Dictynna was undoubtedly one of the many local names for the moon goddess which then had to be woven into the general body of myths worked out by the old Greek poets. It was said that one of the companions of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, who was often considered a personification of the moon, was Britomartis, who hid from the unwanted love of King Minos of Crete. Britomartis finally threw herself into the sea in desperation and was rescued in a fisherman's net. Thereafter, she was given the name "Dictynna" from a Greek word for "net." Her association with Diana was used to explain the fact that Dictynna could be used as a personification of the moon.

Of course, Dull can make nothing of the answer and Holofernes has to explain it.

Again, he quotes a Latin line and falls into ecstasies over it, saying:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 95-96

Now, the greatest of all the Latin poets, Vergil, who wrote the Aeneid, was born near Mantua and was frequently referred to as "the Mantuan." A reader might be forgiven if he supposed at first that Holofernes was quoting from the Aeneid and rhapsodizing over Vergil.

He is not, however. He is referring to Battista Spagnoli, an obscure Italian Renaissance poet, who used "Mantuan" as his pen name.

Jaquenetta brings Holofernes a poem delivered her by Costard and supposedly intended for her. It is the letter, however, written by Berowne in the form of an eloquent sonnet and intended for Rosaline. Jaquenetta can make nothing of its high-flown style.

Nathaniel the Curate, a humble admirer of Holofernes, is also present, and he reads it. Holofernes criticizes the reading at once, of course, and falls into admiration of the Roman poet Ovid (see page I-8). Quite irrelevantly, he makes use of the poet's name to make a ridiculous metaphor, saying:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 125-27

"Naso," you see comes from nasus, the Latin word for "nose."

In another part of the park, Berowne is still trying to write love poetry and still berating himself for it, saying:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 6-7

This refers to the tragic death of Ajax in madness and frustration, killing sheep under the hallucinatory belief they are his enemies (see page I-110).

He hears someone coming and hides. It is the King, who reads aloud a lovesick sonnet to the Princess, then hides as Longaville comes in to read aloud a lovesick sonnet to Maria, then hides as Dumaine comes in to read aloud a lovesick sonnet to Katherine.

Each one is in love against their original intention and each moves in a simultaneous and symmetrical way. Each one in turn steps forward to announce his discovery of the next and then Berowne steps forward to berate them all in most hypocritical fashion considering his own activity. He affects to bemoan the conversion of serious scholars into moaning lovers and says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 164-69

The contrasts he cites are extreme ones. He pictures Hercules, the epitome of strength and heroism, and Solomon and Nestor, bywords for wisdom in Greek and Hebrew literature, respectively, engage in childish occupations. (This is like serious Navarrese scholars writing love poems.) As for "critic Timon," this is Timon the misanthrope concerning whom Shakespeare was to try to write a play, Timon of Athens (see page I-133) fifteen years later.

But, of course, in the midst of Berowne's self-righteous scoldings, in come Jaquenetta and Costard with Berowne's letter, which they still don't understand. Berowne, to his chagrin and embarrassment, must admit that he too has been writing sonnets.

The others are very naturally quite anxious to turn the tables and they make unsparing (and, by our standards, unchivalrous) fun of Rosaline, who is Berowne's love. Rosaline is a brunet at a time when it was conventional to consider blondness beauty.

The King sneers at Rosaline's blackness (meaning her hair, of course, and not her skin). Loyally, Berowne insists that he considers blackness a sign of beauty, but the King says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 253-54

The phrase "school of night" is a puzzler. Some people think it is a misprint and that what is meant is that black is the "shade" of night.

On the other hand, some think "school" is what is really meant and that this is another of Shakespeare's partisan references. This may have referred to a group of amateur scholars who gathered together in a secret group to study the new astronomy that had arisen out of Copernicus' book in 1543, which held that the Earth moved round the sun and not vice versa.

Shakespeare never accepted this and, in fact, his view of science is always strictly conservative and medieval. The Copernican view was widely held to be against the Bible and religion, and therefore atheistic. The group of scholars would be, then, according to their enemies, a "school of night"; that is, one where devilish doctrines were taught.

Raleigh was supposed to patronize this wicked school, which, of course, gave the Essex faction a handle with which to strike at him.

Once again, he blames the King and the others for even trying to abolish love so that they might study undisturbed. Constant study will wither, while love will supply true inspiration. He says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 301-3

The phrase "Promethean fire" harks back to Prometheus (the name means "forethought"), who was considered, in the Greek myths, to be one of the Titans, the race of divine beings who ruled the universe before Zeus and his relatives (the Olympians) won that rule by force.

In the war between the Titans and the Olympians, Prometheus foresaw that the latter would win and he was careful to avoid joining the other Titans or to do anything that would offend Zeus. He was therefore allowed to retain his freedom when the other Titans were condemned to Tartarus.

Nevertheless, Prometheus was still a Titan and he could not wholeheartedly be a friend of the Olympians. Recently created mankind did not have the secret of fire-which was deliberately withheld by Zeus. Prometheus therefore stole fire from the sun and brought it down to man.

Zeus punished Prometheus for this by chaining him to a crag in the Caucasus where an eagle (or a vulture) gnawed at his liver all day long. The liver regenerated at night so as to be ready for fresh torture the next day.

It is possible to consider Prometheus the embodiment of man's forethought or ingenuity-personified "inventiveness." The fire he brought man might be, symbolically, the light of insight and inspiration and that is what Berowne would mean by "the true Promethean fire."

Berowne's defense of love is in the tradition of courtly love that was developed in southern France in the mid-twelfth century and was associated with the troubadours. Eleanor of Aquitaine (see page II-209) was one of the first great patrons of such notions.

Courtly love had little to do with real passion or with sex but rather presented love as a kind of game to amuse an idle aristocracy, a game which consisted of complex rules of behavior, of love poetry, of exchanges of wit, of idealization of women-of everything but actual contact.

So Berowne speaks in grandiloquent phrases of love as an act of heroic aspiring to idealized woman, saying:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 339-41

For his eleventh labor, Hercules had to obtain golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were three nymphs who were descendants of Hesperus, the evening star. The name is from the Greek word for "west," since the evening star is always visible in the west after sunset. The Hesperides are thus the individuals to whom the garden belongs, but Shakespeare takes it to be a region in which the garden is located. Of course, Hercules must climb the tree if he is to get the apples, and the valor consists of doing so despite the fact that it is guarded by a fearsome dragon.

The Sphinx, in Greek mythology, was a monster with the body of a lion and the head of a woman. It was most notable for propounding riddles (hence it was "subtle"), which it forced those it met to answer. It killed those who could not answer correctly. Oedipus, on his way to Thebes, was faced with the riddle "What has sometimes two feet, sometimes three, sometimes four, and is weakest when it has most?" Oedipus at once answered, "Man, for he crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet in youth, and needs a cane in old age." The Sphinx, in chagrin, killed herself.

Love's Labor's Lost is Shakespeare's tribute, then, to courtly love, and this speech is the clearest expression of it.

Berowne is convincing. The men decide to lay aside subterfuge, forget their resolutions, and woo the women.

Meanwhile Nathaniel the Curate and Holofernes the Pedant are discussing Armado. Holofernes finds fault with Armado, particularly in his fantastic manner of speech (as though Holofernes himself were not infinitely worse). Nathaniel drinks in the other's every word (writing down particularly good ones in his notebook). Nathaniel even tries a little Latin of his own, which Holofernes immediately corrects, saying:

—Act V, scene i, lines 31-32

Priscian is the usual English name for Priscianus Caesariensis, a Latin grammarian at Constantinople about a.d. 500. His book on Latin grammar was the final authority through the Middle Ages, and it was common to say "to break Priscian's head" in characterizing any mistake in Latin. In this case the mistake is so minor (a single letter) that Holofernes is satisfied to say that Priscian was merely scratched.

Armado, Moth, and Costard come onstage. Holofernes and the Spaniard are immediately involved in complicated badinage and Moth comments ironically at their ability to use long words and involved phrases. Costard, with equal irony, wonders why Armado, who is so familiar with long words, doesn't swallow the diminutive Moth. He says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 42-44

This is the longest word in Shakespeare but it is not really used as a word, merely given as an example of a long word. It is Latin, of course, and is the ablative plural of a word meaning "honorableness." It has twenty-seven letters and is thought to be the longest word in Latin and, therefore, the longest word in English-at least in Shakespeare's. time. Nowadays, it is "antidisestablishmentarianism" which is usually cited as longest, with twenty-eight letters. (It means the doctrine of opposition to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and came into prominence in the nineteenth century.)

Actually, it is only those whose knowledge is limited to what are called the humanities who fall for this hoary old chestnut. In German, it is customary to run words together to make long compound words far longer than any in ordinary Latin or English. Since organic chemistry was almost entirely a German monopoly in the nineteenth century, the habit has persisted in naming organic chemicals, even in English. The intricate structure of organic chemicals requires an intricate naming system and there is, for instance, a chemical called "betadimethylaminobenzaldehyde," which is twenty-nine letters long and which is far from the longest possible.

Apparently the King is planning an entertainment that evening for the Princess. He has consulted Armado on what it should consist of and he, in turn, consults Holofernes. Holofernes makes an instant decision:

—Act V, scene i, lines 118-19

The Nine Worthies (see page II-401) are usually given as Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey Bouillon.

Holofernes does not go by this standard list, apparently. He starts assigning the different worthies to the people present and after mentioning Joshua and Judas Maccabeus, he says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 128-30

We can only suppose that Pompey the Great is substituted for Julius Caesar, and if this is so, it is a great mistake, for Caesar was far the greater man (see page I-257).

The last scene in Love's Labor's Lost is the longest in the play and, for that matter, in Shakespeare. It begins with the ladies coming together to talk about the fact that they have all received love tokens from the men. Boyet arrives to say he has overheard the men speaking and they have decided to woo the ladies in earnest.

The Princess says, lightly:

—Act V, scene ii, line 87

It is to be a merry war between the sexes in the tradition of courtly love. The men come to woo and the French ladies will resist. Saint Denis, the patron saint of France (see page II-515), will be opposed to the assaults of love, here represented as Saint Cupid.

Boyet tells the ladies that the gentlemen will come to them in exotic costume, for they

—Act V, scene ii, lines 120-21

In Shakespeare's time, Russians were exotic and popular in England because of Chancellor's voyage (see page I-640).

The ladies therefore decide to wear masks and to switch their characteristic ribboned decorations ("favors") with one another, so that each man might think the wrong girl his and court at cross-purposes. This is done and the ladies utterly thwart the men first when they are disguised as Russians and then in their own persons.

Berowne in particular is forced, in frustration, to forswear the complexities of courtly love, at which the ladies win every time, and vows to be an honest lover henceforward. He says:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 413-16

Russet and kersey are the color and material of homemade peasant clothing and Shakespeare thus expresses (as he usually does in his plays) his opinion of the superiority of plain Englishness over foreign ways and customs.

But it is time now for the masque of the Nine Worthies to be presented by the various eccentrics of the play.

Costard comes in with a sonorous Pompey the Great. Nathaniel is a hesitant and easily rattled Alexander the Great, and then in come Holofernes and Moth as Judas Maccabeus and Hercules respectively. Holofernes speaks first for Moth with the expected scraps of Latin, saying:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 586-89

The trite Latin rhyme of canus (dog) and manus (hand) reduces pedantry to its most foolish.

Hercules' twelfth and climactic labor was that of bringing into the upper world the three-headed hound Cerberus (see page I-101), who guarded the entrance to the underworld. He did not kill it, but brought it up alive as proof of the successful completion of the labor, then returned it.

When Hercules was a year old, according to legend, the jealous Juno (who was angry because Hercules was the offspring of one of Jupiter's many extramarital ventures) sent two serpents to kill him in the cradle. The infant Hercules seized each serpent in one of his baby fists and strangled it. The diminutive page is therefore not so ridiculous a representation of Hercules as might be thought. He represents Hercules, the Heroic Babe.

The rest of the masque of the Nine Worthies is reduced to a shambles. Holofernes, trying to make the Judas Maccabeus speech for himself, is teased into silence. Armado, who comes next as Hector, can make no more headway.

Costard is urged on by Berowne to accuse Armado of making Jaquenetta pregnant, and for a minute the audience is made to think there will be a mock duel between the two, but all is interrupted by the arrival of a messenger. He comes with news of the Princess' father, the King of France. The Princess guesses at once:

—Act V, scene ii, line 721

Henry III was stabbed on August 1, 1589, and died the next day. This may have nothing to do with the play at all, for there is a good chance it was written before then.

The French King's death, in the play, is a convenient device to end the developing and increasingly intense game of courtly love before it is forced to graduate into something else. The unreal world of the Navarrese court is forced to face reality, for the Princess must return to Paris to face the difficulties of a succession.

The men insist that though the game is over, their love is real. The ladies order them to remain austere, as they had originally planned to do, for one year anyway and if, at the end, they are still in love, that love will be returned.

And so love's labor is lost-for a year. Yet the audience may suppose that the year will pass and that love will then win.

15. The Taming Of The Shrew

The taming of the shrew, written, possibly, in 1593 or 1594, is a play within a play. At least it starts out so with what Shakespeare calls an "Induction" ("Introduction") representing the frame within which the play proper is presented.

The Induction begins with Christopher Sly, more than half drunk, being thrown out of an alehouse by an irate landlady who demands money for the glasses he has broken; money he refuses to pay.

With the owlish gravity of drunkenness, he rejects the names she calls him. He says:

—Induction, scene i, lines 3-4

Christopher Sly is, as he says later, a tinker, a profession lost to the modern world. A tinker was a solderer and repairer of kettles, pots, and other such household metalware, the name of the profession coming from the tink-tink of a small hammer against the utensil.

It did not take much capital or much intelligence to be a tinker, and while tinkers acted as though they were general handy men, they usually couldn't go much beyond solder or a nail, so that we now have the verb "to tinker," meaning "to fiddle with, rather unskillfully."

Tinkers could scarcely make a living if they sat in one place and waited for neighbors' kettles to come apart. They were usually itinerant, carrying their few tools on their backs and going from village to village. They were distrusted, as strangers usually are, and perhaps a number of them used the tinker's equipment only as a blind and were really beggars, or even smalltime thieves and con men. At any rate, tinkers were traditionally considered rascals and rogues.

Christopher Sly, then, being a tinker, and showing himself in costume and action to be an utter no-account, is amusing in claiming to be descended from one of the Norman barons who conquered England in the eleventh century.

What's more, Sly's amalgamation of William the Conqueror and Richard the Lion-Hearted (the latter was the great-great-grandson of the former) helps the humor with the audience. Even the least sophisticated of the Elizabethans would surely catch the error.

Christopher Sly falls into a drunken slumber, just as a Lord and his hunt-tag party come on the scene. Finding Sly, it occurs to the Lord to play an elaborate practical joke. They are to take Sly, dress him in fine clothes, and, when he wakes, convince him that he is a great nobleman who for many years has been mad and thought himself a pauper.

This is done, and in the second scene of the Induction, Sly, awakening with a call for small beer, finds himself attended by a variety of obsequious servants who wait on him with the greatest tenderness and with a wealth of classical allusions. The Lord himself plays a role as servant and says respectfully:

—Induction, scene ii, lines 37-39

Semiramis is the legendary Queen of Assyria who had become a byword, among the Greeks, for luxury (see page I-403).

Among other things, they offer Sly a choice of paintings dealing with mythological subjects. Thus, one servant says:

—Induction, scene ii, lines 49-51

This refers to the myth of Venus and Adonis, concerning which Shakespeare had written a long poem a year or two before he wrote this play (see page I-5).

Cytherea is an alternate name for Venus, derived from the fact that an important seat of her worship was the island of Cythera, just off the southeastern corner of Greece.

The Lord offers a second choice:

—Induction, scene ii, lines 54-55

Io was a daughter of the river god Inachus in the Greek myths, and Jupiter fell in love with her. The myth has nothing to say about how Io was "beguiled and surprised," though Jupiter used guile on other young ladies, notably Europa (see page I-44). The myth concentrates instead on the manner in which Jupiter's jealous wife, Juno, persecuted Io afterward (see page I-86).

A third choice is presented:

—Induction, scene ii, lines 57-59

Daphne was a nymph sworn to virginity whom Apollo loved. She rejected his advances and fled from him when he tried to seize her. He pursued and would have caught her, but at the last minute, her mother, Gaea (the earth goddess), turned her into a laurel tree.

Little by little, then, Sly is convinced that after all he is a lord. He even begins to speak in blank verse instead of the usual prose. And to cap the climax, a play is presented for his edification, and it is this play which is what we usually think of as The Taming of the Shrew.

The play within a play opens with two young men, Lucentio and his servant Tranio, entering. Lucentio summarizes the situation:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-3

Padua is a city in northeastern Italy a little over twenty miles west of Venice and noted for its university.

Medieval Italy was, in fact, famous for its universities, for learning had taken new root there while it was still all but dead in the countries beyond the Alps. The first medieval university was established in Bologna, eighty miles southwest of Venice, in 1088. It specialized in the study of Roman law and remained the great center of legal studies for centuries afterward.

Bologna had its quarrels and problems and, on occasion, its schisms. In 1222 a group of its professors and students broke away and established a competing university at Padua, and it was this which made that city the "nursery of arts." It, as well as Bologna, supported a great law school and the two were great rivals.

Padua was an independent city-state through the Middle Ages but in 1405 it was absorbed into the territory of the Venetian republic and was still part of it in Shakespeare's time (and remained so till 1797). Padua was not actually part of Lombardy in the medieval or modern sense. Lombardy is located in northwestern Italy with Milan as its chief city, and even at its closest approach, Lombardy is fifty miles west of Padua.

This, however, is not as bad as it sounds. In the eighth century all of northern Italy was under the control of the Lombards and the term might therefore be used in a poetic sense for northern Italy generally. (Nevertheless, Shakespeare may well have been a little hazy on the fine points of Italian geography. This shows up more clearly elsewhere.)

Lucentio has come to Padua for an education, but he pauses also to announce his birthplace:

—Act I, scene i, lines 10-11

Pisa is located on the western coast of Italy, about 140 miles southwest of Padua. During the Middle Ages it was for a time a great commercial city, the rival of Genoa and Venice. It was at its height between 1050 and 1250, and in 1173 it built what is now its leading feature, a bell tower that, through some flaw in its foundation, settled out of the vertical. It is the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Toward the end of the thirteenth century Pisa was defeated in a long war with Genoa and began a steady decline. In 1406 it was captured by the forces of the city of Florence, forty-five miles to its east, and remained under Florentine domination through Shakespeare's time (and, indeed, until 1860). In fact, Lucentio describes himself as:

—Act I, scene i, line 14

Florence, the home city of Dante, was the very epitome of Renaissance culture. It was the Athens of Italy, and one would boast of being brought up there as one might boast of having been brought up in Athens in ancient times or in Paris in modern times.

Tranio is a little nervous at Lucentio's grandiloquent speech, for he views with some concern the prospect of a close course of study. He says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 31-33

Tranio's distaste for Stoics (see page I-305) or for Aristotle (see page I-104) is not so puzzling in a merry young man.

As for Ovid, whom he prefers, his best-known work is his Metamorphoses (see page I-8). However, a more notorious piece of work was his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), which gave, in witty and amusing style, a course in seduction for young men.

Ovid insisted it was intended to deal only with the relations of young men and women of easy virtue, but it could easily be applied to anyone, of course, and the Emperor Augustus, a very moral man, was outraged at its publication. It was one of the reasons why Ovid was banished to a far corner of the Empire a few years later.

It is undoubtedly The Art of Love of which Tranio is thinking, and he is urging Lucentio not to be so wrapped up in his studies as to forget to have a little fun now and then.

Tranio need not have worried. Lucentio is, actually, all on the side of Ovid too, and something comes up at once to prove it.

A rich merchant of Padua, Baptista, comes on the scene with his two daughters, Katherina (or, for short, Kate) and Bianca. Trailing him are two other men also, the aged Gremio and the younger Hortensio.

Both Gremio and Hortensio are clamoring for the hand of Bianca, the younger daughter, a gentle girl, who stands with eyes cast down and rarely speaks. (Her very name means "white," as though to emphasize her color-lessness.)

Baptista will have none of this, however. He will not allow Bianca to marry until the elder sister, Kate, is married. The two suitors can have their chance at her. If one marries her the other may woo Bianca.

But it turns out at once that Kate is a furious shrew, whose every word is a threat, whose eyes flash fire, and who is ready at a moment's notice to commit mayhem. The two suitors climb over each other in an attempt to get away from her.

Tranio and Lucentio are watching from the sidelines. Tranio is amazed at the shrewishness of Kate, but Lucentio has eyes only for the gentle Bianca. When Bianca humbly accepts her father's delay of her marriage, Lucentio is ravished with her modest words. He says to Tranio:

—Act I, scene i, line 84

Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom (her very name may be related to mens, meaning "mind") and is the analogue of the Greek Athena.

Baptista and his daughters go off, but not till after the father mentions in passing that he is looking for a music teacher for Bianca.

Gremio and Hortensio look after them in chagrin and decide that the only way they can manage to pursue their suit of Bianca is to find some madman, somehow, who will be willing to marry Katherina. After all, Baptista is enormously rich, so that Katherina (considering her shrewishness and the difficulty of getting rid of her) would command a huge dowry.

They leave too, and Lucentio comes out of his wide-eyed trance to find himself deeply in love at first sight with Bianca. He says to Tranio:

—Act I, scene i, lines 150-51

Love-in-idleness is the pansy, which was thought in Elizabethan nature folklore to have the effect of a love potion (see page I-34). Lucentio decides to be utterly frank about his feelings and plans, for he says to Tranio:

—Act I, scene i, lines 153-54

Anna was the sister of Dido (see page I-20) and her confidante. Lucentio goes on to say:

—Act I, scene i, lines 166-70

Agenor was a mythical king of Tyre and his daughter was Europa, for whose sake Zeus (Jupiter, or Jove) turned himself into a bull and with her swam to Crete (see page I-44).

Love gives Lucentio an idea. He will impersonate a schoolmaster and get the post teaching Bianca. While he is doing this, his servant, Tranio, can pretend to be Lucentio, performing the educational and social tasks that the real Lucentio ought to be doing (and concerning which his father, Vincentio, back in Pisa, will expect to hear of now and then).

At the end of the first scene, attention is suddenly drawn to Christopher Sly, the tinker, sitting in the balcony. He is dreadfully bored, but doesn't like to say so. When the page, who is pretending to be his wife, asks how he likes it, he says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 252-53

But Christopher Sly is done, for we hear no more of him ever. From this point on, the play within a play is the play itself, while Christopher Sly, the Lord who fools him, and all the play-acting servants vanish from the scene.

It's possible that Shakespeare simply forgot about them. Shakespeare had, apparently, borrowed the device from an earlier anonymous play, The Taming of a Shrew ("a" rather than "the"), which used the play within a play technique. It may be, however, that Shakespeare got so interested in the play about the shrew that he grew impatient with the outer frame as merely serving to get in his way and dropped it.

Why, then, did he not go back and cross out the Induction and these few lines at the end of the first scene? In this connection, we must take into account the legend that Shakespeare prided himself on never revising.

Another possibility is that Shakespeare did keep the frame but that the later parts were omitted by accident from the particular copy that survived and was used as the basis for the first collection of his plays.

The second scene opens with the entrance of Petruchio, the hero of the play. He says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-2

Verona is another city of northern Italy and is located some forty miles west of Padua. In Shakespeare's time, Verona, like Padua, was part of the Venetian republic.

Petruchio is accompanied by his servant, Grumio, and together they are on the doorstep of Hortensio's house, Hortensio being one of the friends Petruchio has come to see.

There is a contretemps at once, one designed to show that Petruchio is as great a shrew in his way as Katherina is in hers. He orders Grumio to knock at the gate, but Grumio takes him to mean to strike Petruchio himself, and refuses. There is a loud clamor, at which Hortensio opens the door.

Petruchio and Hortensio embrace each other and the former explains that he has come to Padua to seek his fortune. Hortensio at once has the notion of suggesting that Petruchio marry Katherina but, remembering her shrewishness, hesitates to play so foul a trick on a friend.

Petruchio, however, urges him on. He is after money and that is the only requirement he has. Aside from that:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 68-71

Florentius is the name of a knight in Confessio Amantis by John Gower (see page I-181). The plot is one in which a knight is forced to marry a horrible old hag who has helped him in time of need and who requires the marriage as recompense. The reward to the knight for keeping his word is that the hag turns into a beautiful maiden after the marriage.

"Sibyl" is from the Greek sibylla, their name for a priestess attached to a shrine or temple who had the ability to utter prophecies. Such a woman would fall into real or pretended fits (which may have been drug-induced) and would utter incoherent sounds which a priest would then interpret in the form of carefully ambiguous sentences.

Sibyls were supposed to attain great ages, for after all, an old woman, with her great experience, might more plausibly be expected to have arcane knowledge than a young one. Besides, prior to the nineteenth century, births of common people were not registered and individuals who lived to their seventies were rare. A wrinkled old crone was an unusual and somewhat frightening sight and it was easy to believe she had strange powers (of a sibyl in ancient times, of a witch in later times) and had lived for a century and more.

A mythic explanation is that Sibylla, beloved by Apollo, offered to give herself to him in return for the gift of prophecy and for as many years of life as the grams of sand which she could hold in her hand. When Apollo granted the wish and Sibylla reneged on her own promise, the angry god pointed out that the girl had asked for years of life and not for youth and allowed her to grow older and older and older.

As for Xanthippe, she was Socrates' wife, and the tales told of her show her to have been a scolding shrew. To be sure, any impartial person would have to admit she had some justification, since Socrates neglected his family to wander about the market place, talking philosophy and teaching rich noblemen without pay, so that his family was always in want. Nevertheless, people aren't impartial. Since Socrates is thought of as the wisest of men and as a kind of pagan saint, Xanthippe is frowned upon for complaining.

The complications grow. Petruchio insists he will woo and win Katherina for her money, quite without regard for her shrewishness. Whereupon it occurs to Hortensio (as earlier it had occurred, independently, to Lucentio) to disguise himself as a teacher and be brought to the house under the patronage of Petruchio. If Petruchio offers to woo Katherina, surely the delighted Baptista will accept his protege for the post of teacher and Hortensio would then be on the inside track with Bianca.

At this point, though, in comes Gremio, with no one other than the disguised Lucentio. Gremio is going to sponsor the disguised Lucentio for the post of teacher, planning to have the man plead Gremio's cause with Bianca. Then in comes Tranio, in fancy clothes, disguised as his master, Lucentio. He too is heading for Baptista's house to woo Bianca.

When Gremio and Hortensio object, the disguised Tranio says grandly:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 243-46

Leda was a queen of Sparta with whom Jupiter fell in love. He visited her in the shape of a swan with the result that eventually Leda laid an egg, out of which Helen was hatched. Helen, as the very epitome of womanly beauty, naturally had many wooers (see page I-90), but was eventually snatched away by Paris.

There are thus four men now after Bianca. There is 1) Gremio; 2) Hortensio, soon to be disguised as a teacher; 3) Lucentio, already disguised as a teacher; and 4) Tranio, disguised as Lucentio.

All understand though mat everything depends on how Petruchio fares with Katherina, and Gremio says, gloomily, that that task is liable to be harder than Hercules' twelve labors put together.

In Baptista's house, meanwhile, Katherina the Shrew is cruelly baiting her younger sister, Bianca, whose hands she has bound. Katherina is demanding to know which of Bianca's many suitors the younger girl likes best, and one may easily suppose that Kate is annoyed at the ease with which Bianca gains love, while she herself remains with no one.

This is made the clearer when Baptista comes in, rescues Bianca, and scolds Katherina. Katherina at once accuses Baptista of favoritism:

—Act II, scene i, lines 31-34

To dance barefoot on the wedding day symbolizes the humiliation of an older unmarried sister on the occasion of a younger sister's marriage. Leading apes in hell is the traditional fate of women who die spinsters.

Shakespeare seems to be making it quite clear that Katherina is a girl who desperately wants love and who doesn't know how to go about getting it. She lacks the natural charm that is so often visible in a quiet, simpering girl, and the fascination that goes with a spirited temper is somewhat less obvious.

Shakespeare does not give us the early history of Katherina, but it is not difficult to suppose that her temper was nothing out of the ordinary till a younger sister came along. A quieter little girl, a younger, the baby of the family, would draw the attention of the father, and with every sign of favoritism, Kate would grow wilder in her indignation and Baptista would cling all the more closely to the little one.

There is no sign that Baptista is actually cruel to Kate, and he is trying to get her a husband, but he cannot conceal the fact that he likes Bianca better, so that the vicious cycle continues till Katherina is virtually mad for lack of love and in becoming so has made it impossible for herself to receive love even if it were offered-or almost impossible.

Now the pack of suitors enters Baptista's house. Petruchio tackles his Hercules' labor at once, announcing himself in affable fashion, and stating that he has come to woo Katherina, of whose mild and sweet behavior he has heard a great deal. While Baptista stands there gasping at this novel description of his older daughter, Petruchio blandly introduces Hortensio in disguise, urging his acceptance as a music teacher. Petruchio says of his disguised friend:

—Act II, scene i, line 60

Thus, another north Italian city is mentioned. Mantua is sixty miles southwest of Padua.

Old Gremio has his ax to grind too. He wants his teacher (the disguised Lucentio) in the house for his own purposes (though he hasn't an inkling that his candidate for the post fully intends to double-cross him). Gremio introduces the disguised Lucentio under the name of Cambio.

Since the disguised Hortensio has been put forward as a specialist in music and mathematics, Gremio avoids those subjects in order to get his man hired as well. He introduces him, saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 79-82

Rheims (Reims) is not an Italian, but a French city, and is located five hundred miles northwest of Padua. Its distance and its foreignness may serve to give the disguised Lucentio an exotic cachet that would be particularly valued in a teacher. Reims is chiefly noted for the fact that the kings of France were traditionally crowned there (see page II-539).

Tranio also introduces himself as Lucentio, thus (presumably) making it easier for the real Lucentio to avoid discovery and allowing a two-pronged attack on Bianca. The real Lucentio would win her love for his person, and Tranio, in the guise of Lucentio, would win her father's official permission.

Meanwhile, Petruchio asks permission to woo Katherina at once, pleading haste. Hortensio, who has gone inside to teach the girls music, comes flying out with the lute broken over his head, thanks to Katherina's shrewish temper. Petruchio isn't fazed at all. As soon as Katherina enters, breathing fire, he is at her at once, insisting on calling her only by the familiar version of her name. He says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 185-89

In Shakespeare's time "cates" were delicacies, luxury foods, and, of course, Petruchio is playing the pun for all it is worth.

Katherina hears herself praised in a fashion she has never experienced before, but, alas, she cannot accept it. Nothing will convince her that she is not being ridiculed, so she fights it off, in the old, old way, making it impossible for herself to receive what she most longs to receive.

But Petruchio is patient, and when after a long battle of wits, she is no less shrewish than she was at the beginning, he simply praises her to her father and announces success. He says to Baptista:

—Act II, scene i, lines 286-91

Grissel is a variant form of Griselda, the heroine of the last tale in Boccaccio's Decameron, a tale picked up by Chaucer and included in his Canterbury Tales. The tale is of an Italian nobleman who marries a beautiful and virtuous lowborn maiden named Griselda, whom he proceeds to test. He pretends to kill the two children she bears him, pretends to tire of her and marry a younger woman, and so on. Through a set of unbelievable trials, Griselda remains unbelievably patient and is finally rewarded by being restored to her own in full with her children about her. Griselda has ever since been a byword for patience.

Lucrece is Shakespeare's favorite pattern of chastity (see page I-205).

Katherina protests vociferously against the notion of marriage and those who hear this are amused. Petruchio is, however, perfectly calm. Ignoring Kate's shrewish anger, he says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 307-8

Venice was the richest of the Italian cities. As a great trading center, it was bound to have merchandise from all over the world and therefore a wonderful selection of clothes.

With Katherina taken care of, Bianca must be disposed of. Hortensio is still playing his role as teacher, which leaves Gremio and the disguised Tranio (playing the role of Lucentio) as two official suitors who happen to be on the spot. Baptista offers to give Bianca to whichever of these two can offer more.

The two start bidding. Since Tranio is not really bidding on his own, he can easily raise the other's bid every time until Gremio is forced out of the competition. On the other hand, Gremio controls his own wealth, whereas Tranio, pretending to be Lucentio, has nothing at all unless his father confirms the bid.

Baptista therefore says that Tranio (the supposed Lucentio) can have Bianca if his father will guarantee what Tranio has promised; otherwise Gremio can have her.

This leaves Tranio rather in a fix. Since he's not really Lucentio, he can't really deal with Lucentio's father, Vincentio. Well then, there will have to be still another imposture:

—Act II, scene i, lines 400-1

Indoors, meanwhile, the disguised Lucentio and the disguised Hortensio are both teaching Bianca and actually whispering love messages in competition. It becomes clear that Bianca prefers Lucentio.

Petruchio now puts in his plan to tame Katherina. He is deliberately late for the wedding and when he does come, it is in an impossible costume. He was supposed to have gone to Venice for gorgeous clothing, but he arrives in old, unmatched clothes and riding a horse so old and sick it can barely move.

The gathered wedding guests are horrified. Surely he cannot mean to let Katherina see him so, let alone marry him so. But he says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 116-17

It is the key to Petruchio's scheme. Katherina must accept him for whatever he is and even for whatever he pretends to be; but she must accept.

He continues his mad behavior at the wedding, which takes place offstage and which Gremio describes for the audience. Petruchio swears his acceptance of Katherina, strikes the priest, throws wine at the sexton, and kisses the bride with a sound like a cannon report.

Once they are back from the church, Petruchio announces he must go away at once, with Katherina. All beg him to stay for the wedding feast. He refuses. Katherina begs. He still refuses.

Whereupon Katherina falls into a fury and orders the wedding feast to proceed. Petruchio agrees, but it must proceed without them. He seizes Katherina and says fiercely to the assembled guests:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 229-33

There is a glancing reference here to the tenth commandment, which begins "Thou shalt not covet" (see Exodus 21:17) and in listing the examples of objects belonging to a neighbor that must not be coveted, ends with "nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's."

There is a strong temptation for males watching the play to feel pleased with Petruchio at this point, but our better natures must assert themselves. This bald assertion of male superiority that treats women as commodities, as animals, as objects, is quite out of line with modern thinking.

It is quite common to excuse Shakespeare by saying that such male domination was taken for granted in Elizabethan society and that Shakespeare was just echoing his time-but Shakespeare does not take this attitude in any other play. Shakespeare's heroines are, if anything, wiser, more capable, and better than his heroes. We can reasonably assume, then, that Petruchio is doing more than merely express a common attitude toward women-this is all part of his plan and nothing deeper than that.

Petruchio brings Katherina to his country house. He has been in a shrewish rage all the way, according to his servant, Grumio, who arrives there first. When Petruchio comes onstage, he continues to seem mad with passion. Kate can't rest, eat, or sleep for his yelling and discontent with everything.

This, however, merely continues the role he has been playing since the day of his wooing. The servants who know him aren't fooled. One says:

—Act IV, scene i, line 174

And Petruchio himself, in a soliloquy, tells the audience:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 182-83

Of course, Petruchio has the money for which he married Katherina. But he wants, we may suppose, a quiet, loving wife too, and it is for this he plans his course of action.

Meanwhile Lucentio's wooing progresses wonderfully well. In his guise as a schoolmaster teaching Latin, he says:

—Act IV, scene ii, line 8

This is Ovid's book which had been indirectly hinted at by Tranio at the very start of the play. The disguised Lucentio says he not only reads The Art to Love, he practices it, and Bianca demurely says she hopes he's good at it.

Hortensio, in his guise as Litio the music teacher, is outraged at Bianca's open preference for someone who seems a lowborn rascal, and abandons her, saying he will go marry a widow who has long been after him.

But while Bianca is accepting the real Lucentio, Tranio (the false Lucentio) must find a false Vincentio to win over Bianca's father. At last an old Pedant who looks the part comes onstage and Tranio stops him and asks if he is traveling on. The Pedant says:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 75-76

It is a longish journey he plans. It is 250 miles overland due south from Padua to Rome, and then 600 miles across the sea to Tripoli, which is on the north African coast.

When asked where he is from, he answers:

—Act IV, scene ii, line 77

Mantua is sixty miles west of Padua, so that if he has come to Padua from Mantua on his way to Rome, he has gone at right angles to his proper course. But then, he may not have come directly from Mantua.

In any case, Tranio at once invents a proclamation in Padua, announcing death to all Mantuans in the city because of some high political quarrel, and offers to save the Pedant's life by allowing him to pose as a Pisan; that is, as Vincentio. The Pedant gratefully accepts.

Katherina is slowly wearing down from lack of food and sleep. She is trying to beg food from Petruchio's servant, Grumio, saying that she is

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 9-12

Surely, this is a key passage. He is wearing her down and forcing her to accept whatever she is offered, not out of cruelty, but in order to force her eventually to accept the one important thing-love.

It is precisely this which is hardest for her to accept, for, as she says, she is more annoyed at being offered love than at being denied food and sleep. And it is precisely love which she must accept.

For all her begging, though, Katherina continues to get no food. What's more, Petruchio promises her clothes but when the haberdasher and tailor arrive, he is utterly discontented with what they offer. Although Katherina cries out that she likes them, he will have none of them, and when Katherina protests, he calmly pretends she is agreeing with him.

They make ready to go to Padua and visit Katherina's father without new clothes, but in exactly what they are wearing. Petruchio casually says it is seven o'clock and Kate tells him, politely enough, that it is two. Whereupon Petruchio falls into a passion:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 192-93

That is what Petruchio is after. He must train Katherina to accept as true whatever he says, however ridiculous it must seem to her.

The Pedant in the guise of old Vincentio goes through the matter of the dowry with old Baptista in very satisfactory fashion, and while the fathers are thus engaged, the real Lucentio makes ready to elope with Bianca.

Meanwhile Petruchio and Katherina (along with Hortensio) are on the road to Padua. Petruchio comments on the brightness of the moon. Katherina points out it is the sun. Whereupon Petruchio falls into a rage again, and says:

—Act IV, scene v, lines 6-8

Finally Katherina breaks down and says, wearily:

—Act IV, scene v, lines 12-15

Petruchio puts her through her paces, making her say first that the object in the sky is the moon, then the sun. When they meet an old man, he has Katherina greet him first as a young maiden and then apologize and greet him as an old man. Katherina follows the flicking of Petruchio's whip perfectly, accepting whatever he says as true.

And that prepares her to accept the one thing he has constantly been saying from the moment he met her-that he loves her.

Thus, by bending Katherina to his will, Petruchio has used a temporary brutality to force the girl to accept what most in the world she has longed to accept-the love of a man. Now, and now only, she can be content

The old man that Petruchio and Katherina have met happens to be Vincentio, the real Vincentio, coming to Padua to see his son. Once he gets there, he goes nearly mad with frustration, for the Pedant claims he is Vincentio and Tranio claims he is Lucentio, so that the true Vincentio can't make himself believed.

He is saved only by the appearance of the real Lucentio, who is now married to Bianca. Baptista is a little annoyed at the ruse that has kept him from giving Bianca to Gremio, but the real Vincentio approves the match and the two fathers will now settle everything.

There is another wedding feast and when Katherina wants to join the happy throng, Petruchio says:

—Act V, scene i, line 142

Katherina begins to object, for they are in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Petruchio, however, frowns, and Katherina hastily kisses him as nicely as you please. Petruchio says:

—Act V, scene i, line 149

Of course, it is well. By the kiss, Katherina shows that she has accepted love. It is the triumph of Petruchio, a triumph for love and not for brutality, and Cole Porter did well to name his own musical version of the play Kiss me, Kate.

At the wedding feast all is gay, and Petruchio, in perfect good humor now, has to withstand a number of quips about being married to a shrew. He waits till the women are gone and proposes a wager. The three newly married men, Lucentio, Hortensio, and himself, are each to send, separately, for their wives. The man with the most obedient wife wins a hundred crowns.

Lucentio sends first, in perfect confidence. The answer comes back by way of a servant:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 79-80

The widow whom Hortensio has married does even worse; for the word comes back:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 91-92

It is not really surprising that sweet Bianca doesn't come. Why should she? She has spent her whole life being sweet Bianca, and simpering and exuding charm, for only one purpose-to catch a man (first her father, then her husband). Well, her catching days are over, at least for a while, and now she means to relax. Wouldn't anyone after a lifetime of work?

The same for the widow, doubly, since she has had to work a second time to catch a second husband.

Lucentio in sending for his wife had told his servant to "bid your mistress." Hortensio, after Bianca's failure, had said "entreat" instead. Petruchio scorns all softness. He says:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 95-96

And to everyone's surprise, she does come, in perfect obedience. And again, why not? She had not labored to win love. It had been Petruchio who had labored to give love, and she has every reason to be grateful.

At his command, Katherina goes back to bring in the other two wives, and the gentle Bianca, when she hears about the lost wager, says to Lucentio:

—Act V, scene ii, line 129

Who's the shrew now?

Petruchio orders Kate to deliver the women a long lecture on the duty they owe their husband and she does, saying in part:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 161-62

It may seem that this final speech is one long irony and that what Katherina has learned has been to show a false acquiescence so that she can rule her husband by pretending to be ruled by him. (In the movie version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, this interpretation is implied in the very last post-speech action.)

Yet it is not necessary to suppose this. It doesn't matter who "rules." Petruchio and Katherina are in love and as long as love exists, "ruler" and "ruled" lose their meaning. Petruchio looked only for money, and got love too. Katherina looked for nothing and got love. It is a completely happy ending.

16. The Two Gentlemen Of Verona

Of Shakespeare's early comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, written about 1594, is perhaps the most forgettable. It is so weak, in fact, that some critics think it may have been written as early as 1590 or else that the version we now have is a mangled copy of the real play.

Shakespeare may have used as his source material for the play an unfinished romance, Diana Enamorada, written in Spanish by a Portugal-born poet, Jorge de Montemayor, in 1542. The only difficulty with that suggestion is that the romance was not translated into English until 1598, some four years after The Two Gentlemen of Verona was written. We might speculate that Shakespeare saw the English translation in manuscript or that he saw the French translation, which had appeared in 1578.

Verona, where the play opens, is a city in north-central Italy. It is a favorite setting for Renaissance comedy and was briefly mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew as the home town of Petruchio (see page I-451). It is also the home town of the two friends who are protagonists in this play.

The play opens with the two gentlemen of Verona on the scene. They are Valentine and Proteus. The latter name is significant. In Greek mythology, Proteus was an infinitely changeable sea deity (see page II-655), and much of the action in this play is produced by the changeable character of the Proteus we now meet.

Valentine and Proteus, it seems, are about to part. Valentine is setting off on his travels, for in Shakespeare's time, a period of travel in youth was considered an essential part of the education of a young man.

Proteus, however, prefers to remain at home in Verona, for he is in love with a young lady and will not leave her. Valentine teases Proteus, saying that the latter is so lovesick that even in praying, he will do so…

—Act I, scene i, lines 21-22

The Hellespont (better known today as the Dardanelles) is a narrow strait, about forty miles long, separating Turkey and Greece, and it forms part of the waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. At its narrowest it is only three fourths of a mile wide. On the European side in ancient times was the Greek city of Sestos, where a beautiful young girl, Hero, served as priestess of Aphrodite, according to a tale that was told in antiquity and that has never lost its popularity. On the Asian side, in the Greek city of Abydos, lived a handsome youth named Leander.

Hero and Leander met at a festival and fell instantly in love. Thereafter, every night Leander swam the Hellespont to be with Hero, guided by a light she placed in her window. One stormy night, the light was blown out and Leander lost his way and was drowned. When his dead body was washed ashore, the grief-stricken Hero plunged into the waters to her own death.

The tale is a favorite of Shakespeare's. He mentions it several times.

But Valentine must leave and the two friends cannot talk long. Valentine says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 53-54

Verona isn't a seaport, to be sure. It is sixty-five miles from the sea. Perhaps Valentine means to travel overland to Venice and take ship there; or to travel to the sea by way of the Adige River, on which Verona is located. That depends, of course, on where he is going, and he tells us quickly, for he says to Proteus:

—Act I, scene i, lines 57-58

But Milan is not a seaport either (it is seventy-five miles north of Genoa) and cannot be reached directly by sea. One has the vision of Valentine traveling sixty-five miles to Venice, taking ship all around Italy to Genoa, a voyage of about one thousand four hundred miles, and then traveling seventy-five miles overland to Milan.

This is scarcely necessary, since in actual fact Milan is only ninety miles due west of Verona over undoubtedly well-traveled roads. One can argue, of course, that there were ways of traveling from Verona to Milan by inland waterways, but it is much more likely that Shakespeare simply didn't bother checking his geography. Nor need he have really. The audience wouldn't care and the actual cities have nothing to do with the story. It might just as well have been London and Amsterdam with an appropriate sea voyage between.

With Valentine gone, Proteus turns his attention to his love for Julia, who, it quickly turns out, returns his love fully and is coy only out of maidenly modesty (and, perhaps, design too, to make herself more dearly valued).

And yet Proteus' stay in Verona does not entirely please his father, Antonio, who wants his son educated too. He discusses the matter with Pan-thino, who is listed as his servant in the cast of characters, and Panthino is all in favor of sending Proteus on his travels. He says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27

Through the most famous part of its history, in the fifteenth century, Milan was an independent duchy and the Duke of Milan was one of the best-known princes in Italy. There were two famous lines of these dukes, Visconti and Sforza, and indeed it is the Duke of Milan (unnamed) who is an important character in the play. Why, then, this reference to the Em-seror?

To be sure, Milan had an imperial past. In the fourth century it, rather than Rome, was the place of residence of the Roman emperors in the West, and it was from Milan, for instance, that the Roman Emperor Constantine [issued his edict establishing official toleration of Christianity in 313.

More likely to have influenced Shakespeare's thinking, however, was the fact that in 1535 Milan lost its independence and became part of the wide-spreading dominions of Emperor Charles V (see page II-747). Shakespeare may have associated Milan with the Empire so thoroughly that he spoke of the Emperor when he meant to refer to the situation as it had been a century earlier and speak of the Duke. (Or else the term "Emperor" is just another fault in the mangled copy of the original play on which alone our present version is based.)

And so, impressed by Valentine's success at the court of Milan, Antonio decides to send his son, Proteus, there too, and Proteus, to his chagrin [for he has just learned of Julia's love for him), finds he must go.

Now begin the complications. In Milan Valentine has fallen deeply in love with Silvia, the daughter of the Duke of Milan. She is presented as a paragon of beauty and virtue. Also in love with her is Thurio, much inferior to Valentine in looks and character, but who the Duke has destined to be her husband. As for Silvia, there is soon no doubt it is Valentine she loves.

Into this triangle comes Proteus, who has taken an emotional leave of Julia and has exchanged rings with her as tokens of love. As soon as Proteus meets Silvia, however, he demonstrates his right to his name. He changes completely, falling in love with Silvia on the instant, forgetting his Julia, and at once planning to betray his friend.

Valentine intends to use a rope ladder to get to Silvia's window and lope with her. He confides this to Proteus, who promptly passes the information on to the Duke. The Duke therefore confronts Valentine, who is on his way to the elopement, and has no trouble at all in catching him out. In a rage, the Duke banishes Valentine from his court, leaving the field that much clearer for the perfidious Proteus.

Meanwhile, Julia, left behind in Verona by Proteus, can endure her loneliness no longer. She determines to travel to Milan to see him, and to avoid the troubles that might come to an unattended maiden on a voyage such as that, she decides to dress like a man.

This is a convention used by Shakespeare in several of his plays (though first, chronologically, in this one), and to us it carries no conviction at all. The audience is invariably amused that the hero cannot see that under the male clothing a female lies barely concealed, and gains but a poor notion of the hero's powers of observation. However, a convention is a convention (like the one in the movies whereby whenever two lovers in isolation begin a love duet, the sound of an orchestra appears out of nowhere). Besides, in Shakespeare's time female parts were played by boys, and to have a boy-Julia dress up like a man was much more convincing than to have a girl-Julia do so. In fact, it was when the boy-Julia was playing Julia as a girl that he may have been least convincing.

In this play, at any rate, Shakespeare does manage to point out some of the difficulties of trying to switch outward appearances. Julia's maid, Lu-cetta, who disapproves of her mistress' plan, asks coldly how to make the breeches, and when Julia tells her to make them any way she pleases, Lu-cetta answers:

—Act II, scene vii, line 53

A codpiece was a baglike affair, covering the opening in the front of the breeches. It was, in effect, a container for the penis and was quite fashionable in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There was a tendency to fill it out with stuffing of one sort or another, partly as protection, and partly to make the organ seem more prominent than it was (much in the way that ladies' brassieres are tampered with in our own times). They might also be decorated or prinked out for the same purpose.

Naturally, the maidenly Julia is shocked at the mention of the object, but Lucetta says:

—Act II, scene vii, lines 55-56

The reference to the codpiece as a pincushion is Lucetta's wry way of saying that Julia will have nothing inside to interfere with that use. It may also be a sardonic reference to men who use so much stuffing that pins may safely be stuck in it Despite Lucetta's discouragement, Julia remains firm in her determination to make the trip.

Valentine, traveling sadly away from Milan, falls in with a group of outlaws in a forest through which he is passing. Valentine points out he has no money and pretends he has been banished for having killed a man in a duel.

The fact that he has no money spoils him as a victim; the fact that he has killed a man commends him as a comrade; and the fact that he is handsome seems to have an effect also. The Third Outlaw says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 36-37

Any mention of outlaws would instantly remind an English audience of Robin Hood, and Shakespeare is usually very responsive to his audience. The "fat friar" is, of course, Friar Tuck, who scarcely needs further words to an American audience either.

The outlaws then introduce themselves to Valentine, for it seems that many of them are gentlemen who have been outlawed for some little prank or other which are common to hot-blooded young men of high birth. As the Second Outlaw says, in what seems to be an aggrieved tone, concerning his own outlawry:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 50-51

Mantua was briefly mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew as the home town of the Pedant (see page II-454). It is about twenty-five miles southwest of Verona and in Shakespeare's tune (and for nearly five centuries before) it was an independent duchy.

Meanwhile, Proteus continues to betray everyone in sight. Having abandoned Julia and having treated Valentine most despicably, he is now prepared to double-cross Thurio. Under the pretense of pushing the latter's suit with Silvia, Proteus woos her for himself, singing for her the lovely ballad "Who is Silvia?"

Julia, in her male disguise, has come in time to hear it and understands at once the extent of Proteus' duplicity. She also hears Silvia nobly remain faithful to her Valentine and scorn Proteus as a traitor. Silvia urges Proteus to return to Julia (of whom she has apparently heard).

Silvia plans to flee from Milan and make her way to Valentine, wherever he is, while Julia decides to carry her plan one step further by attempting to gain employment with Proteus as his servant, under the name of Sebastian.

Proteus does indeed employ her and at once uses her as his go-between with Silvia. Sebastian and Silvia fall to discussing Julia, and Silvia wants to know how tall she is. Sebastian says:

—Act IV, scene iv, lines 158-63

Pentecost was originally a Jewish harvest festival ("Shabuoth") celebrated seven weeks after Passover. (The Hebrew word means "weeks.") Its celebration came on the fiftieth day counting from the first day of Passover. For that reason it received the name Pentecost, which is from a Greek word meaning "fiftieth."

Pentecost gamed a special Christian significance because it was on that day, the first celebration after the crucifixion of Jesus, that the apostles received the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in Acts 2:1-4, it says: "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Consequently, Pentecost remained an important Christian holiday and was celebrated on the seventh Sunday after Easter.

Easter and Pentecost were favored times for baptisms, but in England and other parts of northern Europe Pentecost was the more often used because it came in a warmer season of the year (late May or early June). Since the newly baptized generally wore white for a week to signify the new-washed purity of their souls, Pentecost is commonly called Whitsunday ("White Sunday") in England. Some speculate that this is really "Wit Sunday" ("Wisdom Sunday") celebrating the time when spiritual wisdom rained down upon the apostles.

Naturally, Pentecost was a joyous holiday and was celebrated with dances, plays, and other outdoor amusements.

Julia describes her Pentecost role, saying:

—Act IV, scene iv, lines 166-68

Julia, in her guise as Sebastian, is thinking of herself, of course, for she is much in Ariadne's position (see page I-31).

But now the action speeds up bewilderingly.

Silvia flees Milan to seek for Valentine. Her father, the Duke, and also Thurio and Proteus leave in pursuit of her while Julia follows Proteus.

Silvia is captured by the outlaws and is rescued by Proteus, but she still refuses to listen to his protestations of love (which Valentine overhears, so that he learns the truth at last).

The desperate Proteus threatens rape and then, finally, Valentine confronts his false friend. After Valentine's tongue-lashing, Proteus tearfully repents and at once Valentine forgives him. Valentine does more than that, in fact. He says:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 82-83

Most critics find it utterly beyond the bounds of reason to suppose that Valentine should on an instant forgive an all-but-unforgivable falseness in his friend and then abandon his love to him as well-to say nothing of the insult offered Silvia in treating her as though she were a sack of wheat to be bartered. Some suspect a corrupt text, an ill-remembered denouement, a cut version.

Any of these possibilities may be so for all we know, and yet it might also be argued that Shakespeare meant it exactly as it stands. There is some reason to suspect that Shakespeare may have had homosexual tendencies (see page I-4), but there are no outright homosexuals in his plays except for Patroclus in Troilus and Cressida (see page I-98), and that was enforced by the Greek tale. Nevertheless, there are a number of cases in the romances in which friendship between males is suspiciously close and in which the language used between them is suspiciously ardent. The case of Valentine and Proteus is one of them and it is just possible to argue that Shakespeare was trying to maintain that affection between males was a higher and stronger emotion than that between the opposite sexes.

When Proteus gives up Silvia after being reproached by Valentine and then asks forgiveness, he is implicitly abandoning the lesser love (female) for the greater (male), and what can Valentine do but reciprocate and hand the lesser love back?

Fortunately for heterosexual sensibilities, this does not happen. When Valentine makes his offer, "Sebastian" swoons. Her true identity is discovered and the repentant Proteus is thus reunited with his ever true Julia.

The Duke and Thurio are also captured by the outlaws and Thurio shows himself to be a coward, while Valentine's bravery is conspicuous. The Duke of Milan therefore consents to have Valentine marry Silvia. Even the outlaws are forgiven and are taken into the employ of the Duke. All is happy as the curtain descends.

17. The Tragedy of Romeo And Juliet

In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare dramatized a love tale that was well known and much wept over by young people before his time. The nub of the tale, that of two young lovers unnecessarily dying for love through misunderstandings and family feuding, is not a very difficult thing to invent, and examples date back to ancient times.

The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, for instance, which Shakespeare burlesques in A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-48), has such a plot. Indeed, both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream were written at about the same time (1595 probably) and there are some who suggest that in the version of the Pyramus and Thisbe legend presented by the Athenian laborers, Shakespeare was deliberately satirizing his own just-completed Romeo and Juliet. (For myself, I find this difficult to believe.)

The first version of a plot which is specifically that of Romeo and Juliet appeared in a collection of romances, Il Novellino published in Italian in 1476 by Masuccio Salernitano. It was adapted and, in the process, made into something considerably closer to the Shakespearean version (down to the names of the characters) by Luigi da Porto in or about 1530.

The first important English version of the story was in the form of a long narrative poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, published in 1562 by the English translator Arthur Brooke. It was Brooke's poem that Shakespeare used as his direct source, following it quite closely, but adding (needless to say) master touches of his own.

The play opens with a "Chorus," who explains the subject matter, beginning:

—Prologue, lines 1-3

Verona (see page I-451) is mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew and is the place in which The Two Gentlemen of Verona opens. The city first appears as the scene of the Romeo and Juliet story in Da Porto's version. The earlier Salernitano version placed the tale in Siena, 150 miles south of Verona.

The actual scene does not matter, of course. The play is not historical and it is not confined to any particular city. It could just as easily, with very minor modifications, have taken place in England, and in the contemporary musical West Side Story it is transferred, fairly intact, to the New York of today.

Nevertheless, if we consider Verona, we find that in the play it is treated as an independent principality, something which it was in history only between 1260 and 1387.

That period would well fit the vision of an Italian city split by the rivalry of internal factions led by competing noble families, whose enmity resulted in street fighting with private armies of retainers and sympathizers.

Most Italian cities of the time contained those who favored a strong and centralized secular government under the German Emperor (Ghibellines) and others who favored a congeries of independent city-states under the moral leadership of the Pope (Guelphs). Families lined up on this side or that and feuded in consequence, or sometimes they had feuds for other reasons and lined up on opposite sides in consequence.

In Florence, for instance, the most famous city of Renaissance Italy, there arose about 1300 a deadly feud between the two families of the Cerchi and the Donati. It began over some trivial incident but gradually each side drew to itself others, so that the Cerchi headed the "Bianca" (White) faction, which was Ghibelline, while the Donati headed the "Nera" (Black) faction, which was Guelf. The whole city was torn in two by them and for nearly half a century its history was determined by the ups and downs of what had begun as a family feud.

Shakespeare does not give the nature of the feud between the Veronese households, and there is no indication that it is political in nature.

The play opens on a Sunday (from internal evidence), with two retainers of the Capulet faction coming onstage. They are indistinguishable from comic English servingmen (as are all Shakespeare's comic lower-class characters, regardless of the supposed nationality of the upper-class ones) and are given the most un-Italian names of Sampson and Gregory.

They boast to each other of their desperate bravery and Sampson says:

—Act I, scene i, line 8

The Montagues are one of the feuding families, and the Capulets the other. In Da Porto's version, the two quarreling households of Verona are given the names of Montecchi and Capelletti, but for English audiences the very similar Montague and Capulet would be more congenial to the ear.

The two Capulet retainers deliberately provoke two others of the Montague faction who enter later. The Montague retainers are ready to be provoked and there is suddenly swordplay.

One of the leaders of the Montagues, Benvolio, enters now and runs forward, anxious to stop the proceedings. He cries out:

—Act I, scene i, lines 66-67

Throughout, Benvolio endeavors to make peace, to end the feud or at least to keep it blanketed. This is evident in his very name, which is Shakespeare's invention since the equivalent character in Brooke's poem is not named. "Benvolio" means "good will."

Benvolio's attempt at conciliation is only one of several indications in the play that the family feud is dying. It is possible to argue that it could easily be ended altogether by some sensible and decisive act of placation on one side or the other. The fact that this does not happen adds to the eventual tragedy.

Indeed, the chief reason that the feud is not ended appears immediately. Hard upon Benvolio's entry comes the evil genius of the play, Tybalt, of the house of Capulet. Furiously, he cries out to the peacemaking Benvolio:

—Act I, scene i, lines 68-69

Benvolio protests that he is merely using his sword to break up the fight and keep the peace, but Tybalt will have none of it:

—Act I, scene i, lines 72-73

This is the clearest expression in the play of the irrational psychology of all that is meant by "feuding." It is almost the only expression. It is Tybalt, the only irrational hater among the leaders of the factions, who prevents the triumph of reason.

In Da Porto's tale, the corresponding character is Thebaldo, but it is a happy stroke to change it to Tybalt. It brings on thoughts of the folk tale of "Reynard the Fox" (see page I-153), in which Tibert was the name of the cat. A common version of this was Tybalt, so that to the Elizabethan audience, the very use of the name at once brings up the picture of this particular Capulet as a quarrelsome and vicious tomcat.

The fight, forced on Benvolio by Tybalt, continues to expand. Other members of the faction arrive, including even Capulet and Montague themselves, the aged heads of the family (whose wives sternly refuse to let them fight), until finally the Prince of Verona himself appears on the scene.

He is, quite understandably, exasperated at this disorder in the streets. There have been three such incidents and his patience is at an end. He says, angrily:

—Act I, scene i, lines 99-100

The name of the Prince is given as Escalus. No Veronese prince of that name is known, but, interestingly enough, Verona was ruled from 1227 to 1259 by Ezzelino da Romano. That may be no more than coincidence.

When the streets are cleared, Lady Montague expresses her relief that her son, Romeo, was not involved. It turns out that Romeo has taken to mooning sadly about in a fashion which, to Elizabethan audiences, marks the conventional symptoms of unrequited love. Romeo is no sooner spoken of than he appears in the guise of the romantic lover.

The older Montagues are puzzled by Romeo's behavior and Benvolio volunteers to discover the cause. The task is easy, for Romeo admits to unrequited love at once. Romeo says of the girl he loves:

—Act I, scene i, lines 211-12

Romeo does not name her at this point and, indeed, she never appears in the play.

Romeo's moan is that the girl he loves insists on chastity. She has "Dian's wit" and Diana is the Roman goddess of the hunt (analogous to the Greek Artemis, a virgin goddess sworn to chastity).

Benvolio therefore gives Romeo the very sensible advice to find someone else, but Romeo rejects that advice scornfully. (It is the sad fact that whereas Benvolio is always sensible, Romeo is always romantic, and that too helps bring on the catastrophe.)

On the other side, Capulet is talking with Count Paris, a kinsman of Prince Escalus. Their talk at first is of the feud and here it seems quite obvious that there is little real interest in keeping it alive. Capulet says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 2-3

Paris agrees and says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 4-5

What more do we need to see that only a face-saving formula is needed and the feud will be gladly abandoned.

But Capulet has more on his mind than the peace, and so has Paris. Capulet has a lovely daughter and Paris would like to marry her. It would be a good match and Capulet is eager for it. He is held back by only one thought. Perhaps the girl is too young. He says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 8-9

He is speaking of Juliet, the heroine of the play, and as is stated and emphasized on several occasions, she is not quite fourteen! Her very name is a diminutive, for Juliet means "little Julia." (There was a Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona who was also a sweet and plucky girl of that city, though she could scarcely have been as young as Juliet.)

In Elizabethan times, of course, life went more quickly. Girls became marriageable more quickly, were made mothers more quickly, and died more quickly. Nevertheless, fourteen is rather young. Shakespeare does not bother giving the ages of any of the heroines of his other early plays; only in this one does he make an exception, and for no obvious reason, he emphasizes it strenuously. -Perhaps there is a reason.

My fair niece Rosaline …

Circumstances now begin to complicate matters. Even while Capulet is talking to Paris, he is making preparations for a feast that very night. He gives the list of invited guests to a servant and tells him to go through Verona and invite them all.

But as the fates would have it, the servant who receives this order is illiterate and has no chance to explain that fact to the hasty Capulet.

And, as the fates would further have it, in come Romeo and Benvolio, still discussing the former's romantic love affair, and it is to Romeo that the servant applies for help in reading off the names of the invited guests. Romeo obliges and, included on the list are:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 69-72

It is Rosaline with whom Romeo is in love, and this means that Rosaline, as the niece of Capulet, is shown to be a member of the opposing faction.

Yet this does not seem to bother anybody at all. To be sure, Romeo has not mentioned her name; to do so would ill fit his mood of romantic melancholy. Yet he doesn't keep it entirely secret, either, for he has apparently imparted the identity of his loved one to Benvolio since the close of the first scene. Thus, Benvolio says to Romeo:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 85-86

Can it be that Rosaline has turned down Romeo because of the feud between their families? There is no mention of any such thing. Romeo has stated that Rosaline has sworn herself to indiscriminate chastity.

Is there any sign of danger at all in this love affair of Romeo's that crosses the lines of the feud? No one makes any mention of it. Even the cautious Benvolio does not seem to remark danger in it. In fact, Benvolio, still anxious to wean Romeo away from a useless love that makes him unhappy, advises him to attend the ball, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 88-90

So unimportant is the feud, in other words, that even the cautious Benvolio sees no danger in walking right into the center and hotbed of the Capulet faction.

It is time to introduce Juliet now. Lady Capulet wishes to broach the subject of marriage to her, but with her also is Juliet's garrulous old Nurse, who had a daughter Juliet's age, for she says, referring to Juliet:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 18-19

If the Nurse were to serve as surrogate breast feeder for Juliet, she would have to have had a child of her own shortly before. More important, this leads to talk of Juliet's age once more. The Nurse says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 12-14

The Nurse then launches into an irrelevant tale of Juliet's childhood that begins

—Act I, scene iii, lines 16-17

Lammas Day is August 1. In early English times it was the day of a harvest festival, and the fruits of the field, symbolized by half loaves of bread, were consecrated at mass. The Anglo-Saxon term for half loaf was "hlaf-maesse" and this was distorted to "Lammas."

Earlier the Nurse had asked Lady Capulet how long it was to Lammas-tide and had been answered:

—Act I, scene iii, line 15

We can therefore place the beginning of the play at about July 13. It is summer and the hot weather is referred to later in the play.

There must be some reason why Shakespeare harps so on Juliet's age.

The Nurse has another way of dating Juliet's age, too, for she remembers the circumstances of the weaning. She says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 23-24

This verse has sometimes been given special significance, for in 1580 there was a notable earthquake felt in London. The argument is therefore presented that this was referred to at this point and that the play was consequently written in 1591. This seems awfully thin, however, and most critics do not accept the reasoning at all.

The garrulous Nurse is finally persuaded to be silent and Lady Capulet begins to talk Juliet into marriage. She takes the opportunity at once to stymie any objections as to age, by saying:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 71-73

Apparently, then, Lady Capulet is herself some twenty-eight years old. Juliet, however, seems unmoved by the thoughts of marriage and Lady Capulet tells her that Paris will be at the banquet that night and she can look him over and decide whether she can love him.

In the next scene it is later in the day and the Capulet feast will soon begin. In the street outside come Romeo and Benvolio, who plan to attend in masks.

This seems to give an impression that it is dangerous for the Montagues to invade the Capulet feast, but the presence of masks does not necessarily prove it. Masking at feasts was common and masked dances are featured in Henry VIII (see page II-761) and Love's Labor's Lost (see page I-440), for instance. Masks afforded young men and ladies a chance to flirt in semiconcealment.

To weaken the case for danger, Romeo does no more than wear a mask. He makes no attempt to disguise his voice, for instance, and is, in point of fact, readily recognized at the feast, as will soon be apparent.

To be sure, Romeo does express reservations about going. He says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 48-49

But when asked why, he can only say:

—Act I, scene iv, line 50

If the feud were really alive and deadly, he could easily have said that it was "no wit to go" because discovery would mean death. To fall back on a dream, a mere presentiment of evil, shows how little importance Romeo attaches to the feud.

With Romeo and Benvolio is a friend, Mercutio, who is of neither faction and is friendly with both, for he has been invited to the feast. He is, it appears, a relative of Prince Escalus.

Mercutio is, in essence, Shakespeare's invention. Da Porto had a minor character named Marcuccio, but Shakespeare took that and touched it with his own special gold even down to the small change in the name. Mercutio suggests Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, who flits through the air with superhuman speed. Mercutio is mercurial, with a flashing wit that never leaves him.

Mercutio does not seem to think of the feud as a deadly thing either. He makes no attempt to dissuade the Montagues from going, as he might well have done if there were real danger. Rather, he is intent on rallying Romeo out of his melancholy and is so anxious to have him come to the feast that he eagerly turns dream presentiments into nonsense by advancing his own theory on the origin of dreams as the product of a tricky elf. He says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 53-55

Queen Mab is out of Celtic mythology. The pagan Irish had a goddess named Meadhbh, who was the ruler of a group of the "little people." This may have contributed to the notion of Queen Mab.

Queen Mab need not be considered a fairy queen in the sense that Titania was in A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-26). She is the fairies' "midwife"; that is, she helps men and women give birth to dreams, and this is no task for a queen.

Here, in all likelihood, "Queen" is used in its original sense of "woman" and to speak of "Queen Mab" would be something like speaking of "Dame Mab" or "Mistress Mab." The word "queen" early split into two forms: one of them, "quean," degenerated to mean a degraded woman, a harlot; the other, "queen," rose to mean an elevated woman, the wife of a king. "Queen," in its ordinary original sense, neither depressed nor elevated, vanished altogether.

Mercutio's speech about Queen Mab presents the view that dreams are not messages of fate but the product of the routine thoughts of the day. Lovers dream of love, courtiers of curtsies, lawyers of fees; soldiers of war and drink, and so on. This is one of many examples of Shakespeare's modern-sounding rationalism.

Thus, when Romeo tries to stem the flow of Mercutio's brilliance and says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 95-96

Mercutio answers at once, with stabbing relevance:

—Act I, scene iv, line 96

Within the mansion the feast is in full progress. The masked dancers are enjoying themselves and Romeo sees Juliet for the first time. He falls immediately and hopelessly in love and completely vindicates Benvolio's promise that Romeo had but to look at other women to forget Rosaline. Romeo says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 54-55

But his voice is overheard and instantly recognized-and by Tybalt, the only person of consequence in either faction who takes the feud seriously. He flares into mad rage at once and is prepared to kill. He says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 56-57

Capulet is at once aware that Tybalt is in a passion and demands the reason. Tybalt says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 63-64

Capulet is not moved in the slightest. He recognizes Romeo at once and says to Tybalt:

—Act I, scene v, lines 67-70

Surely the feud is as good as dead when the leader of one side can speak so of the son and heir of the leader of the other side. Capulet speaks so highly of Romeo, in fact, that one could almost imagine that a prospective match between Montague's son and Capulet's daughter would be a capital way of ending the feud.

Then, when Tybalt objects to Capulet's tame endurance of the presence of a Montague, the old man isn't in the least shamed into taking a stronger stand. On the contrary, he turns savagely on Tybalt, crying:

-Act I, scene v, lines 85-86

Tybalt, trembling with frustrated rage, is forced to withdraw.

Meanwhile, Romeo has made his way to Juliet, who is as instantly struck with him as he by her. In fifteen lines he reaches the stage of kissing her. He must leave soon after and Juliet inquires his name of the Nurse. She finds out he is Romeo, the son of Montague, and says at once, dramatically:

—Act I, scene v, line 140

It turns out later in the play that she was particularly close to her cousin Tybalt. We can imagine, without too much trouble, young Juliet listening with awe and admiration to the tales told her by her paranoid cousin; of fights with the Montagues, of their disgraceful defeats and treacherous victories. Tybalt would surely have poured into her ears all the sick preoccupation with the feud that filled his own wrathful heart.

And she would have absorbed it all. That may well be the point of Shakespeare's stressing Juliet's extreme youth. She was young enough to absorb the feud in its full romanticism without any admixture of disillusionment that would have come with experience.

Although Romeo has left the feast, he cannot really leave. He must have another sight of Juliet if he can. Slipping away from his companions, he climbs the wall bounding the Capulet estate and finds himself in the orchard.

Benvolio and Mercutio come seeking him, and Mercutio in mockery calls after him with all the cliches of lovers' tales. He asks of the hiding Romeo just one word about Venus or Cupid as a sign of his whereabouts, defining Cupid, ironically, as:

—Act II, scene i, lines 13-14

This is another reference (see page I-431) to the famous tale of the happy love of a socially ill-assorted couple.

But Romeo remains in hiding, and Benvolio and Mercutio shrug and leave. Surely if the feud were alive and dangerous, they would never have left Romeo alone in the very center of enemy territory. Instead, they seem not a bit concerned.

Romeo's patience is rewarded, for Juliet (as lovesick as he) comes out on her balcony to sigh romantically.

Romeo, spying her, indulges in a long soliloquy in which he praises her beauty in the most extravagant terms, but never once mentions the fact that she is a Capulet. It does not seem to concern him that she is of the opposing faction any more than it concerned him that Rosaline was. But then, Romeo is not fourteen and he is old enough to know the feud is really on its last legs.

Not so Juliet. She speaks at last and all her talk is of the feud. She says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 33-36

It is irritating in the extreme that the first line of this passage, taken by itself, is so often treated in popular quotation as though Juliet were saying "Where are you, Romeo?" and were looking for him. Not only does it show a pitiful ignorance of the meaning of the archaic word "wherefore," but it rums a key point in the plot development. "Wherefore" means "why," and Juliet is asking the absent Romeo why he is a Montague. Oh, if only he weren't.

All she can talk about is his name. She says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 38-44

What can Romeo be thinking as he hears this? We might speculate that left to himself he might have approached his father and urged him to talk to Capulet, under a flag of truce if necessary, and try to arrange a reconciliating marriage. It is so easy to feel that this would work. Who but Tybalt shows any signs of anything but weariness with the feud, and he could be beaten into submission. To be sure, marriage had been spoken of with Paris, but nothing had yet been committed.

However, Romeo may well have recognized the romanticism of the young girl who feels the thrill of loving the family enemy; who loves the risk and danger and sadness of it; and perhaps he would not dream of throwing cold water on that feeling. So he makes himself known and dramatically denounces his name, saying:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 49-51

Thus he commits himself to the full gamut of romantic folderol as seen through the eyes of a dramatic fourteen-year-old, and the catastrophe is under way.

Juliet is astonished at Romeo's sudden presence and makes the most of it in terms of the romantic version of the feud. She berates Romeo for having taken chances, saying:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 63-65

Exaggeration, we might easily guess. To be sure, if Tybalt had made his appearance at this moment there would have been trouble. We can suspect, however, that if anyone but Tybalt had appeared, Romeo would have gotten away with nothing but some hard words. In fact, the subject of marriage might have been broached.

Is it possible that even Juliet considered the feud and its consequences only as an afterthought? Her first fear was that he might have hurt himself falling off the wall.

Romeo accepts Juliet's insistence on the danger of death, perhaps recognizing that it is part of his appeal to her and glad to take advantage of that. Still, he doesn't really seem to take it seriously, for he says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 71-72

With all that done, the two get down to the serious business of expressing their love.

From words of love, they pass quickly to the thought of marriage. Juliet says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 143-45

If Romeo had had the rational plan of trying to work a marriage settlement in an aboveboard fashion to the advantage of everyone, he abandons it. If romantic little Juliet wants secret messages, and clandestine word, and even an exciting forbidden marriage-then she shall have them.

The meeting comes to an end with Monday's dawn nearly upon the two. Romeo, thoroughly happy, says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 188-89

With luck, the friar can arrange the secret marriage that Juliet longs for.

The scene shifts at once to the cell of Friar Laurence ("Fra Lorenzo" in Da Porto's version) early Monday morning. He is an alchemist as well as a friar and is gathering herbs in order to extract their juices for his experiments, saying:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 15-18

Here is expressed the medieval view that all creation is made for the express good of man; that everything on earth has some property that makes it valuable to man.

Romeo comes to the friar with his tale of love and Friar Laurence is more than a little confused at this sudden change from Rosaline to Juliet and clucks disapprovingly over the whole matter. He decides, however, to go along with the secret marriage for a clearly expressed reason; saying:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 90-92

Friar Laurence obviously considers the feud to be dying and a marital alliance, he judges, will end it altogether. He seems, however, to prefer the indirect and hidden approach to the direct one; he is as romantic as Juliet.

It is broad day now and Benvolio and Mercutio have still not found Romeo. Meanwhile Tybalt, angered over the incident at the feast, has sent a formal challenge to Romeo. The two friends aren't worried, sure that Romeo can take care of himself. Mercutio thinks very little of Tybalt as a swordsman, characterizing him as

—Act II, scene iv, lines 19-22

The "Prince of Cats" is a jeer at Tybalt's name, of course. The mockery is aimed at that favorite butt of Shakespeare's-the French or Italian way of doing things (in this case, scientific fencing) as opposed to the wholesome English fashion of simply dealing out good thwacks.

And now at last Romeo appears, and Mercutio fully expects him to begin again with his whining lovesickness. He mimics him in advance:

—Act II, scene iv, lines 40-42

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca in Italian) was an Italian poet whose work may be thought of as sparking the Renaissance. He was born in 1304 and in 1327 met a lady known to us as "Laura." Who she was in actuality is not certain.

Though he did much work in Latin, he is best known for his collection of Italian sonnets, odes, and other poems written between 1330 and 1360. These poems deal with his love for Laura, and through that love, deal with many other matters. Because of this, Petrarch and Laura are one of the great pairs of lovers of history, though the love may have been an ideal one only.

But how things have changed! Romeo is no longer a mewling wretch, but is lively and sparkling, quite ready to engage Mercutio in a game of wits and to give as good as he gets, so that the latter is delighted that Romeo is himself again.

The Nurse then comes on the scene. Mercutio is, with some difficulty, shoved offstage and Romeo tells her that all has been arranged for Friar Laurence to marry them that very afternoon. The Nurse goes off with the news and plans also to get Juliet a rope ladder that she can lower to Romeo that night, so that he might climb to her room and enjoy the fruits of love.

We might imagine that on the next day, once Juliet has had her romantic marriage and all it involves, Romeo will confront his father with the fact, and old Montague will in turn confront the Capulets. All, we hope, will be well-if only Romeo can stay out of trouble till then.

But it is still Monday afternoon, midsummer, and very hot. Tempers may be short and Benvolio (still promenading with Mercutio) feels it will be well to go in. With characteristic caution he wishes to avoid meeting an irritated Tybalt, brooding over the crashing of the party the night before.

Mercutio refuses to take this seriously.

At this point, however, in comes Tybalt, inquiring after Romeo. Mercutio baits hull while Benvolio anxiously tries to keep the whole matter under control.

But now Romeo enters, already married to Juliet, although no one knows it but bride, groom, and friar. Tybalt challenges him with an insult and Romeo, aware of their present relationship, of which Tybalt is not, patiently endures the insult and refuses to fight.

So far all is well. Romeo has done the sensible thing, even if it was not a particularly heroic one.

And now the secrecy, Juliet's romantic secrecy, does its fell work. If Mercutio had known of Romeo's marriage he would have understood and stood aside. He did not know and finds he cannot endure Romeo's tame acceptance of insult. If Romeo will accept the grace, Mercutio will wipe it out on his behalf. He cries out to Tybalt:

—Act III, scene i, line 76

"Ratcatcher" is one more reference to Tybalt the cat, and Mercutio is inviting the other to walk to some quiet place where they may fight without interruption.

Tybalt hesitates. His quarrel is not with Mercutio. He asks Mercutio what he wants and the latter says, lightly:

—Act III, scene i, lines 78-79

It is an old fable that a cat has nine lives, and there is something to it. A cat is careful, sly, equipped with needlelike claws for a fight and soft pads for stealth. It can climb a tree and land on its feet when it falls. It will escape sure death for other animals eight times out of nine.

All might still be well. Mercutio, we may well expect, is the better swordsman and will kill Tybalt. Mercutio is not a member of either faction and so is not included in the ban against street fighting. With Tybalt dead, the chief upholder of the feud will be gone. It will be all the easier to reconcile the factions.

All Romeo need do now is stand aside.

But Romeo cannot. Mercutio is his loved friend, Tybalt his new relative. He wants neither hurt so he tries to get between and stop them. At which point, in one Sash, all goes wrong. Tybalt's sword passes under Romeo's arm and Mercutio is blocked from parrying. Badly wounded, Mercutio recognizes the fact that the quarrel was not really his, after all, and says so in a phrase that has entered the language:

—Act III, scene i, lines 91-92

Mercutio makes his last bitter jests and hobbles off to die.

Yet still things are not utterly lost Romeo has lost a dear Mend but it was by no willing action of his own. He had tried for the best, endeavored to make peace. It was Tybalt who was the murderer and it is he who may be executed for it and again the feud will be made up the easier, perhaps, for Tybalt's end.

Yet Romeo cannot leave it at that, not even for Juliet. Mercutio died in his quarrel and he has no choice. Wildly, he challenges Tybalt and kills him-and by then all the noise has roused the citizens.

Romeo is half amazed at all that has happened in a matter of a few minutes, for now he must get out of the city at once or, by the Prince's decree, he will be executed.

It is still less than twenty-four hours since he met Juliet and already he has not only gained her, but lost her as well. No wonder he cries out in agony:

—Act III, scene i, line 138

Yet a little chink of hope remains. When the Prince arrives, Benvolio tells the tale of what has happened with objective accuracy. Despite the clamors of the Capulet faction, the Prince believes Benvolio (and perhaps remembers that the dead Tybalt had killed his own kinsman) and does not place the death penalty on Romeo after all. He merely banishes him.

While banishment seems bad enough under the circumstances, a sentence of banishment can be unsaid, while an execution is final.

Meanwhile, toward sunset, Juliet is waiting with unbearable impatience for the coming of night, of Romeo, of love. She says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 1-4

The sun is pictured here in the fashion of the Greek myth, as a blazing chariot conducted by golden horses, traveling toward the west where they can move behind the horizon and rest till it is time for the next day's journey across the sky. The horizon is therefore Phoebus' (the god of the sun) place of lodging. Phaeton is the son of the sun god, whose ill-fated attempt to drive the horses of the sun chariot nearly led to disaster (see page II-297).

But then in comes the Nurse with the rope ladder-and with news, as well, of Tybalt's death.

Juliet is heartbroken, for she loved Tybalt. Her greater love for Romeo wins out, however, and she weeps over the rope ladder that was to have carried her husband to her, then goes to her room where she hopes to die.

But that is more than the Nurse can bear. She can still help. She assures Juliet she knows where Romeo is hiding and will get him to come to his wife and comfort her.

Romeo, in Friar Laurence's cell, is completely broken. Overwhelmed with horror at the thought of banishment, he will not listen to the friar's consolation. Even when the Nurse comes, asking him to go to Juliet, he can think only of suicide.

It is only with the greatest difficulty that the friar finally manages to make him understand that banishment is not necessarily the end, saying:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 146-52

Mantua (see page I-454) is only twenty miles south of Verona, not really very far, though to Romeo it might well have seemed an infinite distance under the circumstances.

The chink of hope remains, but oh, how different from what it would have been if Mercutio had not been ignorant of Romeo's marriage.

For even that chink of hope to remain, however, time is needed as Friar Laurence says, and, alas, time disappears.

Old Capulet is perturbed at Juliet's misery and attributes it entirely to the death of Tybalt. He says to Paris:

—Act III, scene iv, line 3

Yes indeed, and this is the best evidence we have that she may well have picked up her fatal notions of the feud from him.

Thinking to console his daughter, Capulet decides to let her marry Paris at once after all. He asks the day and Paris says:

—Act III, scene iv, line 18

This fixes the time sequence for all the play. Capulet considers that and says:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 19-20

He doesn't know that Juliet is already married, of course.

Unsuspecting this new gruesome development, Juliet receives Romeo late Monday night. The night after their meeting and their great balcony scene, they spend in connubial love. At dawn on Tuesday they must separate and Romeo gets out of town safely.

But then Juliet learns of her prospective marriage to Paris and of course refuses firmly. Old Capulet promptly flies into a passion and makes it plain that she will marry Paris whether she wishes to or not.

Juliet can find no one to help her. Capulet threatens to disown her. Lady Capulet turns away. Even the Nurse, in desperation, can only advise Juliet to marry Paris and commit bigamy.

Juliet can think of no alternative but to fly to Friar Laurence.

At this point the friar might have shown courage. He might have gone to the Capulets with the truth and endeavored to protect himself and Juliet with his priestly robes. Under the circumstances, there would have been great risk, but there were no reasonable alternatives.

Friar Laurence turns to an unreasonable one. As romantic as Juliet, he tries a complicated plan of indirection. He gives Juliet a mysterious drug he has prepared himself. He tells her to take it the night of the next day (Wednesday) and it will put her into a cataleptic trance. He says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 96-98

This trance will last forty-two hours, that is, through Thursday and Friday. The Capulets, thinking she is dead, will place her in the family tomb. Romeo will be there by Friday night, and when she wakes he will carry her off to Mantua.

This drug is, of course, an element of fantasy, for no drug is known (even today) that can safely counterfeit death so accurately over so long a time.

For the first time in the play, there is a sizable gap in time. Some thirty-six hours are skipped over and it is Wednesday night. Juliet suddenly submits to her father's plans (to his relief and pleasure) and has now prepared herself, supposedly, for a wedding the next morning. She sends out the Nurse so that she may sleep alone, and as she prepares to take the friar's drug, she is beset with quite understandable fears.

What if it kills her? Or, worse still, what if it wears off too soon and she comes to in the tomb before Romeo is there to claim her? What if she is surrounded by the effluvium of death, the gibbering of ghosts, and, in general, by

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 46-48

The mandrake is a herb with a large, fleshy root that is usually forked in such proportions as to give it a resemblance to a partly formed man. About this fancied resemblance a number of superstitions arose.

Since the root looked like a man it would, supposedly, help in the formation of one, and mandrakes were therefore thought to have the ability to make women fecund. This superstition (a worthless one, of course) is sanctioned by the Bible, where Jacob's second wife, Rachel, who is barren, begs for the mandrakes gathered by the son of his first wife, her sister Leah (Genesis 30:14).

It was also thought that because mandrakes looked like little men they ought to share some of the qualities of men-feel pain, for instance, and cry out if wounded. From this arose the tale that if a mandrake were uprooted, it would emit a bloodcurdling shriek-so horrible a shriek as to madden or even kill those who heard it.

Since mandrakes were desired for the ability to increase fecundity, and for other valuable properties assigned to them, it was necessary to pull them up anyway. What was sometimes done was to tie the top of the herb to a dog. From a distance, stones could be thrown at the dog, and in running away, he would pull out the mandrake, which could then be reclaimed.

The first part of Friar Laurence's plan works well. Juliet does take the potion and falls into a cataleptic trance. In the midst of the preparations for the wedding on Thursday morning, the Nurse finds her apparently dead. Juliet is carried to the tomb with heartbreaking lamentation.

But there is another part of the plan. Romeo must be informed of all this and be ready to return to carry off Juliet on Friday. To carry this message to Romeo, Friar Laurence has sent off a friend, Friar John.

Romeo gets a message indeed, but it is from a servant of his who comes spurring hard from Verona with the tale that Juliet is dead and entombed. Romeo, stricken, has no thought but to reach Juliet's corpse and kill himself there. For the purpose he buys poison.

As for Friar John, however, he fails to reach Romeo. Before leaving he had sought the company of another friar, who had been visiting the sick, and both fell in with "searchers," that is, health officers, seeking to prevent spread of infection.

Friar John tells Friar Laurence that:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 8-11

He could neither leave town nor send the message. Friar Laurence, thunderstruck, now realizes he must hasten to the tomb so that Juliet will not waken alone and so that he can explain matters. Meanwhile, he sends another message.

The care of the "searchers" and their assiduity in applying quarantine is easily understood. In 1347 an "infectious pestilence" reached Europe. This was the infamous Black Death, the most frightening epidemic in world history. It is supposed to have killed some twenty-five million people in Europe in the space of three years, and quarantine was the only counter-measure the frightened continent knew.

On Friday all converge on the tomb. Paris arrives first to grieve over his lost bride. Then comes Romeo, intent on suicide. They fight and Paris is killed. Romeo then lays himself down next to Juliet, takes the poison, and dies. It is less than five days since he first laid eyes on his tragic love.

Only then does Friar Laurence finally come-a few minutes too late to prevent this further development of the catastrophe. He comes in muttering:

—Act V, scene iii, line 121

St. Francis (Giovanni Francesco Bernardone) was born in Assisi in 1182, and after the usual life of a gay, but not particularly immoral, young man of the upper classes, he experienced a conversion to a saintly life. About 1202 he began to embrace a life of poverty and gathered disciples about him who were dedicated to preaching humbly and making their way through life by reliance on free-will offerings of the pious. This was the beginning of the Franciscan order. Presumably Friar Laurence belonged to it.

Friar Laurence finds Paris and Romeo both dead, and even as he tries to absorb this, Juliet wakes. The friar tries to persuade her to come with him so that he might bestow her in a nunnery, but with Romeo dead, she does not want to live and will not budge. The friar thinks he hears a noise and has one last chance at a boldness that might save the last pitiful remnant-Juliet's life. He misses that, too, and flees in fear of being discovered.

Left alone, Juliet kills herself with Romeo's dagger.

The watch, drawn by all the disturbance, now gathers, and so does the town: Montague, Capulet, the Prince. Little by little, the whole story comes out and the Prince sorrowfully states the moral:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 291-95

The mutual grief ends the feud; as it might, so easily, have ended days earlier in mutual joy.

18. The Merchant Of Venice

The merchant of venice, written in 1596 or 1597, lays its scene in what is surely one of the most remarkable cities in history. It is a city which at its peak was richer and more powerful than almost any full-sized nation of its time. It was queen of the sea and a barrier against the formidable Turks.

This city, Venice, which was like an Italian Athens born after its time, or an Italian Amsterdam born before, had its birth at the time of the invasion of Italy by Attila the Hun in 452. Fleeing Italians hid in the lagoons offshore along the northern Adriatic and about this colony as the nucleus Venice arose.

While the Franks, the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy all struggled for control over Italy, Venice, under skillful leadership, managed to gain for itself a steadily increasing independence and, through trade, a steadily increasing prosperity.

Venetian prosperity and power climbed steeply during the period of the Crusades, since it, along with several other Italian cities, had the ships to carry the Crusaders and their supplies-and charged healthily for it. By 1203 Venice could blackmail a group of Crusaders into attacking the Byzantine Empire first. In 1204 the Crusaders took Constantinople itself and the Byzantine Empire was divided as loot, with a considerable share going to Venice, which thus became a major Mediterranean power.

Venice embarked on a long struggle with Genoa, a port on the other side of the Italian boot, and by 1380 had won completely. The war made her aware of her need for continental territories to assure herself of food supr plies despite the ups and downs of naval warfare. She spread out into nearby Italy and by 1420 northeastern Italy was hers from the Adriatic nearly to Lake Como.

The fifteenth century, however, saw her pass her peak. The Turk captured Constantinople in 1453 and it became less easy to trade with the East The Portuguese explorers circled Africa by 1497 and, as it grew possible to bypass the Mediterranean, the Venetian stranglehold on trade with the East further diminished.

Then, ha the sixteenth century, France, Spain, and the Empire began to use Italy as a battleground and the entire peninsula, including Venice, was reduced to misery.

But even in Shakespeare's time, although Venice was no longer what she had been, she remained a romantic land, with the trappings of empire still about herself-an efficient, stable, and long-established government over wealthy merchants and skillful seamen with territory and bases here and there in the Mediterranean. What's more, Shakespeare's century saw Venice reach its artistic heights. Titian and Tintoretto were sixteenth-century Venetians, for instance.

Then too, even in decline, Venice remained Europe's shield against the Turks throughout Shakespeare's lifetime and for several decades after his death.

The play opens with Antonio on stage. He is the "merchant" of the title and he is in conversation with two friends, Salerio and Solanio. Antonio says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

The sadness is never explicitly explained in the play and it may be accepted as simply setting a mood. Antonio, after all, is to spend much of the play in a position of great danger.

However, it is possible to speculate that there is a more specific cause of sadness, one which Shakespeare does not care to elaborate upon. As will appear soon enough, Antonio has a male friend to whom he is devoted with a self-sacrificial intensity that is almost unbelievable. This friend, we are soon to find out, is about to woo a young lady in the hope of marrying her.

Antonio may very easily be meant by Shakespeare to represent the nobility of homosexual love, something he hints at in several plays (as, for instance, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, see page I-473) without quite daring to be specific about it.

Well then, if Antonio's friend has, in the eagerness of his new plans involving a lady, grown more distant, is not this reason enough for the poor man to be sad-and yet be unable to explain it, without disgrace, to his friends?

His friends, however, have a more prosaic explanation. Salerio suggests that he is nervous over the state of his business affairs, saying:

—Act I, scene i, lines 8-9

The word "argosies" harks back to a city founded on the eastern shore of the Adriatic in the seventh century by refugees, as Venice had similarly been founded two centuries earlier. In this case, the founders were Greeks who were being pushed out of the interior by invading Slavs. The new city was named Ragusium, better known to us in the Italian version of the name, Ragusa.

Ragusa was, for a time, a flourishing trading city, much like Venice itself, or like Genoa and Pisa. Ragusa was particularly known for its large merchant ships, which were called ragusea. In English the first two letters were transposed and the word became "argosy."

It is clear from these opening exchanges, then, that Antonio is an extremely wealthy merchant, but one whose business involves extreme risk. Antonio, however, pooh-poohs the chances of these risks coming to pass.

But if Antonio is not worried about business and is merely irrationally sad, then, says Solanio with a touch of impatience, he might just as well be irrationally merry. Solanio says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 50-56

In other words, some people are, by simple temperament, happy; others sad.

As for Janus, he is the most familiar of the purely Roman (that is, non-Greek) gods. He was the god of doorways and therefore the god of going in and going out. (The word "janitor" is derived from his name.) It is an easy extension from that to seeing in him the god of beginnings and endings, of comings and goings (and January, the beginning of the year, is named in his honor.)

In the Roman forum Janus was honored with a temple whose gates were open in time of war and closed in time of peace. Rome's military history was such that for seven centuries they were hardly ever closed.

Though on Roman representations he is shown with two identical faces in opposite directions, it is possible to improve on that. Since he is the god of beginnings and endings, he might be imagined to have one face turned toward the past and the other toward the future.

It could easily be imagined that the past-viewing face was cheerful, since the pains of the past were over, while the forward-viewing face was sad, since there was uncertainty as to what the pains of the future might be-hence the figure of speech in Solanio's statement.

Three other friends of Antonio enter: Bassanio, Gratiano, and Lorenzo, while Salerio and Solanio leave.

Gratiano also notes Antonio's sadness and he too advocates merriment for its own sake. He says to Antonio:

—Act I, scene i, lines 79-82

The link between liver and wine might seem at first blush to indicate that Shakespeare had a prescient knowledge of the connection physicians would eventually draw between cirrhosis of the liver and alcoholism.

Nothing of the sort. The liver is the largest gland in the body, weighing three or four pounds in man and being correspondingly large in other mammals. It is easy to equate size and importance and to argue that the liver is so large because it has a peculiarly important function and must therefore serve as the seat of life and of the emotions. (The similarity between "liver" and "live" is not accidental.)

Contributing to this also is the fact that ancient priests, looking for prognostications of things to come, would often study the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods. This is natural, since the liver is so large and varies so in detail from animal to animal that it is particularly easy to study. Yet it is not the ease that can be advanced as a reason, so special importance must be insisted upon instead.

It is Bassanio with whom Antonio is in love and the strength of the lat-ter's affection is quickly shown. Bassanio has been living beyond his means and is deeply in debt. He has been forced to borrow and says, frankly:

—Act I, scene i, lines 130-31

But Antonio is willing to continue the support. He says earnestly to Bassanio:

—Act I, scene i, lines 137-39

Surely the attachment on Antonio's side can only be love in its fullest sense. Yet it may be one-sided. Bassanio's affection may be nothing more than friendship, for he seems to have no hesitation in attempting to draw on Antonio's support for a competing love.

Bassanio explains that he may be in a position to repay all he has borrowed if only Antonio will be willing to invest a bit more. He says:

—Act I, scene i, line 161

In short, Bassanio knows of a rich heiress and if he can marry her, he can pay off all his debts. All he needs is enough money to appear a respectable suitor; he cannot go as a beggar.

(The beginning of Bassanio's speech makes him sound like a fortune hunter, but the play will amply show that he wants the woman for herself and that the money is secondary. He stresses the money now because he wants to explain that he will be able to pay off his debt to Antonio, and not that he is greedy for wealth for himself.)

As for Belmont, that may well be a fictitious name for the estate left to the heiress. In the Italian tale from which this portion of the plot is derived, the place is Belmonte, and there is a Belmonte in Italy, on the western shore of the Italian toe, a little over five hundred miles south of Venice. Probably there is no connection, and as far as the play is concerned, it doesn't matter where Belmont is, but it is interesting that a Belmonte exists.

Bassanio has seen the lady and knows her to be beautiful and virtuous. He says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 165-66

Brutus' Portia-that is, his wife-appears as a pattern of Roman virtue in Julius Caesar (see page I-281), a play Shakespeare wrote some two years after The Merchant of Venice.

Bassanio goes on in his lyrical praise of Portia to say:

—Act I, scene i, lines 169-72

The tale of the Golden Fleece is one of the most famous in Greek mythology. Two children, the son and daughter of a king of Thebes, had a wicked stepmother. With the help of the gods they were whisked away from Thebes on the back of a winged ram with a golden fleece (see page I-541). The ram flew them to what must have seemed the end of the world to the very early Greeks-the easternmost shore of the Black Sea.

On the way, the girl, Helle, fell off and drowned in one of the narrow waterways between the Aegean and the Black seas, a waterway known as the "Hellespont" in consequence. The boy, however, was carried safely to the kingdom of Colchis (called Colchos in this Shakespearean passage). The King of Colchis, Aeetes, sacrificed the ram and suspended the Golden Fleece from a tree, leaving it under the guard of a never sleeping dragon.

To attain that Golden Fleece and bring it back to Greece was a worthy aim for an adventurer, and Jason, an exiled Thessalian prince, undertook the quest. With a fifty-oared ship, the Argo, and a crew of heroes, he penetrated the Black Sea and won the Fleece.

When Bassanio is done explaining, Antonio promptly offers to finance the project in a characteristic burst of selflessness. With that done the scene shifts at once to Belmont, where we meet Portia and her companion, Nerissa.

It seems that Portia's father, in dying, has left three caskets behind, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead. Each suitor must choose one of the caskets, and only he who picks the correct casket, the one with Portia's portrait inside, can marry her. If the suitor loses, he must swear to leave at once and never to reveal which casket he had chosen.

There are many suitors come to take their chances and Portia has an opportunity to display her mocking wit at their expense (and Shakespeare has a chance to air his prejudices).

Nerissa mentions a prince of Naples first and he is dismissed by Portia at once as interested only in horses and horsemanship. Nerissa then says:

—Act I, scene ii, line 44

In the early Middle Ages a "count palatine" was a high official who served in the King's household; that is, in the palace. Eventually, the title came to be inherited only as a tide and without any special house-holdly duties.

In only one case did the title remain prominent, and that was hi connection with a tract of land along the middle Rhine River whose ruler remained the Count Palatine. The territory was therefore known as the "Palatinate." Its capital was at Heidelberg.

In Shakespeare's time the Palatinate was a center of German Calvinism, a form of religion which was similar to English Puritanism. In 1592, just a few years before The Merchant of Venice was written, Frederick IV succeeded to the title. He was a sincere Calvinist (he was called "Frederick the Upright"), which meant he was grave and solemn to a degree.

It was perhaps with that in mind that Shakespeare has Portia say with respect to him:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 46-49

There was a "weeping philosopher"; he was Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived about 500 B.C. and whose gloomy view of life caused him to weep over the follies of mankind. (There was also a "laughing philosopher," Democritus of Abdera, who lived about 400 b.c. and whose cheerful disposition enabled him to laugh over the follies of mankind.)

A reference to a French suitor has Portia say:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 57-60

This is, in part, the old stereotype of the Frenchman-a frivolous person without strong convictions who takes on the coloring of his surroundings. In this case, Shakespeare may even have a specific case in mind.

In 1593, just three years before The Merchant of Venice was written, the French Protestant leader Henry of Navarre (pictured so favorably in Love's Labor's Lost, see page I-423) accepted Catholicism to establish himself as King Henry IV. To English Protestants this was a perfect case of French lack of principle.

An English suitor does not escape Portia's sharp tongue either. Concerning him, she says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 72-75

This is the old complaint of the conservative nationalistic Englishman (of whom Shakespeare is so often a spokesman) that the younger generation is mad for foreign novelties and has nothing but contempt for the traditions of their own land. (This view is not confined to England or to the sixteenth century.)

The mention of a Scotsman brings forth an expression of contempt from Portia, who says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 78-81

Scotland was, like France, one of England's traditional enemies. Since Scotland was much weaker than France it was regularly beaten, so that Shakespeare can indulge in a rather cheap vaunt over an enemy that was often defeated but never accepted defeat.

As a matter of fact, the sixteenth century saw England inflict two disastrous boxes of the ear upon Scotland. In 1513 England defeated Scotland in the Battle of Flodden Field (see page II-746), and then again, in 1542, at the Battle of Solway Moss.

Shakespeare's reference to the Frenchman becoming the Scotsman's surety refers to the traditional friendship between France and Scotland. France was always ready to support Scotland financially in her wars against England, but was never able to support her by direct military force.

Then Nerissa asks about another:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 83-84

To which Portia replies:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 85-86

This was no more than a matter of making fun of the proverbial German habit of drunkenness, but Shakespeare hit closer than he knew. The Elector of Saxony (a title unique to Germany, which Shakespeare converts into the more familiar "duke") had, at the time The Merchant of Venice was written, a younger brother who was then about twelve years old, and who grew up to be a notorious drunkard.

However, none of these suitors will even try the casket test. They are there only to serve as butts for Portia's jokes, and now Nerissa reports they are leaving. Portia is relieved, but she insists she will marry only in accordance with the casket test just the same:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 105-7

Sibylla's age was proverbial (see page I-452) and Shakespeare makes use of that in several plays.

But now we get down to business. Nerissa asks:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 111-13

The marquisate of Montferrat was an independent state in Shakespeare's time located just north of Genoa. In 1587 Vicenzo I became marquis. His immediate predecessors had been enlightened rulers who had patronized art and literature and were therefore looked upon with great favor by artists and writers. Vicenzo himself helped deliver the great poet Torquato Tasso from the insane asylum to which he had been sent as a result of his paranoid mania.

Nevertheless, Vicenzo was a most extravagant and wasteful ruler, and at the time The Merchant of Venice was written, these proclivities of his were quite clear. If Bassanio was his friend and had been forced to keep up with him, no wonder he managed to go through so much of Antonio's fortune.

It was undoubtedly on this earlier visit that Bassanio had seen Portia and discovered her beauty and virtue. She had not been unaffected either, for on the mere mention of him she grows excited. But new suitors are coming and the scene reaches its end.

Back in Venice, there is the problem of financing Bassanio. Antonio's ready cash is tied up in his merchant vessels, so the young man must borrow the actual money elsewhere. Antonio, however, is willing to act as guarantor of the loan. (Otherwise, Bassanio would lack the credit to borrow anything at all.)

The third scene of the play opens, then, with Bassanio in conversation with a prospective source of money. The man of whom the loan is being requested says musingly (for it is a large sum):

—Act I, scene iii, line 1

In the Middle Ages there were few regions with a sufficiently reliable supply of silver to issue good coins. Venice was one of the exceptions. Her rich trade brought precious metals to her gates and it paid her to use them in producing good coins of full weight and honest value. The reputation of Venice lay behind the coins and merchants from all over Europe and the Mediterranean lands were anxious to accept those coins-which was to the benefit of Venetian trade.

These coins were put out by the Duchy of Venice, a state which in the Italian language was the "Ducato di Venezia," so that the coins were called ducati or, in English, "ducats." Good coins, also called ducats, were put out by the Duchy of Apulia in southern Italy.

In either case, three thousand ducats was a huge sum for the tune. Bassanio was not skimping.

The person to whom Bassanio is talking is not an ordinary Venetian. We can picture him (and he is usually presented on the stage) as a tall man with a beak of a nose, a long black beard, curly sideburns, a skull cap, and a long black coat. He is, in short, a Jew, and his name is Shylock.

Shylock is not a Jewish name; there was never a Jew named Shylock that anyone has heard of; the name is an invention of Shakespeare's which has entered the common language (because of the power of the characterization of the man) to represent any grasping, greedy, hard-hearted creditor. I have heard Jews themselves use the word with exactly this meaning, referring back to Shakespeare's character.

Where did Shakespeare get the name? There is a Hebrew word shalakh, which appears twice in the Bible (Leviticus 11:17 and Deuteronomy 14:17). In both places, birds of prey are being listed as unfit articles of diet for Jews. No one knows exactly what bird is meant by shalakh, but the usual translation into English gives it as "cormorant."

The cormorant is a sea bird which eats fish so voraciously that the word has come to mean personified greed and voraciousness. Shakespeare apparently is using a form of the Hebrew word both as name and characterization of the Jewish moneylender.

Shylock hesitates. The loan is a large one but Antonio, who is being offered as surety, has a good reputation for honest business dealing and is known to be wealthy enough to cover the sum. And still Shylock hesitates, for Antonio's ventures are thinly spread and he is at the moment in a period of unusual risk. Shylock says of Antonio:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 17-21

Of the places listed by Shylock, the least familiar is Tripolis. This word means "three cities" in Greek and any city built up out of the union of three towns is liable to be given that name. As an example there is one in northern Africa, which is better known to us by the Italian version of the name, Tripoli. It is the capital of the modern kingdom of Libya.

There is also a second Tripolis on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, in what is now Lebanon. It is the second largest city of that nation nowadays, and is better known to the west as Tripoli. Its Arabic name is Tarabulus.

Which Tripoli Antonio's argosy was bound for, whether the one on the southern or the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, we have no way of telling.

Shylock heard his news "upon the Rialto," a phrase that needed no explanation for the audience of the play.

In 1590, some seven years before The Merchant of Venice was written, the Venetians built a magnificent marble bridge across the Grand Canal, their chief waterway. The Latin rivus altus means "deep stream," and a bridge crossing the stream would very likely adopt its name. The Italian version of the phrase is "Rialto."

The Rialto bridge was lined with a row of shops on either side and with a broad footpath between. It became a busy commercial center and Venetian merchants and traders would gather there to exchange news and gossip.

Despite his misgivings, Shylock thinks Antonio is good surety for the loan. Bassanio, eager to help Shylock come to a favorable decision, invites him to dinner, and Shylock draws back at once:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 31-33

So far the exchange between Bassanio and Shylock has indicated nothing of the religious difference; it might have been any two men discussing a business deal. But now, with the mention of eating, comes the first clear stamp of Jewishness upon Shylock. He won't eat pork!

The Jewish abhorrence of pork is based on biblical statutes. The eleventh chapter of the Book of Leviticus states that only those beasts that have a cloven hoof and that chew the cud are ritually clean and may be eaten and sacrificed. As one example of a beast that is not ritually clean, the seventh and eighth verses say: "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch."

Many other creatures are listed as unclean in the chapter; such as the camel, the hare, the owl, the cormorant, the shellfish, and so on.

It is the pig, though, that stands out. Most of the other creatures forbidden to Jews were not a customary part of the diet of Gentiles either. Pork, on the other hand, was a favored dish of Gentiles, and for Jews to have so extreme an abhorrence of it seemed most peculiar.

It became a hallmark of the difference between Jew and Gentile. When Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Empire tried to eradicate Judaism in the second century b.c., he insisted that Jews eat pork as the best way of indicating they had abandoned their religion (and a number of Jews suffered martyrdom rather than comply). In medieval Europe too the value of a conversion from Judaism was judged by the eagerness with which the erstwhile Jew ate pork.

Shylock, in his comment on pork, does not, however, refer to the Old Testament prohibition. The Elizabethan audience would not have been familiar with that. The dietary laws of the Mosaic Code had, in the Christian view, been superseded through a vision St. Peter had had (as is described in Chapter 10 of the Book of Acts) and the Leviticus chapter was therefore a dead letter.

Instead, Shylock is made to express his disgust by means of a reference to the New Testament. The reference is to a wonder tale concerning Jesus which describes how at one time he evicted many devils from a man possessed and sent them into a herd of swine. The version in Matthew states (8:32) that the devils "went into the herd of swine and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters."

Presumably, Shylock scorns pork as evil-haunted, and feels swine to be a fit habitation for demons and therefore most unfit food for men. And, of course, we might also view the passage as a mocking reference by Shy-lock to the kind of childish and superstitious tales (in his view) that made up the Christian religion.

In actual fact, a Jew of the time would have been careful to avoid mocking at Christianity or to refer sneeringly to "your prophet the Nazarite," out of consideration for his own safety in a hostile world. Shakespeare, however, was intent on constructing a villain, and how better to do so than to have him sneer at what the audience held sacred.

It is also important to remember that neither Shakespeare nor his audience had any firsthand knowledge of how Jews talked or acted anyway. The Jews had been driven out of England by Edward I in 1290, and save for a few special exceptions, they were still absent from the land in Shakespeare's time. They were not allowed to return, in fact, until the time of Oliver Cromwell, forty years after Shakespeare's death.

Now Antonio enters and Shylock views him with instant hate. He says, aside:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 38-39

The word "publican" occurs on a number of occasions in the New Testament, where it is used for those who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman masters of Judea. A tax collector is never popular and one who collects on behalf of an occupying power is doubly damned. "Publican" was therefore a term of opprobrium among the Jews of Roman times. The word is frequently coupled with "sinners," so that when the Pharisees wished to express their disapproval of Jesus, they pointed out that he ate "with publicans and sinners" (as in Matthew 9:11, for instance).

Certainly Antonio cannot possibly be considered a publican and it is very likely that an actual Jew would not so glibly have used a term that does not occur in the Old Testament. But Shakespeare's audience knew "publican" as a word associated with the only Jews they really knew, those spoken of in the New Testament, and as a word of opprobrium besides.

Thus, the very use of the word, whether sensible or not, indicated Shy-lock's Jewishness, and that is what Shakespeare wanted it to do.

Shylock's next remark about hating Christians further emphasizes his unrelieved villainy to a good Christian audience. They are not likely to reflect that the Jews of Shakespeare's time had little to associate with their Christian neighbors but abuse, blows, and worse and could scarcely be expected to love them for it. (As Israel Zangwill, the English-Jewish writer, is supposed to have said with sardonic bitterness in the last years of the nineteenth century: "The Jews are a frightened people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have broken down their nerves.")

And yet the Christians were but victims of their training too. Each Christian knew of Jews from the New Testament tales that were repeated in church week in and week out. The Jews had rejected Jesus and demanded the crucifixion. The Jews had opposed and persecuted the apostles. In the time of the Crusades, tales arose that Jews poisoned wells and sacrificed Christian children as part of the celebration of the Passover.

Furthermore, added to all these abstractions, there was in England a contemporary case of an actual Jew of alleged enormous villainy. Queen Elizabeth I had had as her personal physician one Roderigo Lopez. He first accepted the post in 1586.

Lopez was of Portuguese origin, which made him a foreigner, and he had once been a Jew, which made him worse than a foreigner. To be sure, he was converted to Christianity, but born Christians generally suspected the sincerity of a Jew's conversion.

In 1594 Lopez came under suspicion of trying to poison the Queen in return for Spanish bribes. It is the modern opinion that he was innocent, and certainly Queen Elizabeth seemed to believe he was innocent. The Earl of Essex (of whom Shakespeare was a devoted follower) held a strong belief in Lopez' guilt and forced a trial. A Portuguese ex-Jew could scarcely expect a very objective or fair trial, and Lopez was convicted and then executed before a huge crowd under conditions of utmost brutality.

The execution made the whole question of Jewish villainy very topical, and a play entitled The Jew of Malta was promptly revived. This play, first produced in 1589, had been written by Christopher Marlowe (who had died in 1593) and dealt with the flamboyant and monstrous villainy of a Jew. The revival was enormously successful.

Shakespeare, who always had his finger on the popular pulse, and who was nothing if not a "commercial" writer, at once realized the value of writing a play of his own about a villainous Jew, and The Merchant of Venice was the result.

But Shakespeare is Shakespeare; he cannot make his Jew a simple straw man of unreasoning villainy. Shylock must have rational motives, and he says, in further explanation of his hatred of Antonio:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 41-42

"Usance" represents the "use" of money, and closely allied to it is the word "usury." In early times money was usually lent as a gesture of friendship or charity, to relieve distress; and it would seem a most ignoble act to take back more than was lent. To charge "usance" (or "interest") was strongly condemned by the ethical teachings of Judaism. In Exodus 22:25 God is described as saying: "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury."

In a more complicated society, however, money is lent not necessarily to friends, but to strangers; and not to those who are in personal need, but to those who need ready money to begin a course of action that will eventually (it is hoped) lead to profit The money is hired for business purposes and the hire should be paid for. Naturally the rate of payment should be greater if the risk of loss is greater.

The medieval church did not distinguish between lending out of charity and lending out of business need, and interest on both were alike forbidden.

The Jews, however, might interpret the Exodus verse as applying to "my people" (i.e., Jews) only. Lending at interest to non-Jews would therefore be permissible. Furthermore, Jews in Christian countries found themselves locked out of one type of employment after another, until very little was left them but the profession of moneylending, which was (in theory) forbidden to Christians.

Thus was set up the sort of vicious cycle that is constantly used to plague minorities of any land. Jews were forced into becoming usurers and then the fact that they were usurers was used to prove how villainous and hateful they were.

To make matters still more ironical, Christians were by no means as virtuous in the matter as theory had it. The church's strictures could not stand up against economic needs. Christian usurers arose in northern Italy to the point where the term "Lombard" (see page I-447) became synonymous in England with "pawnbroker" or "moneylender." In fact, it was because Italian moneylenders came to England in the thirteenth century that Edward I was able to do without Jews and could expel them from the nation.

Shylock broods on the wrongs he and his have suffered, and he mutters:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 43-45

The hatred is thus mutual (and in a passage shortly to come Antonio makes it clear that it is). The villainy is not, however. To the Christian audience, Shylock's hatred of Christians is a mark of dark and malignant villainy, but Antonio's hatred of Jews is very natural and even praiseworthy. Undoubtedly, if the audience consisted entirely of Jews, the view would be precisely reversed-and no more rational.

This double standard in viewing the ethical behavior of oneself and one's enemy is common to almost all men and is the despair of the few.

Antonio and Bassanio are anxious for a definite reply from Shylock, but Shylock delays as he considers how best he might turn Antonio's need to his advantage.

Shylock is stung, too, by Antonio's scornful hint that ordinarily he does not lend or borrow at interest. Shylock feels it necessary to prove that shrewd bargaining is not sinful.

He turns to the Old Testament and cites the case of Jacob, who agreed with his uncle, Laban, to herd his sheep and goats and take for his own pay only those lambs and kids who were born streaked, spotted, or otherwise not of solid color.

Ordinarily these would have made up a tiny minority of the young (which was why Laban agreed to the bargain), but Jacob peeled wands in such a way as to give them a striped appearance and placed them where the ewes would see them during the act of mating. Shylock says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 81-87

The story is a reasonably accurate rendition of the second half of the thirtieth chapter of Genesis. The belief that the characteristics of the young can be influenced by the nature of the environment during conception and pregnancy is part of the folklore of the ages, but it lacks any real foundation. No reputable biologist accepts this view, nor can real evidence be cited for it, and even the authority of the Bible is insufficient to put it across.

If the biblical tale were true and if the young animals were born as described, it would have had to be the result of a miracle and not of any natural event brought about by Jacob.

The case of Jacob is a poor one to support usury (something Antonio quickly poults out), and a real Jew could easily have found better arguments. However, the use of the Jacob tale is to condemn Shylock to the andience rather than to support him. Since he is made to quote, with approval, a shady act of business on the part of Jacob, the audience can nod to each other and say "Jews were always like that from the very beginning."

But to avoid some of the blame appearing to stick to the Bible rather than to Shylock (for Shakespeare never knowingly sought trouble with the authorities) Antonio is made to remark in an aside to Bassanio:

—Act I, scene iii, line 95

This is not merely a metaphorical reference to Shylock, but is a direct derivation from a biblical tale. Matthew tells of Jesus being tested in the desert by the devil, who tries to persuade Jesus to display miraculous powers for prideful self-aggrandizement.

Thus, the devil takes Jesus to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and urges him to jump off in order that he might display the protection that angels would afford him. The devil accompanies his urging with a quotation from the Old Testament, saying: "… for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." (This is from Matthew 4:6 and the quotation is from Psalms 91:11-12.)

As Shylock continues to be pressed, his politeness suddenly snaps and his hatred peeps forth. Bitterly, he begins:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 103-9

The Jewish gaberdine was a long, coarse cloak of the kind pilgrims wore in humility, to show that they were approaching some shrine as sinners hoping to be forgiven. In many places, Jews were forced to wear some distinctive garb of humiliating nature that had the double duty of indicating to the world what sinners they were and at the same time warning Christians from afar, so that they need not be sullied by showing Jews any kindness or courtesy.

Indeed, in the very city of Venice in which this play is laid, and in 1516, some eighty years before the play was written, the authorities went further. It was decided to herd the Jews into a special quarter which could be efficiently isolated. In part, this was a further development of the idea that Jews should not pollute Christians with their presence; and in part there was a kind of humanity behind it, since the Jews were safer in their own section and could be more easily protected by the authorities against looting and lynching. (They could also be more easily massacred en masse if the authorities chose to look the other way.)

For the purpose, the Venetians chose an island on which an iron foundry (gheto in Italian) must once have stood, for that was the name of the island. It was established as the Jewish quarter and "ghetto," with an additional "t," has gone ringing down history ever since as the name for any Jewish quarter anywhere and, in very recent times, for any city area occupied largely by any minority group.

Again, a vicious cycle was established. The Jews were forced to dress differently and live separately and were then hated for being different and exclusive.

Shylock's point is that he can scarcely be expected to lend money to someone who has treated him with such scorn and hatred. If Antonio had, at this point, been diplomatic, the loan might have been made in ordinary fashion and that would have been that. Instead, however, Antonio answers cruelly:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 127-28

This is utterly out of character for Antonio, who throughout the play is shown to be the soul of courtesy, gentleness, and love, and in the end has mercy even on Shylock. But Shakespeare needs a motive for Shylock's behavior in this play, and Antonio's harshness now, when Shylock all but begs for some sort of Christian remorse for the cruelty shown him, turns his persecuted heart to stone.

He agrees to make the loan but only on a queer condition, saying:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 142-48

On the surface, there is some generosity being shown here. Shylock is lending money without interest. If he is repaid on time, he will take only the three thousand ducats he is lending, no more. And if the money is not repaid, there is a forfeit of a pound of flesh, no money at all.

Shylock suggests this as a kind of merry jest, but it is clear that he is playing a long shot. He has already expressed his doubts of the safety of Antonio's manifold sea ventures, and if something should happen to them, by means of the forfeit he can kill Antonio. If the ships come home safe, he loses interest, of course, but after Antonio's remarks, the loss of interest is worth the slender chance of killing him legally.

Bassanio and Antonio both realize this, and Bassanio, in horror, refuses the deal. Antonio, however, convinced that his ships will return, insists on agreeing to the terms.

It is from this passage and from those following in the play that the phrase "pound of flesh" has entered the language as meaning the wringing out of the last bit of a bargain, however harsh and brutal the consequences.

The Shylock and Portia scenes now alternate. Back in Belmont, a new suitor arrives, the Prince of Morocco, who begins:

—Act II, scene i, lines 1-3

There is nothing here to indicate that the Prince of Morocco is anything more than a Moor, that is, a swarthy member of the "white race." However, Shakespeare's emphasis on his complexion induces us to think that he was imagined as a black, for Shakespeare confused Moors and blacks, as in Titus Andronicus (see page I-402).

As Morocco prepares to take the test of the casket, he can't resist boasting a little. He swears he would dare anything to win Portia:

—Act II, scene i, lines 24-26

"Sultan Solyman" is Suleiman I the Magnificent, under whom the empire of the Ottoman Turks reached the peak of its glory. He reigned from 1520 to 1566 and during that reign he was the strongest ruler in Europe, far greater in war and peace than the contemporary Christian monarchs: Henry VIII, Charles V, and Francis I (see page II-747), whose names make so much greater noise in the West-oriented chronicles of our historians.

During the early part of his reign Suleiman led the Ottoman armies deep into Europe. In 1526 he destroyed the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohacs and absorbed most of Hungary into his realm. In 1529 he reached the peak of his fortunes when he actually laid siege to Vienna (which, however, he did not succeed in taking).

Suleiman might have done even better against Europe, had he not also had to face eastward and battle the Persians, who, although Moslems, were of a different sect. Between 1548 and 1555 there was strenuous war between Suleiman and the Persians; a war which was won by Suleiman, but not by a very great margin. There were further wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Persians after Suleiman's death. Indeed, one was in progress at the time The Merchant of Venice was being written, so that Morocco's reference was topical.

From Morocco's words we might suppose he fought as an Ottoman ally, for it was Persians he claims to have beaten. When Morocco says he "slew the Sophy," he is referring to the Shah of Persia.

In the sixteenth century Persia was undergoing one of its periods of greatness under the rule of a family descended from one San-al-Din, who had lived in the thirteenth century. The family was called the Safavids, and this became "Sophy" in English.

The first ruler of the Safavid line was Ismail I, who came to the throne in 1501. In 1587 Abbas I became shah. He was the greatest of the line and is sometimes called Abbas the Great. He labored to reform and revitalize the Persian army and make it more fit to defend the land against the Ottoman Turks. In this he had some help, for in 1598 an English mission arrived in Persia to negotiate a treaty against the common Turkish enemy.

Thus, at the tune that The Merchant of Venice was written, references to Persia and the Sophy were easily understood.

Nevertheless, Morocco, despite his vauntings, realizes that the casket choice means that luck, not valor, will give the victory. He says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 32-35

Lichas is the attendant of Hercules (or Alcides, see page I-70), and, as it happens, he comes to a bad end (see page I-380).

Before we come to Morocco's casket choice, however, it is back to Venice and a distant glimpse of Shylock's home life. Onto the stage comes Launcelot Gobbo, Shylock's Christian house servant. Launcelot is considering leaving Shylock, for as a good Christian, he has qualms about serving a Jew.

Eventually, after an encounter with his blind father, Launcelot enters the service of Bassanio. He announces this change of service to Shylock's daughter (who makes her first appearance). She says:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 1-3

There is, of course, nothing to indicate that Shylock is cruel to his daughter or anything but a good family man (although he is later shown to be puritanical and intent on keeping his daughter from participating in foolish merrymaking). Nevertheless, the audience would readily assume that a Jew's home would be bound to be hellish.

Jessica is beautiful and lacks all the stigmata associated by Elizabethan audiences with Jews. Thus, Launcelot weeps at leaving her, even though she is as Jewish as Shylock.

This is, of course, an old convention. The villainous Jew (or Moslem, or Indian chief, or Chinese mandarin) very frequently has a beautiful daughter who falls in love with the handsome Christian and betrays her people for his sake to the cheers of the audience. In modern action tales, the beautiful Russian girl can hardly wait to fall in love with the handsome American spy and switch sides. (The audience would consider it unspeakably horrible if the situation were reversed, however.)

The name "Jessica" by the way, is not likely to strike modern readers as particularly Jewish, yet is much more so than "Shylock." Toward the end of the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the sister of the wife of Abraham's brother, Nahor, is given as Iscah. It is of this name that Jessica is a form.

That Jessica is in love with a Christian appears at once, for she loves Lorenzo, who has already appeared as a friend of Antonio's. Jessica says in a soliloquy after bidding Launcelot goodbye:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 16-21

This demonstrates that medieval prejudice against the Jew was, in theory at least, religious rather than racial. If the Jew were to consent to become a Christian he would then be accepted into the Christian community on an equal basis.

Actually, this was by no means always so. In Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century, extreme pressures forced the conversion of many Jews, who were then nevertheless discriminated against by those who took to calling themselves "Old Christians." The converts were called "marranos" ("swine"), and no matter how they attempted to be Christian they were forever suspected of being secretly Jewish.

The opportunity for Jessica to run off with Lorenzo soon appears. Shy-lock has been invited to dinner with Bassanio, and he is going despite the fact that he will "smell pork." This means Jessica will be left alone.

Launcelot Gobbo, who has carried the invitation from his new master to his old, promises there will be entertainment (to Shylock's further discomfort, for he is puritanical in his outlook-another proof of villainy to a theatergoing audience). Launcelot says:

—Act II, scene v, lines 22-25

This is a satire against the habit of finding a premonition in everything. After all, what can a nosebleed "on Black Monday last" have to do with a masque tonight?

The adjective "black" is sometimes used to commemorate some particularly disastrous occurrence. This particular case dates back to 1360, some two and a quarter centuries before The Merchant of Venice was written. At that tune Edward III, who had won two great victories in France (see page II-257), settled down in March to lay siege to Paris itself.

The army was reduced in numbers as the result of the previous winter's campaigning and was in want of provisions besides. It was not equipped to withstand a really bad siege of weather, but it was hoped that with spring well under way and the French badly demoralized the siege would not last long.

How wrong they were! On Monday, April 14, 1360, the day after Easter Sunday, a tremendous hailstorm struck the English camp. The fierce wind and unseasonable cold, the hail and the darkness all combined to strike a superstitious fear into the hearts of those who survived the horrible day.

The siege was lifted and Edward himself was sufficiently disheartened to decide on peace. This was signed on May 8 and the rest of Edward's long reign was an inglorious anticlimax. England was not to regain the upper hand in France until the reign of Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt (see page II-498) a half century later.

This Black Monday of 1360 left enough impression on English minds to give the name to Easter Monday ever after.

But Launcelot is doing more than bringing Bassanio's invitation to Shy-lock. He is also bringing a secret message from Lorenzo to Jessica, arranging for the elopement, and he cannot resist hinting to her of this in phrases that Shylock imperfectly overhears. Shylock says sharply to Jessica:

—Act II, scene vi, line 43

Sarah, the wife of Abraham and the ancestress of the Jews, had a handmaiden named Hagar. Since Sarah herself was barren, she gave the handmaiden to Abraham in order that he might have a son by her. This, indeed, came to pass and Hagar's son was named Ishmael.

When, years later, Sarah herself bore Abraham a son, Isaac, it was this younger son who was designated as Abraham's heir. Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, were evicted from the family and sent away in order that there be no dispute over the inheritance.

Thus, one might metaphorically speak of Hagar's offspring, Ishmael, as representing those who did not really inherit the covenant God made with Abraham and over whom the mantle of the true religion did not fall. Shylock would use such a term as a contemptuous designation for any Christian.

Jessica quiets her father's suspicions and, as soon as he is gone, she disguises herself as a boy and joins Lorenzo, taking with her a good supply of her father's money.

That she should escape from her father and elope with a lover, anyone would be ready to excuse since we are all sympathetic with the drives of love. That she should also steal from her father is a less sympathetic action in modern eyes. However, to Elizabethan audiences, stealing from a Jew was not really stealing.

Meanwhile the Prince of Morocco, back in Belmont, must choose among the three caskets. The gold casket bears a legend that says:

-Act II, scene vii, line 37

Morocco does not hesitate. Surely this can only refer to Portia, for as he says:

—Act II, scene vii, lines 41-43

Regions are named which are as distant and unattainable as can be imagined. Arabia is an utterly unknown desert to Christians of Shakespeare's time, and the original home of the feared Moslems.

As for Hyrcania, that was the name of the region south of the Caspian Sea (which was therefore called the Hyrcanian Sea in Roman times). Hyrcania reached its period of greatest prominence in the time of the Parthian Empire during the first and second centuries. Parthia was then the great enemy of Rome and its Hyrcanian heartland was never reached by Roman armies.

So Morocco chooses the golden casket and finds a skull inside. Apparently many men desire gold and, in searching out their heart's desire, find death instead. He loses and must leave forthwith.

In Venice, Jessica's elopement has been carried through. Shylock has discovered the loss of his daughter, together with the money and jewels she has stolen, and is distracted.

He suspects Lorenzo and is sure that he is escaping by way of the ship that is taking Bassanio (along with his friend, Gratiano) to Belmont. A search of the ship reveals nothing, but Shylock is nevertheless convinced that Antonio, the friend of Lorenzo, is at the bottom of it.

Solanio tells the tale, mimicking the distracted Shylock, who has gone raging through Venice crying for justice against those who stole his daughter and his ducats. The boys of Venice run after him, mocking, and Solanio himself thinks it is all terribly funny, and so, no doubt, did the Elizabethan audience.

The modern audience, if Shylock is played properly as the tragic character he is, is very likely to find it not funny at all, and to find themselves sympathizing with Shylock Instead.

Solanio does say one thing rather uneasily:

—Act II, scene viii, lines 25-26

The forfeit of the pound of flesh had been set in a moment of extreme irritation on Shylock's part. If it had come to the touch it is conceivable that Shylock might have relented. But now, maddened by the conspiracy to rob him of possessions and daughter by the very men (as he was convinced) to whom he had supplied necessary money, he could scarcely be expected to want anything but revenge-revenge to the uttermost. And while the thought of the kind of revenge he anticipates is not something we can sympathize with, it is something we can understand if we can bring ourselves to occupy his shoes for a moment in imagination.

And in Belmont there comes another suitor. Nerissa announces him to Portia:

—Act II, scene ix, lines 2-3

Aragon was the name of a region on the Spanish side of the central Pyrenees to begin with. It was ruled by the kings of Navarre (see page I-422), but in 1035 Sancho III of Navarre left Aragon to his third son, separating it from his kingdom. Independent Aragon then expanded southward at the expense of the Moors, who at that time controlled much of Spain.

By the middle of the fifteenth century Aragon occupied the easternmost fourth of what is now Spain. Most of the rest was occupied by the kingdom of Castile. In 1469 the heir of Castile was an eighteen-year-old girl named Isabella, while the heir of Aragon was a seventeen-year-old boy named Ferdinand. It seemed natural to arrange a marriage. In 1474 the girl became Isabella I, Queen of Castile, while her husband ruled jointly with her as Ferdinand V, King of Castile. In 1479 the old King of Aragon died and Isabella's husband also became Ferdinand II of Aragon.

The two lands were united to form modern Spain and were never separated again. The union was followed by the final defeat of the southern remnant of the Moors in 1492. In that same year Christopher Columbus' first voyage laid the foundation for Spain's vast overseas empire and made her the first true world power.

Although Aragon thus vanished from the map as an independent power a century before The Merchant of Venice was written, its name remained green in the minds of Englishmen. Ferdinand and Isabella had a daughter who became a famous and, in her time, popular queen of England-Catherine (or Katherine) of Aragon (see page II-754).

The Prince of Aragon is displayed as a far less attractive character than Morocco. For one thing, he is proud, but then this was taken as a national characteristic of the Spanish stereotype. And, no doubt, the happy accident that Aragon resembles "arrogant" helped Shakespeare choose the title.

The Prince of Aragon dismisses the leaden casket at once since lead is beneath his dignity. The golden casket offers him what many men desire and that is not for him either, since he is not satisfied with what "many" men desire. He is special. The silver casket has a legend, reading:

—Act II, scene ix, line 35

Aragon recognizes no limits to his own deserts and chooses it. He finds it contains the caricature of a fool's head. Only a fool, in other words, places too high a value on his own deserving, and Aragon loses too.

But now things suddenly turn black for Antonio. Even when Solanio had been mocking Shylock's grief-stricken outcries two scenes earlier, his friend Salerio had spoken of rumors concerning lost merchant vessels. Now the news is more specific and more damaging. Salerio reports to Solanio the news that

—Act III, scene i, lines 2-5

The "narrow seas" is the English Channel, or perhaps the Strait of Dover (only two dozen miles wide) in particular. It would seem to us that a Venetian would be more likely to refer to the strait between Italy and Sicily or Spain and Africa as the "narrow seas," but to the English audience of the play, the phrase would have only one meaning.

The "Goodwins" are the Goodwin Sands, seven miles east of the southeastern tip of England. These are a ten-mile-long stretch of treacherous shoals, where the sands are actually partly exposed at low tide.

Shylock enters, sorrow-laden and bitter. The two Venetians jeer at him, but when they ask about news concerning Antonio, it is clear that matters are worse and worse. Shylock is now grimly intent on his bargain and he echoes Solanio's earlier remark when he says of Antonio:

—Act III, scene i, lines 44-45

When Salerio, rather shaken out of his mockery, asks what use Shylock will find in a piece of human flesh, Shylock bursts out into a moving defense of himself and his fellows. It would almost seem that Shakespeare, driven by the force of his own genius and the necessity of creating a well-rounded character at all costs, gives Shylock-all against the playwright's own will, one might think-a tragic dignity and puts words in his mouth that the mocking Venetians can find no words to answer.

What does he want with the pound of flesh? Shylock grinds out:

—Act HI, scene i, lines 50-69

Remember this is a Jew's defense as placed in his mouth by someone not friendly to Jews. It is not, therefore, the most effective defense a Jew can make. Even so, the points are clear. Shylock does not claim to be better than a Christian. He merely claims to be no worse, and even in the context of the play, that gives him a great deal of room. Everyone in the play humiliates and torments him without conscience or remorse and nowhere and at no time do they consider it wrong. Even the saintly Antonio sees no wrong here.

Shylock, at least, recognizes villainy when he sees it. He admits his own plan to be villainous. His defense is that it has been taught him by Christians. In recognizing the villainy, he rises, in a way, an ethical notch above his tormenters.

Solanio and Salerio leave the stage with another sneer, but with no attempt at a real answer. Another Jew enters. Shylock greets him at once with feverish anxiety:

—Act III, scene i, lines 75-76

Tubal is no more a personal Jewish name than Shylock is. The name is to be found in the listing of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis, where in the second verse it is written, "The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras." These are taken to be the names of tribes and regions rather than of true individuals.

The one place where Tubal occurs in a context familiar to the casual biblical reader is in Genesis 4:22, which reads, "And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."

According to biblical legend, then, Tubal-cain was the first metallurgist. But even here the name means "smith of Tubal," a region in eastern Asia Minor (one suspects from Assyrian records) famous for its metal production.

Tubal has brought no definite news of Jessica's whereabouts, but has evidence that she gave one of Shylock's jeweled rings to a sailor in exchange for a monkey. Shylock groans in agony and says:

—Act III, scene i, lines 113-16

Shylock's frustrated outcry is undoubtedly designed to get a laugh, and the Elizabethan audience undoubtedly obliged. For us, however, this is surely a remarkably touching moment. Could Shylock, this monster of evil, so love his dead wife and honor her memory? Could there be a spark of love in his harsh heart? Was he a human being?

And what of Jessica, with whom the audience is expected to be completely in sympathy? The ring was her mother's. Was she so completely dead to family affection as to part with it for so trivial and unworthy an exchange? What might this tell us of the effect of conversion from Judaism to Christianity-and does anyone in the audience think of that?

And at the very tune Shylock's heart is ground by the loss of his wife's ring, he hears that Antonio is losing everything through a succession of shipwrecks. More than ever now, he must have his pound of flesh of the man who has abused him so much and who (he surely believes) has arranged the elopement of his wicked daughter.

Meanwhile Bassanio and Gratiano have arrived in Belmont. Portia is desperately in love with Bassanio and does not want him to choose, fearing he will guess wrong and be forced to leave. He, however, wants to choose, for he cannot bear the suspense. He advances to the test and Portia, in agony, says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 43-44

From classical times it was believed that swans sang before they died. Apparently it seemed natural to suppose that a bird so dignified, graceful, and austerely beautiful ought to be admirable in everything. So many birds were remarkable for the sweetness of their song that if the beautiful swan was mute, surely it could only be because it was saving something supremely wonderful for some divine climax. When better could this climax come than at its death?

This was prettified by legend makers. The swan was felt to be sacred to Apollo and to be filled with his spirit of song at the approach of death, glorying in translation, perhaps, to a better world.

This symbolism of a glorious afterlife, which many of the ancients longed for and which became part of Christian dogma, must have kept the legend going despite the fact that no one ever heard a swan sing at any time. "Swan song" is still used for the last work of a creative artist of any sort.

Portia feels Bassanio is going to fight the demon of chance for her hand and compares him to

—Act III, scene ii, lines 53-57

The reference is to the rescue of Hesione (see page I-403).

Portia has self-righteously declared she cannot give Bassanio any hints, but the music she orders played contains hints just the same. The song urges him to judge not by his eyes alone.

Bassanio gets the point and at once begins to ruminate on the way in which objects that are fair without may be worth nothing within. Apostrophizing the golden casket, he says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 101-2

In Greek legend Midas was a king of Phrygia-a land in western Asia Minor that existed prior to 700 b.c. and was then destroyed by nomadic invaders from the east. It did have kings named Mita, which could easily become Midas in Greek.

Phrygia, which gathered its wealth from over a large territory and concentrated it in the royal palace, must have seemed powerful and rich to the tiny city-states of Greece, who were in those days sunk in a Dark Age. Naturally, the wealth of King Midas became legendary.

The story that arose was that Midas had come across the drunken Sile-nus, a favorite of the wine god, Dionysus. Midas treated Silenus well and in return Dionysus offered him anything he might wish. Greedily, Midas asked that anything he touched be turned to gold. This worked well for a while, until he tried to eat. His food turned to gold as he touched it and Midas realized that the "golden touch" meant starvation. He had to beg Dionysus to relieve him of the dangerous gift.

This legend has always been popular among those who, lacking wealth, find in it the consolation of knowing that "money isn't everything," and Bassanio, in scorning gold, gives it the most unfavorable allusion he can think of. It was merely "hard food for Midas."

Bassanio chooses the leaden casket as the one least subject to dissimulation without, and, of course, it contains Portia's portrait The two may now marry and are in transports of delight Portia gives Bassanio a ring which he must never part with and the young man swears he will surrender it only with his life. Gratiano chimes in to say he has fallen in love with, and will now marry, Portia's lady in waiting, Nerissa. She gives Gratiano a ring, also.

At the height of their happiness, Lorenzo, Jessica, and Salerio arrive from Venice with the news that Antonio, beggared by the wreckage of his fleets, was unable to meet his debt to Shylock, who is now demanding his pound of flesh.

Portia hastens to send Bassanio back to Venice, placing her entire fortune at his disposal so that he might buy of! Shylock. For herself, she has additional plans. She gives a message to a servant, saying:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 47-50

Portia's cousin Bellario is apparently a professor of law at the University of Padua (see page I-447), and her plan involves him and, as she quickly explains to Nerissa, their masquerading as men. (This is a favorite device in the romances of the period. Shakespeare has already used it in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, see page I-469, and in this play, Jessica has already made use of the masquerade. Thus, all three female characters in The Merchant of Venice appear, at one time or another, in the costume of a man.)

With Portia and Nerissa gone, Lorenzo and Jessica are in charge at Belmont, and with them, of course, is Launcelot Gobbo, who affects to be unimpressed by Jessica's conversion. He refers to an Old Testament text to make his point when he says:

—Act III, scene v, lines 1-2

This is taken from the Ten Commandments themselves. As part of the second commandment, God is quoted as saying: "… I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" (Exodus 21:5).

This is actually a rather primitive view, which is altered in the course of the Old Testament itself. The prophet Ezekiel, writing in the time of the Babylonian Exile, quotes God as saying: "Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezekiel 18:19-20).

Nevertheless, the harsher and more primitive verses of the Old Testament seem always the better known to Christians (perhaps for the greater contrast they make with the New).

Of course, Launcelot admits, it may be that Jessica's mother was unfaithful and that Jessica is not truly the daughter of Shylock. Jessica points out that then her mother's sin of infidelity would be visited upon herself and Launcelot agrees and says:

—Act III, scene v, lines 15-17

Scylla and Charybdis were a pair of deadly dangers which in Homer's Odyssey are described as being on either side of a narrow strait. The strait in question is generally accepted as being the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily-which is two and a half miles wide at its narrowest

Scylla is described as a monster on the Italian side of the strait. It has twelve legs and six heads. Each head is on a long neck and is armed with a triple row of teeth. (It is almost impossible to resist the temptation that this is the distorted description of a large octopus with its sucker-studded tentacles.) The heads bark like so many puppies and during the confused yelping, the necks dart forth, with each head snatching at a sailor on any ship that passes beneath.

Charybdis was the personification of a whirlpool on the Sicilian side of the strait, which three times a day sucked down the waters and then threw them up again.

Odysseus had to pass the strait twice. First, with a full ship, he chanced Scylla and lost six men. The next time, alone on a raft, he passed across Charybdis, seizing a branch overhead when the raft was sucked down and waiting for its return before proceeding.

To be "between Scylla and Charybdis" is the classical way of saying "between the devil and the deep sea." The statement "avoiding Scylla, he fell into Charybdis" was used by the Roman poet Horace, whom Launcelot is here paraphrasing.

Jessica, however, counters all Launcelot's misgivings with a reference to the New Testament, saying:

—Act III, scene v, lines 18-19

St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians says "… the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean…" (1 Corinthians 7:14).

All this may be mere persiflage, but one is at least entitled to wonder if the cautious Shakespeare is trying to save himself trouble. Anticipating the reactions of those displeased at making a heroine of a Jew's daughter, he places their arguments in the mouth of the clown and answers them.

In Venice, Antonio must stand trial. All of Venice, from the Duke himself on downward, are on Antonio's side; all plead with Shylock not to insist on the forfeit. Shylock does insist, however. What's more, he will not accept money in place of the pound of flesh. He wants his revenge, not money.

The Duke says:

—Act IV, scene i, line 88

Here is another New Testament reference, for it is an echo of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says: "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7).

Shylock does not bother to defend himself directly; nor does he hypocritically pretend to be merciful. Instead, he faces down the angry crowd of Christians in the courtroom with a neat poniarding of their hypocrisy. Scornfully, he says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 90-93

Shylock has bought human flesh as the Venetians have and has done it at three thousand ducats a pound, a far greater price than any Venetian paid for his. If Shylock is expected to give up what he has bought, why are not the Venetians expected to give up their purchases? (The argument is not foolproof. Shylock is being offered a huge sum to give up his pound; and his purchase means death for a man, as the purchase of an entire body does not. Nevertheless, the point of hypocrisy is made.)

The Duke can see no way out of the Shylock-imposed dilemma, unless Bellario, the renowned lawyer from Padua (Portia's cousin), has some helpful opinion to offer. While they wait for a message, Shylock gets his knife ready and Gratiano bitterly berates him, saying:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 130-34

Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher of the sixth century b.c., believed in the transmigration of souls. There is a famous story that he once stopped an animal from being beaten because he insisted he recognized the voice of a dead friend. (I wonder if that might not have been merely a humane device to stop the beating of an animal.)

Clearly, such transmigration is counter to Christian doctrine, and for Gratiano to accept it would mean that he had wavered in his faith.

The reference to a hanged wolf may well have referred to Lopez (see page I-514), whose very name is related to the Spanish word for wolf.

Now Portia's plan reveals itself. The message from Bellario comes, brought by Nerissa in man's costume. Bellario cannot come himself but sends a young lawyer, Balthasar, in his place. Balthasar is, of course, Portia in disguise.

Portia too calls for mercy and says Shylock must be merciful. Shylock demands where in the law it says he must be merciful and Portia retreats, but in doing so delivers one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare, one which begins:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 183-85

It is true, then, that one is not compelled to be merciful, but mercy doesn't require compulsion. One is merciful simply because it is so wonderful to oneself and to others to be merciful.

Shylock nevertheless refuses. He insists on the letter of the law and nothing else, crying:

—Act IV, scene i, line 205

Bassanio desperately offers ten times the original loan, and if that fails, he urges the young judge to

—Act IV, scene i, lines 214-15

In a sense, this reflects a great philosophic struggle between Jew and Christian (as interpreted through Christian thought) between the letter and the spirit. In the New Testament the orthodox Pharisees are pictured as insisting on the letter of the law, while the more liberal Jesus is willing to bend the letter if that means retaining the spirit.

St. Paul makes this specific by saying that God "… hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).

But it is not so easy to bend the law. Venice is a commercial, trading city and must deal with a wide variety of foreigners with other customs and beliefs. Venetian law, like Venetian money, must inspire confidence and it cannot unless it is equitable and just and never bent to personal advantage.

Portia points out that to palter with the law would set bad precedents, and Shylock cries out exultantly:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 222-23

Daniel, in the biblical Book of Daniel, is a wise interpreter of dreams, but the reference here is to Daniel's role in the apocryphal book of The History of Susanna.

The heroine of the book, Susanna, a chaste wife, is lusted after by two wicked elders. Her virtue was proof against their ancient charms and they conspired to accuse her of adultery to punish her. They stated they had seen her intimate with a young man and the court condemned Susanna to death.

At this point Daniel, a young man at the time, entered the story (just as "Balthasar" did). He demanded the right to cross-examine the elders separately before the council. He asked each the name of the tree under which he had seen the criminal intimacy take place. Not having concerted this part of the story, they named different trees and it was plain that they were lying. Susanna was freed and the elders executed.

Of course, since Susanna is an apocryphal book and not part of the Bible in the Jewish tradition, Shylock would not be apt to refer to it in reality.

It seems that all is lost for Antonio. Shylock even refuses to pay the expense of a surgeon to help Antonio after the operation, because that is not part of the agreement (something which loses any sympathy any Elizabethan might possibly have for him).

Antonio makes a last touching speech that so moves Bassanio that he says (and, one can only believe, sincerely) that he would gladly deliver his new wife to Shylock's ruthless clutches if only that would save Antonio (and here Shakespeare's feeling of the utter nobility of male affection and its greater strength than that between man and woman shines through). Gratiano chimes in with a similar wish, and both Portia and Nerissa, in their male disguises, cannot hide the fact that such gestures sit rather poorly with them.

As for Shylock, the strong family man, he finds these remarks revolting and says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 294-96

There is scarcely a name that rings so unpleasantly in Christian ears as "Barabbas." In the New Testament, it is the name of a prisoner who was slated for execution when Jesus was. Because it was the time of Passover, Pontius Pilate offered to free a prisoner and put it up to the populace: "… Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus…" (Matthew 27:17). Since the populace demanded the release of Barabbas, Jesus was led out to crucifixion.

Matthew merely describes Barabbas as "a notable prisoner" (Matthew 27:16), but Mark says that Barabbas 'lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mark 15:7). Barabbas, in other words, had been taken after having participated in a rebellion against Rome. In the nationalistic spirit of the times one can see that to the Jewish masses Barabbas may have been a hero, but to the Christians of later times, he was a murderer whose life was unjustly traded for that of Jesus.

Marlowe in his The Jew of Malta called his Jew Barabbas, so that his villainy would be expressed in his very name. Shylock's remark can thus be interpreted as being a wish that Jessica had married even the worst kind of Jew (or, from the Christian standpoint, any Jew) rather than any Christian. (It is an odd point in favor of Shylock, and one rarely remarked upon, that despite what his daughter has done to him, he regrets her marriage because of his belief that a Christian would make an unkind husband. It would seem he still loves his daughter.)

Again, since Barabbas is a name that does not occur in the Old Testament, Shylock, in reality, would not have made the reference.

Shylock is ready to take his pound of flesh when suddenly Portia stops him. She turns his insistence of the letter of the law against him. There is no mention of blood in the bond and therefore Shylock must take his pound of flesh without spilling one drop of Christian blood. What's more, he must take exactly a pound, neither the tiniest fraction more or less.

It is a legal quibble, but under the circumstances, it has its logic.

Shylock finds himself caught and offers to take the three-times payment Bassanio has offered. Bassanio is willing, but Portia grimly insists on the letter of the law. Shylock asks for his bare principal, but Portia insists on the letter. Shylock offers to abandon the money altogether and even that cannot be done, for in planning to take the pound of flesh he was a foreigner seeking the life of a Venetian, and as such, half of all his goods is forfeit to Antonio and half to the state.

(Actually, if we were arguing law, then, in the existence of a statute against a foreigner seeking the life of a Venetian, the agreement to accept a pound of flesh as forfeit for non-payment of a loan to a foreigner was illegal to begin with.)

Antonio now displays his magnanimity most impressively. That half of Shylock's fortune that is to go to the state he urges be returned to Shylock on the payment of a mere fine (a suggestion first made by the Duke). That half that is to go to Antonio himself, he would turn over to Shylock's daughter, Jessica, and her Christian husband, on Shylock's death.

But then one thing more is added, which sits less well with a modern audience than with an Elizabethan one. In return for all this, Antonio sets a condition:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 385-86

The notion of forced conversion to Christianity was often justified by a verse in Luke. In a parable told in that Gospel, a man giving a feast found that his guests refused his invitation. He therefore sent his servants out to find strangers to attend the feast, and, if necessary, to make them attend by force. "And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled" (Luke 14:23).

And indeed, Christians have converted Jews and pagans at the point of a sword. (So have Moslems and, to be truthful, on at least one occasion, Jews. In the second century b.c. the Maccabean King of Judea, John Hyrcanus I, conquered the Idumeans, a non-Jewish people who lived to the south of Judea, and forced them to accept Judaism.)

The present Western liberal tradition considers such forced conversions in any direction to be abhorrent, but the Elizabethans would not find it so. To force a Jew to turn Christian was, in their view, a crowning mercy, since it rescued him from the certainty of hell and placed him on the route to salvation. Many in the Elizabethan audience may well have thought Antonio was being entirely too softhearted, and it is not impossible to suppose that Shakespeare himself wanted to do Shylock this favor out of a sneaking affection for this full-rounded villain he had managed to create. After all, Marlowe had given his Jew in The Jew of Malta an unrepentant and horrible death.

After the tension of the trial, there is a final act of idyllic happiness back in Belmont, where Lorenzo and Jessica are continuing their blissful honeymoon. The night is glorious and they hymn it alternately in classical allusion to sad and tragic loves, as a delicious contrast to their own happy one.

Lorenzo says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 3-6

The tale of Troilus and Cressida was handled by Shakespeare five years after the writing of The Merchant of Venice (see page I-71 ff). Jessica responds:

—Act V, scene i, lines 6-9

Shakespeare had treated the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, in burlesque form, a year or two earlier in A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-48).

Lorenzo says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 9-12

The sad tale of Dido and Aeneas (see page I-20) is one of Shakespeare's favorites.

But then Jessica comes up with an allusion that doesn't fit at all. She says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 12-14

Medea was the archetype of the powerful witch in Grecian myth, a woman of passionate desires who would stop at no crime to gratify them. She was the daughter of Aeetes, to whose guardianship the Golden Fleece (see page I-161) was entrusted. When Jason and his companions came searching for it, she fell in love with Jason and betrayed her father. She returned to Jason's kingdom with him and, according to one tale, restored the youth of Jason's old father, Aeson, by the use of her enchantments.

Medea might be included in the list of tragic loves because Jason tired of her eventually and abandoned her. In rage, she killed her own children by the faithless Jason. Still, it is odd that Jessica should refer to the tale of a woman who betrayed her father for her lover and who was regarded not as a heroine by the Greeks but as a villainess, and who came to so bad an end besides. Might we argue that Shakespeare's sneaking sympathy for Shy-lock shows itself here yet again?

Lorenzo and Jessica are interrupted by messengers reporting that Portia and Nerissa on one hand and Bassanio and Gratiano on the other are returning. (They are arriving separately; the young men don't know even yet that their wives were at the trial in masculine guise.) Yet Lorenzo cannot bear to leave the night. He says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 58-65

This notion of the "music of the spheres" (see page I-199), first advanced by Pythagoras, was still extant in Shakespeare's time. The great German astronomer Johann Kepler tried to figure out the exact notes being sounded by the various planets. This was done just about the time Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice. Could Shakespeare have heard about it and could he have been inspired by it to write this lyrical passage?

Portia, returning, is also captivated by the night, saying:

—Act V, scene i, lines 109-10

Endymion, in the Greek myths, was a handsome prince who, asleep in a cave one night, was spied by Selene, goddess of the moon. Ravished by his beauty, she descended to the cave and kissed the sleeping youth. She wanted no more and, throwing him into a magic, eternal slumber, she returned night after night to kiss him and sleep awhile by his side.

Portia has returned home before her husband and gives orders that no one is to reveal the fact she has been away at all. She is ready for the last complication of the play.

After Antonio had been saved, Bassanio, in gratitude, had offered the young judge (whom he did not recognize to be his wife) some reward. She would take nothing but the ring which Portia had given him and which he had sworn not to surrender. Reluctantly, Bassanio (recognizing his debt to Antonio) gave up the ring. Doubling the fun, Nerissa made Gratiano give up his ring too.

(Surely one must see the contrast with Shylock, who would not have given up his wife's ring for anything.)

When Bassanio and Gratiano come, bringing Antonio with them, the women at once ask for the rings. Naturally, they refuse to believe their husbands' explanations and pretend to be sure the rings were given to other women.

Portia, in particular, swears that if Bassanio did give her ring to some man, as he says, then she would take that man for her bedmate. She says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 230-33

(Of course she will. If she is alone, she will sleep with herself as the only person in the bed.)

Argus was a giant in Greek mythology, whose special monstrous attribute was a hundred eyes, some of which were always open (see page I-86).

But then, before the quarrel can grow more fierce than suffices to amuse the audience, the truth is revealed, Lorenzo and Jessica learn they will be Shylock's heirs, and all ends in a blaze of happiness.

19. Much Ado About Nothing

Much ado about nothing is among the pleasantest of Shakespeare's plays. It was written about 1599 and is the first of a cluster of three comedies, written in the space of a year or so, that represent Shakespeare's comic genius at its height.

The play opens with Leonato, the governor of Messina, speaking with a Messenger who has just brought him a letter. Leonato says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

Messina is one of the principal cities of the island of Sicily. It is located in the northeastern comer of that triangular island just at the narrow strait that separates Sicily from Italy. As for Aragon, that is a medieval kingdom that was located in eastern Spain (see page I-526).

But what was Don Pedro of Aragon doing in Sicily?

Well, through much of the Middle Ages Sicily had been ruled by the German emperors. In 1266, however, it fell into the hands of the French dynasty of Anjou.

In 1282 the Sicilians grew tired of this Angevin rule. On March 30, just as the church bells were ringing for the sunset prayers called vespers, the Sicilians rose in concert and killed every Frenchman they could find. This event, the "Sicilian Vespers," ended Angevin rule on the island.

The last German ruler of Sicily, prior to the advent of the Angevins, had had only one surviving child, a daughter. She had married the King of Aragon, and the Sicilians considered this Aragonese King to be the natural successor to the crown. They Invited him to come to Sicily. He did so and by 1285 had established himself firmly as ruler of Sicily, beginning a dynasty that was to continue for over five hundred years.

The Aragonese King who took over in Sicily was Pedro III (also known as Pedro the Great). Naturally, he was not the Don Pedro of Aragon who figures in Much Ado About Nothing, a play which is completely and entirely unhistorical. Undoubtedly, however, it was his name that floated into Shakespeare's mind when he needed one for the prince.

It is quickly established that there has been a battle which Don Pedro has won and which has been practically bloodless. Leonato says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 9-11

Florence was the leading city of Renaissance Italy, the medieval analogue of ancient Athens. Shakespeare never set the scene of one of his plays in that city, but he knew its reputation and worth. Simply by making Claudio a Florentine he was informing the audience that the man was intelligent and gallant.

Leonato has a daughter, Hero, beautiful and shy, and a niece named Beatrice, merry and impudent. The latter is trying to make herself heard and finally manages to say:

—Act I, scene i, lines 29-30

Mountanto is the name of a style of fencing thrust and the implication is that the gentleman in question is a great swashbuckler, presumably a phony, whose valor is all talk.

The Messenger doesn't know whom she means and her cousin, Hero, must identify him, saying:

—Act I, scene i, line 34

Padua is the scene of much of the action of The Taming of the Shrew (see page I-447). The Messenger assures the company that Benedick is alive and well, and Beatrice breaks out at once in a flood of slander against him. Leonato feels it necessary to explain this away and says to the Messenger:

—Act I, scene i, lines 58-61

And indeed, it is this "merry war" that is the heart of the play and that will keep it alive and popular forever.

In come the warriors, including Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick. There is a gracious and good-humored conversation with Leonato in the course of which Benedick carefully manages to fail to see Beatrice.

Finally, Beatrice is forced to address him and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 112-13

Whereupon in the most lordly way possible, Benedick turns, looks at the lady with a vague surprise, and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 114-15

And the battle is joined.

But not quite all is merry. Among the party is a sour-visaged gentleman who has thus far said nothing. Leonato greets him too, and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 149-51

He is speaking to Don John, the Prince's illegitimate brother, who has apparently been in rebellion against Don Pedro. In fact, that was what the battle was about. Don John lost, apparently ignominiously, with Claudio particularly notable on the winning side, and the loser has had to reconcile himself with his brother. No wonder he looks so sour.

Nothing of this is historical, but Shakespeare may well have thought of the name because King Philip II of Spain (who died only a year or so before Much Ado About Nothing was written and who had ruled Sicily) had happened to have an illegitimate brother widely known as Don John of Austria.

The historical Don John was, to be sure, nothing at all like the Don John of the play and had never rebelled against his brother. In fact, the historical Don John is best known for his victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto and then for his death, not long afterward, at the age of thirty-one in 1578.

Claudio has fallen in love with Hero and as is natural for a lover, he wants his friend, Benedick, to praise her. Benedick, a very sensible young man, refuses to be poetic about it. He says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 184-86

The Furies were creatures of Greek legend who were vengeful spirits that pursued those guilty of great crimes, and were probably personifications of the madness that stemmed from guilt and remorse. It is clear, though, that despite Benedick's unkind characterization of Beatrice he is very much struck by her-and we might guess that Beatrice wouldn't take so much trouble to tongue-lash Benedick if she weren't equally struck by him.

In short, the two are in love and everyone in the play and in the audience knows it-except for Beatrice and Benedick themselves.

Don Pedro is on Claudio's side, however, and the two of them then proceed to tease Benedick over his confirmed bachelorhood. They assure him he will fall in love and marry someday, and Benedick swears mightily that he won't, saying:

—Act I, scene i, lines 248-50

The reference is to a north English ballad, famous in Shakespeare's time, concerning three master archers who lived in a forest in the extreme north of England. These were Clym of the dough, William of Cloudesly, and Adam Bell, and any of the three might be used as a way of signifying a champion archer. In this case, it is Adam who gets the nod.

Finally, Benedick's protestations reach a climax and succeed in adding a word to the language. He says that if he ever gets married, they can make a sign on which he is to be caricatured and

—Act I, scene i, lines 257-58

"Benedick" is but a slightly corrupt form of "Benedict," and either is now used with a small letter (a benedict) to signify sometimes a bachelor, sometimes a married man. The most appropriate use, however, is for a long-time bachelor who is newly married.

Benedick's companions are not impressed and feel that he will pay for his scorning of love. Don Pedro warns him laughingly:

—Act I, scene i, lines 261-62

Venice, as a great trading center (see page I-499), would be crowded with sailors from all lands, eager for the use of women after the Spartan life aboard ship, and the city would therefore be considered a center of sexual license.

All is going along marvelously well. Don Pedro promises to use his influence to see to it that Claudio and Hero get married. Leonato learns of it and is delighted.

There is only one exception. Don John, the defeated brother, is miserable. His companion, Conrade, tries to cheer him up, but fails. Don John is even surprised that Conrade should try. He says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 10-12

In astrological thinking, each person is considered as having been born under the influence of a particular planet, which governs his personality in some fashion related to its own properties.

Mercury is the fastest moving of the planets, and to be "mercurial" is to be gay, volatile, and changeable.

Venus, named for the goddess of love, is related to "venereal," which can mean loving or lustful. The word has fallen out of use because of its association with diseases such as syphilis.

Mars, the ruddy planet named for the god of war, has an obvious connection with "martial."

Jupiter (Jove) is the second brightest of the planets and is named for the chief of the gods. It is considered most fortunate to be born under it and to be "jovial" is to be merry, good-natured, and sociable.

Saturn is considered to produce effects opposite to those of Jupiter. It is the slowest moving of the planets and is named for a particularly ancient god. Those born under his influence are therefore "saturnine," that is, grave, gloomy, and slow. Don John himself is portrayed as a saturnine individual.

The name "Conrade" has a connection with Sicily, by the way. The last of the German emperors to rule as King of Sicily was Conrad IV, who reigned from 1250 to 1254. His son, Conradin, attempted to retain hold over Sicily but was defeated and beheaded in 1268 by Charles of Anjou, who set up the Angevin dynasty that was to end fourteen years later in the Sicilian Vespers.

But another of Don John's companions, Borachio, comes in with the news that a match is being arranged between Claudio and Hero. Don John brightens. He feels a particular hate for Claudio, who was so prominent in the battle that defeated Don John, and if some mischief can be worked up at the young man's expense, so much the better.

Leonato is planning a masked dance that night as an amusement for the royal company he is hosting, and during the preparations, Beatrice is her usual merry self, as busily denying she will have a husband as Benedick had earlier been denying he would have a wife. She even looks forward, with some cheer, to the traditional punishment Elizabethans imagined for old maids. She will not marry and

—Act II, scene i, lines 39-41

The "berrord" is the "bearward" or animal keeper. She will accept a com from him as wages and do a job for him, which is to lead his apes into hell (see page I-454).

Don Pedro intends to take the occasion of the masked ball to smooth Claudio's path to Hero. He will dance with Hero, pretending to be Claudio. Drawing her to one side, and speaking more gallantly than Claudio himself might be able to, he will win her love for his friend.

When Don Pedro dances with Hero, she naturally tries to find out who is under the mask, and he says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 95-96

This refers to a tale told in Ovid's Metamorphoses (see page I-8).

Jupiter (Jove) and Mercury once traveled through Asia Minor in disguise to test the hospitality of its inhabitants. They were treated discourteously everywhere until they came to the lowly cottage of an old, poor couple, Philemon and Baucis. Their welcome there was so hospitable that they offered to grant the couple whatever their wish might be. Their only wish was that they might die together, without warning, at the same moment, so that neither should know one moment of the pain of living without the other. It was granted.

Don Pedro, in referring to himself as Jove, may be tempted at the moment to speak for himself rather than for Claudio. Indeed, Don John, for sheer mischief, will take the occasion soon to get the news to Claudio that Don Pedro had indeed spoken for himself (though, in the end, he did not).

Benedick dances with Beatrice at the ball and, under the cover of anonymity, tells her of certain anonymous slanders he has heard concerning her. She repeats the information and guesses the informer, saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 128-30

The "Hundred Merry Tales" was a popular, and therefore well-worn, collection of funny stories, most of them coarse. It would be equivalent, in modern terms, to saying that she had gotten her witty sayings out of Joe Miller's joke book.

It was a deadly thing to say to Beatrice and in vengeance (she probably knew very well with whom she was dancing) she floods Benedick with cruel remarks which he cannot counter.

Benedick has so much the worse of it on this occasion that after the dance he boils over with frustration, and says to Don Pedro concerning Beatrice:

—Act II, scene i, lines 250-54

She is such a shrew, in other words, that even Hercules would bow before her in fear.

As a matter of fact, the image is not too far removed from one of the legends concerning Hercules. As a punishment for some crime, Hercules was condemned to serve Omphale, Queen of Libya, for three years. She chose to have him do the woman's work about the house, spinning, cleaning, making beds, while she wore his lion's skin and carried his club.

As for Ate, she is the Greek goddess of vengeance and mischief, who created so much trouble even among the gods that she was cast out of heaven and condemned to live on earth, where, Benedick implies, she has taken on the likeness of Beatrice.

And when Beatrice enters, Benedick bounds to his feet at once and demands to be sent away. He says to Don Pedro melodramatically:

—Act II, scene i, lines 261-69

The Antipodes ("with the feet pointed opposite") is a term invented by the Greeks. When their philosophers worked out the fact that the earth was spherical, there appeared at once the odd and paradoxical situation that people might live on the other side of the earth, with their feet pointed upward (from the standpoint of the Greeks).

Since the temperature rose as one went south, some Greek philosophers suggested there was a burning zone about the equator that men could not pass and that the world of the Antipodes (the Southern Hemisphere) could never be reached.

(By Shakespeare's time this was shown to be false, but the Antipodes remained as a symbol of the distant and unattainable.)

Prester John ("John the Priest") was a mythical monarch whose existence was widely accepted in the later Middle Ages. He was supposed to be a Christian king of immense power, with wide dominions in Asia, a king who had conquered the pagan regions and converted them to Christianity (hence his title).

There were indeed Christians in the Far East. These were the Nestorian Christians, a heretical sect that had been driven out of the East Roman Empire in the fifth century and had found haven in Persia and beyond. They penetrated to central Asia and China and, for a while in the twelfth century, were influential among the Mongol tribes who were gaining power.

In 1145 a Syrian bishop, Hugh of Gebal, brought the tale to the papal court. He spoke of a great Christian monarch in the East, thus combining a Mongol conqueror (who was not a Christian) with the Nestorians (who were not kings). In 1177 Pope Alexander III wrote a letter to this supposed Prester John, suggesting an alliance against the Moslems. The messenger carrying the letter never returned and nothing is known of his fate. Nevertheless, people continued to believe in the myth of a great Christian empire somewhere beyond the horizon.

In 1206 the greatest of the Mongols took the name of Genghis Khan, and he proved a Prester John indeed, though not a Christian one. For a bloody and unbelievable half century the Mongols expanded with unheard-of speed and built the largest continuous land empire the world had yet seen. In 1240 they even penetrated central Europe, defeating all armies sent against them.

Under Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, they reached their height. In the late thirteenth century the Italian traveler Marco Polo spent seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan and thereafter wrote an immensely popular account of his travels. The memory of the Khans (or Chams) remained green, therefore, and it is the beard of the Mongol ruler which Benedick offers to pluck (though by Shakespeare's time only remnants of the Mongol Empire remained).

The Pygmies were a dwarfish race first mentioned in Homer's Iliad, and were reputed to live south of Egypt (see page I-63). The Harpies, in Greek legend, were originally symbols of the storm wind, but they were eventually pictured as winged birds of prey with women's heads. They were described as horrible, filthy creatures that snatched food away from men's tables, soiling and fouling what they could not take.

Having said all this, Benedick stalks off in a huff, to Beatrice's amusement. The rest of the group are happy too, as it quickly turns out that Don Pedro has wooed on his friend's behalf, and successfully. Soon there will be a wedding between Claudio and Hero.

Don Pedro, having listened to Benedick and Beatrice berate each other, suddenly thinks it would be delightful to trick them into falling in love. It is quite obvious to everyone that they are actually in love and it is just necessary to find some face-saving way of getting each to admit it

Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio therefore seize an opportunity when Benedick is within earshot, to pretend they don't know they are being overheard, and to begin a long, circumstantial tale about Beatrice being in love with Benedick and being afraid to show it. They say that she may die of it.

Benedick is quite incredulous at first, but the three are most convincing, and, in his heart, he wants to believe, of course. So it comes about that he decides he can't very well let the poor girl die and he might as well save her life by loving her.

Next, Beatrice must get the same treatment. Hero and a lady in waiting, Ursula, will talk in the garden and Beatrice will be lured there to overhear them. Hero gives directions, saying that the talk will be in a shady place where the plants

—Act III, scene i, lines 9-11

Considering the year in which the play was written, this sounds like an unmistakable reference to the Earl of Essex (see page I-120), who had been the favorite of Queen Elizabeth and who was now falling out of favor and taking it hard. Soon he was to attempt rebellion against the Queen and be beheaded for his pains.

Shakespeare was patronized by Essex and was surely sympathetic to him (see page I-119). In fact, there is every reason to suppose he did not forgive Elizabeth for executing the Earl, and when Queen Elizabeth died he remained mute, something spitefully noted by the poet Henry Chettle, who wrote an elegy in the dead monarch's honor.

And yet here is this passage in Much Ado About Nothing. We might suppose that Shakespeare, not one to risk his neck, or his living either, fearful that his connection with Essex might bring harm down upon his head, inserted this passage as an indication of disapproval of Essex. Such an indication might place him on the right side and out of trouble.

The girls' stratagem works and Beatrice is tricked into love out of pity, just as Benedick was.

Everything is going better and better, but there is Don John even yet His earlier bit of mischief had miscarried and he wants something more effective. His companion, Borachio, has an idea. Why not frame Hero? He can arrange things so that he himself will woo Hero's lady in waiting Margaret at Hero's window. Don Pedro and Claudio will be allowed to overhear and be made to believe that Hero is a creature of light behavior who bestows her favors on anyone.

This vile plot is carried through offstage and works, but almost at once the nemesis of the plotters appears in the shape of comic constables, who mangle the English language with every sentence.

Their chief is Dogberry, epitome of the cowardly policeman who is willing to make an arrest only if there is no risk in it. Thus, when asked by a watchman whether they may arrest any thieves they encounter, Dogberry prudently says:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 57-58

The proverb is biblical; at least it occurs in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (13:1), where it is written: "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith," an analogy that warns against evil companionship.

Two newly sworn watchmen remain behind and almost at once Conrade and Borachio enter. Borachio, having successfully carried through the plot, is bubbling over with glee because he has earned a thousand ducats from Don John as a result. Borachio says to Conrade:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 104-6

It is to be presumed that Don John's companions are Aragonese and speak Spanish. Shakespeare makes no point of it in the play but Bora-chio's reference to himself as a drunkard is interesting, since the Spanish word borracho means just that.

Borachio is triumphant over the ease with which appearance was mistaken for reality (Margaret at the window for Hero). Through him, Shakespeare strikes out at one of his favorite targets-changing fashion. Borachio denounces fashion for making mankind ridiculous:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 134-38

The new fashions only succeed, in other words, in making men look like one variety or another of ancient figures so that those fashions don't even have the virtue of being really new.

The reference to "Bel's priests" brings in another apocryphal book of the Bible. In this case it is Bel and the Dragon, in which the prophet Daniel proved to King Cyrus of Persia that the idol Bel was merely an inanimate object. The priests of Bel pretended that the idol consumed food and wine brought to it by the faithful each day, and Daniel showed that it was the priests themselves who ate and drank.

The watchmen abandon Dogberry's caution and, like valiant men, promptly arrest Conrade and Borachio. Dogberry and his chief assistant, the aged Verges, go to Leonato to acquaint him with the conspiracy against his daughter. Between their wordiness and Leonato's haste to be on with the wedding preparations, communication fails and the plot, which ought to have been scotched, is not.

At the wedding ceremony, Claudio, in the most brutal manner, scornfully refuses to accept Hero, accusing her of immorality. Sadly, Don Pedro confirms this.

Leonato is half convinced, Benedick is puzzled and confused, and Hero faints. Beatrice, of course, is instantly and entirely on the side of Hero.

The Friar, who had been performing the marriage ceremony, suggests (very much in the manner of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet) that the family pretend Hero is dead till the matter can be straightened out. Her supposed death will produce remorse in Claudio and Don Pedro and make them the readier to accept her innocence if the evidence points to it; while if she turns out to be really guilty, her supposed death would hide her shame and make it easier to have her quietly put in a nunnery.

Beatrice, furious, is in no mood, however, for lengthy investigations. She wants direct action. Poor Benedick, confessing his love for her, can scarcely get two words out at a time. Beatrice rages her contempt for Don Pedro and Claudio. She says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 313-15

"Comfect" is candy (as in our modern "confectionary"), and Beatrice is sneering at the fault manliness of those who could treat a young girl so cruelly.

Beatrice has only one small demand of Benedict; that he kill Claudio. Benedick doesn't want to, but he cannot stand against Beatrice's impetuous fire; gloomily, he goes off to challenge Claudio.

Quietly Benedick challenges Claudio to a duel, out of the hearing of Don Pedro. Claudio, however, can scarcely take his old, bantering friend seriously. He insists on thinking it is some sort of joke and says to Don Pedro (who has overheard the conversation imperfectly and asks if Claudio is being invited to dinner):

—Act V, scene i, lines 153-56

They are all items of food; but calves, capons, and woodcocks are all common symbols of stupidity too. Claudio is still wondering if Benedick is advancing some stupid joke. But Benedick insists on being grim, and stalks off after insulting Claudio unmistakably and formally leaving the service of Don Pedro.

The plot is breaking down, however. Not only does Benedick inform Don Pedro that his brother, Don John, has fled Messina (a suspicious act made necessary, presumably, by the arrest of Conrade and Borachio), but the foolish Dogberry has managed to extract a confession from the villains.

When the truth is out, Don Pedro and Claudio are prostrate with remorse and guilt. Leonato demands a simple recompense; that Claudio marry a niece of his that looks very much like the supposedly dead Hero. In deep contrition, Claudio agrees at once, and, of course, the "niece" turns out to be Hero herself. All are reconciled, right down to Claudio and Benedick.

Now it is Benedick's turn. He will marry soon and subject himself to the dangers of the horns of cuckoldry after all. Claudio laughingly says:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 44-47

There is a play on words here between Europa, meaning the continent of Europe, and Europa, the princess whom Jove loved in the shape of a bull (see page I-44).

It comes out now that both Beatrice and Benedick had fallen in love because each had been told the other was lovesick, but it no longer matters. Benedick saves face by saying:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 92-93

And Beatrice answers (as usual) with interest:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 94-96

With that, they kiss and are clearly blissfully happy. And we may presume that the marriage will stay happy too. No doubt the "merry war" between them will continue and Beatrice' sharp tongue will continue to have the better of it, but what of that?

After all, "Beatrice" means "she who makes happy" and "Benedick" means "blessed," and Shakespeare could not have chosen those names accidentally. Beatrice will make Benedick happy and he will be blessed in her.

The play ends with the news that Don John has been caught, but punishment is deferred for the next day. Nothing will interfere with the gaiety of the end.

20. As You Like It

As you like it seems to have been written about 1599, a little after Much Ado About Nothing, and is therefore the second of the cluster of Shakespeare's three joyous comedies.

In this second comedy, much of the action takes place in an idealized pastoral setting, something very popular in the period. The plot Shakespeare obtained from a pastoral romance, Rosalynd, published in 1590 by the English poet Thomas Lodge, and unproved it beyond measure.

The story opens with Orlando and the old servant, Adam, onstage. Orlando is the youngest of three sons. His dead father has left him but a small sum for himself and has placed his bringing up in charge of the oldest brother, Oliver.

Though Oliver supports the middle brother in school, he is (for some reason Shakespeare does not bother to explain) a jealous tyrant to his youngest brother, keeping him deliberately in idleness and penury. When Oliver comes onstage, young Orlando says to him bitterly:

—Act I, scene i, lines 36-38

This is a reference to the famous parable of the prodigal son in the Gospel of St. Luke (see page II-368).

The two brothers nearly come to blows and Orlando demands the small sum coming to him so that he might leave. Oliver agrees, with ill grace, but it is in his mind to be rid of Orlando forever and without paying him any money either.

Charles, a wrestler at the court of the Duke, is there to speak to Oliver, and it is this wrestler who is to be the means whereby Oliver will carry out his plan. Charles, asked after court news, says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 96-98

Who these dukes might be, and over what region they might rule, Shakespeare does not say and, certainly, does not care. In Lodge's pastoral romance, the dead father of the young hero was called Sir John of Bordeaux. That would make the scene the southwestern section of France. And indeed, the wrestler (here called Charles) is, in the source romance, serving at the court of Torismund, King of France. There was once a Toris-mund, who ruled the Germanic tribe of the Visigoths in 451, and that tribe did, indeed, control at that time southwestern France.

In Shakespeare's version, the father of Oliver and Orlando is Rowland de Boys. "Rowland" is a form of "Roland" and that name is best known as that of a Frankish warrior who died at the Battle of Roncesvalles in 778, which was fought in the Pyrenees about 130 miles south of Bordeaux. This is reminiscent of the time and place of Torismund.

That, however, is as far as it goes. The King of France is changed by Shakespeare into a Duke who is not further characterized or even named. (He is called Duke Senior in the play.) The usurping younger brother is named Frederick.

Charles goes on to say of the exiled Duke:

—Act I, scene i, lines 111-15

If we imagine a French setting, the Forest of Arden would be the wooded region of Ardennes, straddling the modern boundary between France and southern Belgium. There is, however, an actual Forest of Arden just north of Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon, and the dramatist must surely have had this at least partly in mind.

In the Forest of Arden, Duke Senior and his men are living the life of happy outlaws, in the midst of nature, eating the game they capture and not having a care in the world. This is the bucolic bliss that is conventional in pastorals, for it is common for people trapped in the hurly-burly of the crowded haunts of men to imagine (wrongly) that there is some special delight in a simple life that existed in the "good old days."

This vain imagining even made its way into many mythologies. The early Greek poet Hesiod pictured the human race as having degenerated through successive ages, each worse than the one before. The first period was the "golden age," in which men lived without care, eating acorns, honey, and milk, free of hunger and pain; to these men death was only a falling asleep. It is to this that Charles refers as "the golden world."

To the English audience, the best-known example of happy outlaws in the forest was that of Robin Hood and his band of merry men. He was originally a peasant outlaw fighting against the Norman overlords, but with time he was polished up and made more acceptable to the aristocracy. By Shakespeare's time he had been transmuted into a Norman nobleman, Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, who was unjustly dispossessed and outlawed. The resemblance between this version of Robin Hood and the case of Duke Senior makes Charles's reference a natural one.

Charles has come to warn Oliver that it is rumored his youngest brother, Orlando, will try to wrestle him. Charles gives troubled warning that he will be forced to hurt Orlando. Oliver, however, callously urges Charles to kill Orlando rather than merely hurt him.

The scene then shifts to the court, where we find the two charming young cousins, Rosalind and Celia. Rosalind is the daughter of the exiled Duke, and Celia the daughter of the usurping one. Rosalind is kept at court, despite her father's exile, because Celia loves her so.

Celia endeavors to keep her cousin cheerful and in this is helped by the court fool, who is named Touchstone. This is a particularly significant name, for a touchstone is a hard, flinty rock upon which a soft metal like gold will leave a rubbed-off mark if drawn across it. Pure gold and gold alloyed with varying amounts of copper can be used to make reference marks of different shades of yellow, orange, and red. If an unknown gold alloy is then rubbed across the touchstone, the mark it leaves, when compared with the standards, will reveal the amount of the copper content. As a result, "touchstone" has come to mean any criterion or standard against which the qualities of something may be tested.

To have a fool named Touchstone, then, is to indicate that it is by the encounter with the wit of a fool that the wisdom of a man may be judged.

Thus, when cautioned about the too great freedom of his remarks, Touchstone says to the girls:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 83-84

To this, Celia responds:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 85-87

This remark has nothing to do with anything in the play and it would seem that Shakespeare was seizing the opportunity to make a cutting reference to some contemporary event. The satiric writing of Elizabethan times had grown more and more scurrilous until those jabbed at by it managed to push the government into banning such satires on June 1, 1599. Censorship, nevertheless, is almost invariably a greater evil than those it tries to cure, and Shakespeare expresses his disapproval of it here.

The young ladies learn of the wrestling matches and of the apparent invincibility of Charles. Orlando is now there to take his turn at the wrestling, and both girls, but especially Rosalind, are greatly taken with his youth and good looks.

All try to persuade Orlando not to wrestle, but he insists, and to everyone's surprise throws Charles and badly hurts him. Duke Frederick wants to know the young victor's name and is put out to find he is a son of Sir Rowland de Boys, an old enemy of his.

Later a courtier comes back to warn Orlando to leave quickly:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 254-56

The word "humorous" refers to the humors (or body fluids) of the old Greek physicians (see page I-582), which were supposed to control the temperament. To say the Duke is "humorous" is to say that he is a creature of moods and his present mood, apparently, is a dangerous one.

The Duke is moody indeed, for he turns against Rosalind also. Having kept her at court ever since her father was exiled, he now bids her leave at once on pain of death, and insists on it despite Celia's wild protests.

After the Duke stalks offstage, Celia insists that she will flee with Rosalind and that together they will seek Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden. Rosalind is disturbed at the thought of two girls wandering through the wilderness and she suggests that she, at least, dress as a man (Shakespeare's favorite device in his romances).

Rosalind even takes a name for herself in her guise as man, saying to Celia:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 122-23

Ganymede, in the Greek myths, was a beautiful Trojan prince (see page I-67) with whom Jupiter (Zeus) fell in love. Since Ganymede was the object of homosexual love, the name is appropriate for a young man who, being really a young lady, is bound to look and behave like an effeminate.

Celia also chooses a new name, saying to Rosalind that it will be

—Act I, scene iii, lines 125-26

"Aliena" is Lathi and is a feminine form of the word meaning "stranger." Celia has become alienated from her father.

The two girls decide to take Touchstone with them, and leave.

In the second act the scene shifts to the Forest of Arden, where Duke Senior is contentedly lecturing his followers on the advantages of the simple life:

—Act II, scene i, line 5

For his sin in eating the forbidden fruit, Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, where food was always at hand, and was condemned to work for his bread: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" (Genesis 3:19). Here in the Forest of Arden, however, Duke Senior and his men are living on the bounty of the earth and the Garden of Eden (another version of Charles the wrestler's "golden world") is returned.

Duke Senior finds that the cruel fate of exile has turned to good, and says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 12-14

Toads are ugly indeed, though beneficial (rather than venomous) insofar as they eat insects and help keep the numbers of those creatures under control. There existed a legend, however, that there were stony concretions in toads' heads that could be used to warn against the presence of poison if set in a ring. They did so by changing color. Such a "toad-stone" was also thought to reduce the pain and decrease the swelling that followed the bite or sting of a poisonous animal. Needless to say, despite Shakespeare, there is no such thing as a toadstone.

But if Duke Senior is contented, poor Orlando certainly is not. Having been warned away from court, he arrives back home only to discover that his oldest brother, Oliver, plans to kill him outright. The warning is brought to Orlando by old Adam, who urges him to leave and offers him his own life savings of five hundred crowns. Adam (who, according to tradition, was played on the stage by Shakespeare himself) says:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 43-45

This is a reference to Jesus' statements "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" (Luke 12:6) and "Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them" (Luke 12:24).

But Orlando will not abandon old Adam and together they leave home and wander off toward the forest, as earlier Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone had done.

Not everyone in Arden is enamored of the life. One of the Duke Senior's entourage is Jaques, whose affectation it is to be melancholy and to be cynical about everything. He sneers at a beautiful song sung by his fellow courtier Amiens, then says:

—Act II, scene v, lines 54-55

A possible meaning for Jaques' remark rests in the fact that the firstborn of Egypt were the victims of the tenth plague brought down upon them by God through Moses. "And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle" (Exodus 12:29).

It was after this climactic visitation that the Hebrew slaves were finally allowed to leave the country and to make their way into the wilderness. It could be that Jaques is using the phrase "all the first-born of Egypt" to symbolize the events that led to the exile of Duke Senior, and it is this against which he intends to rail.

Orlando suddenly bursts in on Duke Senior, Jaques, and the others in wild desperation. Old Adam is too weak with hunger to go farther and Orlando demands food with sword drawn.

Duke Senior speaks to him gently, and Orlando, realizing he is with friends, goes off to get Adam. When the Duke uses this event to show that there are more tragic scenes on earth than their own, Jaques falls to moralizing on the general uselessness of life and of man's pilgrimage in it. Life, he says, is in seven stages that end in nothing. By the sixth, man is well advanced in age:

—Act II, scene vii, lines 157-59

In Shakespeare's time there had arisen the custom in Italy of having traveling bands of actors give plays in different towns. These bands developed stock characters in standard masks and costumes, and one of the most popular of the stock characters was called Pantaleone.

The name means "all lion," signifying great bravery (and is Pantaloon in its English version). Naturally it would seem funny to have "all lion," a lecherous, miserly coward, always being outwitted by the young lovers. His characteristic appearance was sufficiently well known to make it unnecessary for Jaques to do more than mention the name.

Pantaloon was always dressed in baggy trousers, by the way, which came to be called pantaloons in their turn, or, for short, "pants."

The pastoral life in the Forest of Arden now engulfs our various characters. Touchstone matches wits with the shepherd, Corin, and easily wins. Orlando, with time now to think of the love he has conceived for Rosalind on the occasion of his wrestling match, writes verses concerning her and hangs them on the trees in approved pastoral fashion.

Rosalind in her disguise as Ganymede finds them. Celia finds them too and is reading one which describes Rosalind as made up of:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 145-48

Three of these four ladies are subjects of Shakespearean plays or poems: Helen in Troilus and Cressida, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Lucretia in The Rape of Lucrece.

As for Atalanta, she was a beautiful girl whose hand was sought by many but who had vowed to live a virgin. She therefore insisted that no one marry her unless he beat her in a foot race and that if he was himself beaten his head was to be chopped off. This frightened many, and the few who risked the race were beaten by the fleet-footed Atalanta and were killed.

Finally, a youth named Hippomenes prayed to Aphrodite and was given three golden apples. He raced Atalanta and each time she began to forge ahead he threw one of the golden apples before her. Being a woman, each time she paused to pick it up and, thanks to the time she lost, Hippomenes won.

The reference in the poem, then, is that Rosalind has Atalanta's "better part," the beauty which drew so many to court her, but not the cruelty which killed those who wooed and failed to beat her. Atalanta was a byword for fleetness. Thus, later on Jaques speaks scornfully of Orlando's retorts to his own ill-natured remarks, saying:

—Act HI, scene ii, lines 273-74

Rosalind is very pleased at all this, but affects indifference, saying:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 175-76

It was Pythagoras' doctrine of the transmigration of souls (see page I-535) that is here being referred to. By it, Rosalind's soul might once have inhabited the body of an Irish rat.

But what has that to do with rhyming? Well, the Celtic bards of Wales and Ireland were past masters at weaving curses into their improvised poetry. They could use such deadly verses to kill rats and other vermin. Therefore an Irish rat would be most "berhymed."

But Celia knows who has written the verses and finally reveals that it is none other than Orlando. The excited Rosalind instantly demands to know everything about it and him and wants all the answers immediately. To which Celia, laughing, says:

—Act III, scene ii, line 223

Gargantua was a giant of folklore, who was apparently first famous for his enormous appetite, since the name comes from garganta, which is Spanish for gullet. He became best known as a character in a famous satire named for him by the French humorist Frangois Rabelais. That book was first published in 1535.

Celia says she saw Orlando under an oak tree and Rosalind says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 234-35

The oak tree is sacred to Jupiter. Indeed, the most ancient oracle in Greece was an oak tree in Dodona, in Epirus, two hundred miles northwest of Athens. Plates and other objects of brass were suspended from the branches and these struck together when the wind blew. The sounds were then interpreted by the priests of the shrine and were delivered as oracles.

Rosalind, in her boy's disguise, manages to find Orlando and cleverly persuades him that if he is to be a truly good lover, he must practice. She offers to play Rosalind and allow nun to woo her in that fashion. (It may possibly have given Shakespeare pleasure to present scenes that were so vividly homosexual and yet done in such a way as to be inoffensive.)

Touchstone also has fallen in love, and with a goat-herding girl named Audrey. He says to her:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 6-8

Ovid had fallen into disgrace with the Emperor Augustus (see page I-389) perhaps because his erotic books spoiled Augustus' efforts to improve the morals of Rome, or because the poet assisted Augustus' dissolute granddaughter, Julia, in some particularly disgraceful intrigue.

Ovid was therefore exiled to the Black Sea town of Tomi (the present-day port of Constanta in Romania). It was far in the backwoods, among a rustic and backward peasantry, eight hundred miles from Rome. Ovid spent the last nine years of his life there, sending a stream of weepy, self-pitying letters to his family at Rome hoping they would persuade the Emperor to remit the punishment. He never did.

The inhabitants of Tomi were not Goths, but two centuries later the Goths (a Germanic tribe from the Baltic) had reached the Danube River. Tomi was therefore "among the Goths" in anticipation.

Not only does Touchstone pun on "goats" and "Goths," but he also calls Ovid capricious, a word which is derived from the Lathi caper, meaning goat.

Still another set of lovers is Silvius and Phebe, the conventional shepherd and shepherdess of pastoral tales. In this case, Silvius is desperately in love with Phebe, but Phebe answers only with scorn.

Rosalind (as Ganymede) undertakes to right matters by scolding Phebe for being so cruel. She only makes matters worse, however, for to Rosalind's horror, Phebe is attracted to her at once in her boy's disguise. When Rosalind leaves, Phebe sighs:

—Act III, scene v, lines 81-82

The line is a quotation from the poem Hero and Leander written by Christopher Marlowe. The poem was published in 1598, a year or so before As You Like It was written, but Marlowe himself had been killed in a tavern brawl in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine. Hence the reference to the "dead shepherd."

Orlando, as agreed, courts Rosalind in her disguise of Ganymede, pretending (and he thinks it is only pretense) that she is Rosalind. Rosalind deliberately eggs him on to avowals of love by pretending great cynicism in the matter. She scouts the notion that lovers would die if refused, saying:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 92-94

Troilus, having been betrayed by his love (see page I-119), had ample reason to die of that, if men could. Yet he managed to live long enough to be killed in battle. Actually, though, he was killed by Achilles' spear and not by anyone's club.

Rosalind also sneers at the Hero and Leander tale (see page I-466), saying of Leander:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 97-100

Now Orlando's older brother, Oliver, enters the picture again. Duke Frederick, suspecting that his daughter and her cousin had run off with Orlando, orders Oliver to find his brother on pain of his own death.

In the forest, Oliver, sleeping, is threatened by a lioness. Orlando comes upon his brother and the beast and is tempted to leave Oliver to his fate. He cannot bring himself to do this, however, so he attacks the lioness and Oliver, awaking, witnesses the rescue. The older brother repents his earlier wickedness and is a changed character from this moment.

He meets Celia and Ganymede and tells his story. He and Celia immediately fall in love. Rosalind/Ganymede later tells this to Orlando, saying:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 29-31

Caesar's deliberately brief report of his battle in Asia Minor in 47 B.C. (see page II-64) was intended to display a soldierly character, since military men were supposed to be men of action and not of words. There is nevertheless a certain affectation in the way in which Caesar sought the fewest syllables.

Rosalind's characterization of it as a "thrasonical brag" makes use of too many syllables, on the other hand. "Thrasonical" means "bragging." The word comes from Thraso, a bragging soldier in The Eunuch, a play by the Roman dramatist Terence. That in turn comes from a Greek word meaning "overbold," which we may be sure Thraso pretended to be but was not.

Now Rosalind begins to arrange everything. She makes Phebe promise to marry Silvius if it turns out she really cannot have "Ganymede." She then retires and returns in her natural woman's guise, led by none other than Hymen, the god of marriage (see page I-55), who says:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 111-12

The characters now pair off: Orlando with Rosalind, Oliver with Celia, Silvius with Phebe, and Touchstone with Audrey.

Only one thing is left to make everything right and that is supplied by the sudden appearance of Orlando's remaining brother, the one in the middle. He brings the news that Duke Frederick, leading a large army against Duke Senior, has met an old hermit and has been converted to the religious life. Duke Senior may thus consider himself restored to his title, and all ends happily.

21. Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

Twelfth night is the twelfth day after Christmas-January 6. This is the traditional anniversary of the day on which the infant Jesus was viewed by the Magi and therefore the first manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles. The day is also called Epiphany, from a Greek word meaning "manifestation."

There is no biblical justification for this particular date or for any fixed number of days after the birth of Jesus for the appearance of the Magi. Nevertheless, it did afford the people in medieval times the chance of a twelve-day celebration following Christmas (hence the popular carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas").

Twelfth Night was in some ways the climax of the festive period. In connection with this, a lawyers' guild seems to have commissioned Shakespeare in 1600 to write them an amusing play for Twelfth Night 1601. He did so and the play was called Twelfth Night after the occasion and not because of anything in the play itself.

It was the third of Shakespeare's joyous comedies, all written at the turning of the century, and he apparently viewed them as trifles designed for amusement only. His titles show it: Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It. Even this third play, usually called Twelfth Night, has a subtitle which perhaps more effectively describes Shakespeare's feeling- What You Will.

This was the last warm comedy Shakespeare was to write for many years. The shadows closed in and for a decade he wrote somber tragedies and bitter non-tragedies (scarcely comedies). Why this should have been so, we can only speculate. One tempting thought is that it was the execution of Essex (see page I-120), which took place just after Twelfth Night was completed, that darkened the light for Shakespeare.

The setting of the play is Illyria.

In actual geography, Illyria is the coastal district of what we now call Yugoslavia and makes up the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, just across from Italy. It never made up a prominent part of the civilized ancient world, though in the fourth century it contributed a series of great Roman emperors: Claudius II, Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine I.

In the seventh century invading Slavs occupied Illyria and in the fourteenth century it fell into the grip of the Ottoman Turks. In Shakespeare's time what had once been Illyria and then became Serbia was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Parts of its coast, however, were controlled by Venice, and were Italian in culture.

Still, we need not be overconcerned with actual geography. Shakespeare's Illyria, like his seacoast of Bohemia in The Winter's Tale and his Forest of Arden in As You Like It, really exists nowhere but in the play.

It is the Duke of Illyria who speaks first. He is, apparently, lovesick, and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-3

The Duke's name is Orsino, which is derived from the Latin word for "bear" and is therefore most inappropriate for the overcultivated, over-refined Duke of this play. However, at the time the play was being written, Queen Elizabeth I of England was expecting an Italian visitor, Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano (a town twenty miles northwest of Rome). Perhaps Shakespeare was offering the name as a delicate compliment to the Italian guest.

The Duke is apparently hopelessly in love with Olivia, a rich noblewoman of Illyria, and cannot be diverted from his sentimental melancholy. When it is suggested that he hunt the hart (that is, stag) he breaks into a self-pitying play upon the word, saying that when he saw Olivia:

—Act I, scene i, lines 22-24

This is a reference to the tale of Actaeon (see page I-406), who was turned into a stag by the angry Diana and was then killed by his own hounds.

Meanwhile, on the Illyrian seacoast, Viola, a young lady, appears. With her are a ship's captain and his sailors. They have just survived a wreck in which the girl's twin brother has apparently been lost.

Viola is heartsick over her brother's death, but the Captain says he saw her brother tie himself

—Act I, scene ii, lines 14-17

Arion is a character out of Greek legend. He was a master musician at the court of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, about 600 b.c. He traveled to Sicily to compete in a musical contest, winning the prize and many rich gifts.

On the ship back to Corinth, the sailors decided to kill Arion and appropriate those gifts. He asked permission only to play and sing one last time and, having done so, jumped into the sea and the ship sailed on.

The music had, however, attracted a school of dolphins, and on the back of one of these, Arion was brought to Corinth faster than the ship could be rowed. At Corinth, Arion told his story and when the ship arrived, Periander had the sailors executed.

Viola is heartened by the news, but there is still the problem of what she is to do next. As an unattended maiden, she would be in great danger, so once again Shakespeare uses the device of a girl dressed in a man's clothes. As a man, she decides to seek employment in Duke Orsino's service. The Captain approves and says:

—Act I, scene ii, line 62

This is a stab at realism. A girl dressed in men's clothing would, in real life, give herself away with her hairless cheeks, her shrill voice, and her mincing ways. All these would fit a eunuch.

Eunuchs were common in the East, and even in the West were valued in Italy for their high singing voices. The use of eunuchs in the papal choir was continued well into the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Viola as a eunuch would not be fitted for the romantic role she is to have in the play, and the device of eunuch and mute is dropped at once and there is no mention of either at any later point in the play.

The next scene is in the house of Olivia, the unresponsive object of Orsino's affection.

In the house we meet Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's uncle, who sponges off her and off anyone else he can find. "Toby" is a diminutive of "Tobias" and "Belch" is descriptive of his tippling habits. With him is Maria, one of Olivia's women, and entering the scene almost immediately is Sir Andrew Aguecheek. (The name indicates his cheek has the habit of trembling, as though with ague or chills, but actually out of fear.) He is there because Sir Toby is encouraging him to court Olivia, meanwhile helping himself to the money the poor fellow has.

Toby makes merciless fun of Sir Andrew, who never penetrates any mockery at his own expense. Thus, when Andrew boasts of his dancing ability, Toby encourages him to caper about, saying:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 134-35

This is a reference to the zodiac, so important to the pseudo science of astrology. There are twelve signs (constellations or star configurations) in the zodiac, which girdles the sky, and the sun spends one month in each of them.

Apparently Sir Toby and Sir Andrew were both born in the month (April 20 to May 21) when the sun was in Taurus the Bull and were therefore born "under Taurus." Each sign is supposed to have a vast number of significances and is, as an example, supposed to govern a particular part of the body. When Andrew suggests that Taurus presides over sides and heart, Toby says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 137-38

Naturally, if Taurus presides over legs and thighs, those born under Taurus must be great dancers.

Also at Olivia's house is a Clown named Feste, which is very much like the Italian word for "holiday" and may be an oblique reference to the fact that the play was written to celebrate a holiday.

He has been absent without leave, and he is warned by Maria that he may be discharged. The Clown must therefore win over Olivia and he muses over methods for doing so, saying to himself:

—Act I, scene v, lines 34-35

It is useless to try to find Quinapalus in a reference book; the name is invented. The Clown apparently has had an education and it is his particular comic device to speak in pseudo-learned jargon. (This would appeal particularly to the lawyers who had commissioned the play.)

The Clown does indeed amuse Olivia and win her forgiveness, but one member of her staff remains untouched. He is Malvolio (his name means "ill will," the opposite of Benvolio, see page I-477, in Romeo and Juliet), who is Olivia's capable steward and hard-working business manager.

Malvolio is humorless, austere, proud, and easily angered. The Clown's wit does not amuse him; it merely offends. He says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 82-83

Malvolio is Shakespeare's notion of a Puritan, and, indeed, he is referred to as one later in the play.

The Protestant Reformation, which began to affect England in the reign of Henry VIII (see page II-783), settled down at last into a typical English compromise under Elizabeth I. There remained those men of Protestant persuasion, however, who were dissatisfied with the compromise and demanded that the English church be purified of those remnants of Catholicism which it possessed.

These demanders of purification came to be called Puritans, and they grew more prominent throughout Elizabeth's reign, although she remained strong enough to refuse to give in to them even when they gained control of Parliament.

The Puritans were self-consciously virtuous men who were equally conscious of the vices of those who disagreed with them. Stalwartly against serious forms of immorality, vice, and crime, Puritans tended to be just as stalwartly against trivial forms of these same things. By wasting their efforts on inconsequentials, they antagonized many who would have been willing to join the assault on important issues. Furthermore, then- pride in virtue was such that anyone was delighted when a Puritan was caught in sin, and it became easy to equate Puritanism with cant and hypocrisy.

Indeed, Olivia's retort to Malvolio's complaint about the Clown is a reflection of the common attitude toward the Puritan. She says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 90-91

Shakespeare, as a professional dramatist and actor, had a specific grudge against Puritans, since they denounced the theater as a haunt of sin and vice and an encouragement to idleness. It was their intention to close down the theaters if they could, and a professional dramatist and actor like Shakespeare could scarcely be expected to show Puritanism anything but hostility in consequence.

Meanwhile Viola has taken employment with Orsino under the name of Cesario and promptly falls in love with the Duke. As for Orsino, he takes a liking to the "young man" and uses him to carry a message to Olivia.

Viola/Cesario carries the message to Olivia but in such a way as to make the Duke something less than impressive. Olivia is, however, favorably impressed with the "young man" and begins to show an affection which Viola/Cesario naturally finds horrifying.

While that happens, Viola's twin brother, Sebastian, turns out to have survived the wreck after all. He has clung to the mast till picked up by another ship, whose captain, Antonio, takes a strong liking to the young man. Antonio's attitude is, in fact, even more marked than that of the other Antonio (in The Merchant of Venice) toward Bassanio, and is more clearly homosexual.

Once both are on the Illyrian coast, Sebastian abandons a pseudonym he has been using (why, we are not told) and identifies himself, saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 16-19

It is useless to search for Messaline. There is no such place. Either Shakespeare negligently made up a name or else, more likely, it is a printer's error that has been preserved ever since (because actually it makes no difference).

If it is a misprint there are two possibilities for what the place may have been. It may have been Messene, a Greek city in the southwestern Peloponnesus, about 360 miles southeast of the Illyrian coast; or Messina in Sicily, an almost equal distance southwest of it, and the scene of the action in Much Ado About Nothing (see page I-545).

Sebastian takes his leave of Antonio, for he is bound for Orsino's court, where (unknown to him) his sister is. The court is dangerous for Antonio, who has gained the Duke's enmity, but his affection for Sebastian is so strong that he follows him anyway.

The scene shifts to Olivia's house again, where late at night Sir Toby and his friends are having a rousing time. Sir Toby engages in mock-scholarly arguments with the foolish Sir Andrew, saying:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 9-10

The ancient Greek philosophers sought to find out the basic substance ("element") out of which the earth was constructed. Different philosophers had different candidates for the post, and Empedocles of Acragas finally suggested, about 450 B.C., that there was more than one. Four, altogether, were named: earth, water, air, and fire, and out of these all the earth was constructed. A century later Aristotle adopted this view and fixed it in human thought for two thousand years.

The view did not begin to go out of fashion till half a century after Shakespeare's death, and we still today speak of the "raging of the elements" when we talk of wind and water being lashed to fury by a storm over the ocean.

Malvolio comes in at length, to scold them for the noise they are making, and Sir Toby answers him with spirit, in the fashion that all fun-loving, but not really wicked, people might use to counter the self-righteous. He says to Malvolio:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 114-15

It is after he leaves that Maria says of him:

—Act II, scene iii, line 140

Maria describes the most prominent component of Malvolio's character to be a monstrous self-pride and suggests that they work up a plan to take advantage of that. She will imitate Olivia's handwriting and drop notes in places where he can find them so that he will be misled into thinking Olivia is in love with him. He will then, Maria is sure, promptly make a most enormous ass of himself.

Toby is absolutely delighted, and when she leaves, he calls after her:

—Act II, scene iii, line 177

Penthesilea in the Greek legends was an Amazon. According to some of the tales, she was the younger sister of Hippolyta, whom Theseus had married (see page I-18). It was Penthesilea who killed Hippolyta in the Amazonian war of revenge against Theseus, and afterward she joined the Trojans in their war against the Greeks and was killed in turn by Achilles.

Clearly, an Amazon is bound to be a large and muscular woman, and Penthesilea particularly so, since she fought with credit against Achilles himself. But Maria, it is clear in several places in the play, is a particularly small girl, which gives Toby's remark its humor.

Duke Orsino, who intends to continue to use Viola/Cesario as his messenger to Olivia, talks of love to the "young man." Viola/Cesario sadly tells her love to Orsino, pretending it is her sister she is speaking of, and saying:

—Act II, scene iv, lines 111-16

There is a glancing reference here to the doctrine of the four humors, first advanced by the school of Greek physicians who followed the famous Hippocrates of Cos (of the fifth century b.c.).

They believed that there were four fluids, or "humors," in the body: phlegm, blood (sanguis in Latin), bile (chole in Greek), and black bile (melanchole in Greek).

Bile is the secretion of the liver and there is only one variety, a greenish-yellow fluid. On standing, it grows much darker and becomes almost black; hence the distinction between bile and black bile.

The Greek physicians elaborated the theory that the predominance of one fluid over the other resulted in a particular type of temperament or "humor" (see page II-424). There were people who were phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, or melancholic.

The expression "green and yellow melancholy" refers to the fact that bile was supposedly predominant in the melancholic, though Shakespeare is thinking of ordinary bile, rather than black bile.

At Olivia's house, the plot to catch Malvolio progresses. A new character enters, Fabian. He is another of Olivia's servants and he too has a grudge against Malvolio. He says:

—Act II, scene v, lines 6-7

In bearbaiting, a bear is tied to a stake, and sometimes muzzled. Dogs are then set on it and the "sport" consists in watching the maddened bear slowly tortured to death, usually killing a few dogs on the way. It was very popular in the time of Elizabeth I, and in 1575 thirteen bears were baited with the Queen an interested spectator. This "amusement" was not finally outlawed in England till 1835.

Apparently Fabian had organized a bearbaiting, and Malvolio had complained of it to Olivia, whose soft heart had been touched and who had been angry with Fabian in consequence.

This is a reflection of the fact that the Puritans, to their great credit, strove to have bearbaiting made illegal. (There were, however, not wanting those who said, cynically, that Puritans were against bearbaiting not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.)

Malvolio now enters the trap. The letter has been planted in the garden, and the plotters hide in a tree watching Malvolio. The steward is so lost in self-conceit that he dreams of marriage with Olivia and begins to assume the airs of a great lord. Sir Toby is almost choked with indignation, and Sir Andrew, imitating Toby, cries out:

—Act II, scene v, line 41

Jezebel was the idolatrous Queen of Israel, wife of wicked King Ahab. She is a byword for pride. When her son (the successor of Ahab) was killed by the revolutionary general Jehu, she met the murderer in her palace as a queen should. Though facing death, she dressed herself like a queen and taunted Jehu with a past revolution that had failed. Or, as the Bible puts it (2 Kings 9:30-31), "And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window. And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?"

Of course, Sir Andrew's use of the name is inappropriate from the standpoint of sex; for a man, however proud, can scarcely be a Jezebel; and his simplicity is designed to raise a laugh in the audience.

Malvolio eventually spies the letter, picks it up, and examines it. The handwriting on the outside seems Olivia's and the seal which closes the fold has Olivia's imprint. Malvolio describes it as:

—Act II, scene v, lines 94-95

A person of quality would use a particular stamp (perhaps engraved on a ring) to impress the drop of wax sealing a letter, as further indication of ownership and guard against forgery. Olivia uses a representation of the Roman matron Lucretia, concerning whom (see page I-205) Shakespeare had written The Rape of Lucrece some six or seven years before. Of course, Maria had made use of her mistress' seal.

Malvolio interprets the letter exactly as pleases his self-love. It advises him to do just the sort of thing Maria knows Olivia loathes. He is told to smile constantly, to be haughtier and surlier than ever, to talk politics, cultivate eccentricity, wear yellow stockings, and be cross-gartered. He swears to do it all, and when he leaves, Fabian, in the tree, half dead with suppressed laughter, says:

—Act II, scene v, lines 181-82

The "Sophy" is the title given in England to the Persian Shah (see page I-521). In 1599, not long before Twelfth Night was written, Sir Anthony Shirley came back from Persia, laden with gifts from the Shah for his role in helping reorganize the Persian army. This remark of Fabian's, therefore, is a topical reference.

As for Toby, he is so delighted with the working out of the plan that he offers to follow Maria

—Act II, scene v, lines 207-8

By Tartar is meant Tartarus, the level below Hades where evil souls were tortured for their sins (see page I-13).

Viola/Cesario has come to Olivia's for another interview on behalf of the Duke. She exchanges wit with the Clown and then gives him a coin. The Clown promptly asks, in literary style, for another:

—Act III, scene i, lines 52-53

This refers to the famous tale Shakespeare was soon to put to use in his own Troilus and Cressida. Viola/Cesario gets the allusion and commends the begging, whereupon the Clown instantly points out that:

—Act III, scene i, line 56

A late sequel to the medieval tale explained how Cressida was punished for betraying Troilus. She was stricken with leprosy and became a diseased beggar. Shakespeare did not use this part of the tale in his own treatment (see page I-124), but this line is evidence enough that he knew of it.

In the second interview, Olivia is bolder than in the first. She says, when Viola/Cesario speaks of the Duke:

—Act III, scene i, lines 109-12

This is another Shakespearean reference to the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres (see page I-199). Despite Olivia's invitation to speak for himself, Viola/Cesario has no option but to flee.

Olivia's love for Viola/Cesario does not go unnoticed, however. The foolish Sir Andrew is not so foolish as to fail to see it, and, petulantly, he decides his own suit is useless and prepares to leave.

Toby and Fabian, unwilling to let go their profitable gull, try to argue him out of this first sensible decision he has made. They assure him that Olivia is only trying to make him jealous and that Sir Andrew is losing out only because he isn't a daring enough lover. Sir Toby says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 26-30

To sail into the north of a lady's opinion is a clear metaphor representing her growing coldness. It is also a topical reference. Between 1594 and 1597 there was the most spectacular attempt man had yet seen to explore the Arctic regions. The Dutch explorer Willem Barents had sailed northeastward, discovering Spitsbergen in 1596 and exploring the coasts of the large Siberian islands of Novaya Zemlya. He spent the whiter of 1596-97 in the Arctic, the first non-Eskimo to do so. He died in 1597 on his return voyage and in his honor that stretch of water lying between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya is known as the Barents Sea. There is no doubt but that the "Dutchman" in Sir Toby's speech is a reference to Barents.

Given the choice between valor and policy, Sir Andrew (equally pathetic in both) chooses valor as the manlier. He says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 32-33

This is another sneer at Puritanism. The Brownists were followers of Robert Browne, who was such an extreme Puritan he felt he had to leave the Church of England altogether. He founded an independent church hi 1580 and in 1582 went off into exile to the Netherlands.

The Brownists were to form an interesting part of American history. Some of them, who had made a new home for themselves in Dutch exile, felt they could not maintain their English identity there and determined to establish a colony in the New World. In 1620, four years after Shakespeare's death, they sailed westward and landed in Plymouth, becoming America's revered Pilgrim Fathers.

Pleased with Sir Andrew's decision to be valiant, Sir Toby mischievously urges him on to write a challenge to Viola/Cesario. He tells him to write

—Act III, scene ii, lines 47-49

Ware was a market town about twenty miles north of London which in Shakespeare's time was famous for a huge bed, eleven feet square, reportedly capable of allowing twelve people to sleep on it at once. It was in several different inns in the vicinity at one time or another and in 1931 finally came into the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This new practical joke has scarcely been placed under way when the old one regarding Malvolio reaches a climax. Maria comes in to say that Malvolio has fulfilled all the requests of the letter; yellow stockings, cross-garterings, and all, down to the perpetual smiling: 588 ITALIAN

—Act III, scene ii, lines 78-80

Mariners were particularly interested in marking a rhumb line on a map that would indicate the shortest distance from one point to another. On the globe, such a line would be a curve spiraling northward or southward.

In 1568 the Flemish geographer Gerhard Kremer (better known by the Latinized version of his last name, Mercator) put out a map of the world plotted in such a way that the rhumb lines were straight. Maps for navigation based on Mercator's scheme could be easily marked with rhumb lines, and many of them were therefore put in, crossing and crisscrossing.

What's more, the sixteenth-century explorations had led to an increasingly detailed knowledge of the Americas ("The Indies"), and about the time that Twelfth Night was being written, a new map, with numerous rhumb lines, was published, showing the New World in far greater and more accurate detail than had ever been shown before. This added detail was the "augmentation of the Indies."

Maria tells Olivia that Malvolio seems to be raving, and when he appears on the scene, grotesquely clothed and quoting meaningfully from the letter, Olivia, flabbergasted, can only think he really is mad.

Malvolio is so far gone in self-delusion, however, that he interprets everything in the light of Olivia's supposed love for him, and in the midst of his triumphing, he remembers to be pious, saying:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 87-88

This is undoubtedly intended to mock Puritan sanctimoniousness, and, just as undoubtedly, the real Malvolio would have said "God" or "the Lord" or "the Almighty." Growing Puritan strength, however, in later years clamped down on references to God on the stage, and this form of ridiculous censorship led to the foolish substitution of "Jove."

Sir Toby conies fussing in, full of mock concern over Malvolio's madness, and saying:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 89-92

This is a reference to one of the examples of demonic possession in the New Testament. When Jesus asks the name of the "unclean spirit" possessing a man, that spirit answers "My name is Legion: for we are many" (Mark 5:9).

Toby baits Malvolio with his supposed madness and when the latter rushes off in a fury, Toby arranges to have him placed in a dark room because of his supposed madness, so that the practical joke may continue.

Meanwhile the affair of Sir Andrew and Viola/Cesario is developing further. Sir Andrew has written a cautiously phrased and clearly cowardly letter. Sir Toby accepts it gravely, but does not deliver it. He intends to deliver a challenge verbally, enormously exaggerating Sir Andrew's fire-eating propensities. He will then report with equal exaggeration to Sir Andrew, concerning what a raging fury Viola/Cesario is in. He says:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 203-4

The cockatrice is the fabulous serpent which can kill by his mere glance (see page I-150).

There now begins a series of mistakings very like those in The Comedy of Errors, complicated by difference in sex.

Antonio, the captain who has befriended Sebastian, has given him a purse of money to use, then follows him to keep an eye on him and guard him…

Meanwhile, Viola/Cesario, coming for another interview with Olivia, is waylaid by Sir Toby, who delivers Sir Andrew's challenge. The frightened Viola/Cesario finds he must fight the frightened Sir Andrew, but before anything can happen, Antonio comes charging in.

Assuming that Viola/Cesario is Sebastian, he is about to begin a fight in good earnest, when the Duke's officers come in to arrest him on the old charge of piracy. Antonio must ask Viola/Cesario to return his bag of money, for a fine may save his life. Naturally, Viola/Cesario knows nothing about the money, and Antonio is greatly upset over this seeming perfidy as he is dragged away.

And Sebastian too has his share of the confusion. Olivia encounters him, thinks he is Viola/Cesario, and begins to speak of love. Sebastian finds this entirely to his liking and says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 61-63

Lethe was the name of one of the rivers of Hades, according to Greek mythology. All spirits were forced to drink of it, for it had the property of inducing forgetfulness so that past life on earth vanished from memory and only the spirit world remained. Sebastian is wishing, then, to forget his past existence and to live only in the present one, in which beautiful loving women appear from nowhere.

But the Malvolio affair is not yet done. Malvolio is now locked in a dark room and Sir Toby plans a further torment. He will have the Clown personify a curate, "Sir Topas," who will pretend to examine Malvolio.

The Clown demonstrates his skill at the part by talking a little learned-sounding gibberish. He says:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 13-16

Gorboduc was a legendary king of early Britain, and in 1562 he was the subject of a play written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. In this play, Gorboduc divided his kingdom between two sons, Ferrex and Por-rex, and civil war followed. It was the first blank-verse tragedy published in England and began the cycle of drama that culminated so rapidly in the Shakespearean climax.

The Clown now begins the discussion with Malvolio through the closed door and is merciless. He insists the room in which Malvolio has been locked is not dark and that it is only the latter's mad imagination that makes it seem dark. The Clown says:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 43-45

The "fog" spoken of here is the ninth plague brought down on Egypt by Moses prior to the Exodus. It is mentioned in Exodus 1:22-23: "And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days."

Malvolio, maintaining his sanity firmly, offers to answer any questions. The Clown asks:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 51-52

Malvolio answers:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 53-54

This is another Shakespearean reference to the Pythagorean theory of transmigration of souls (see page I-535), and is a perfectly correct answer.

By now Duke Orsino has grown tired of sending to Olivia fruitlessly and decides to go himself. When he reaches Olivia's house, he is met by his officers, who bring the sea captain Antonio to judgment.

The first officer says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 60-63

There is an unobvious reference here to the island of Crete. Crete has been a Greek-speaking island throughout history and in the early Middle Ages the largest city upon it was named Herakleon. In 826 Crete was captured by Moslems, who built a fortress on the site of the city and called it Khandax.

In 1204 the Venetians took the island and to them Khandax became Candia (and to the English, Candy). Since Candia was the largest city in Crete, it gave the name to the entire island. (Within the last century the island has become Greek again, taken back its own name, and its largest city is back almost to what it was-Iraklion).

In Shakespeare's time Venice and the Ottoman Turks were in a state of chronic warfare over the eastern islands, including Crete, and so there is this vague reference to some sort of battle in which Crete is named.

Mix-ups continue. Antonio denies he was a pirate but claims his deeds to have been lawful acts of war. However, he accuses Viola/Cesario of ingratitude and the latter desperately denies knowledge of what the captain is talking about.

To make matters worse, Olivia enters. She has married the delighted Sebastian and now thinks Viola/Cesario is he and claims her lovingly. Orsino, seeing that his servant has won the heart he himself could not, is furious and is almost moved to murder. He says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 117-19

"Th'Egyptian thief" is a character in a romance, Ethiopica, by Helio-dorus, a Greek author of the third century b.c. It is the earliest Greek romance that has survived and follows a pair of lovers, Theagenes and Charicleia, through innumerable adventures. At one point an Egyptian bandit, Thyamis, kidnaps Charicleia, whom he hopelessly loves, and when he is besieged, he tries to kill her in the darkness so that if he cannot have her, no one else can. He misses his mark, Charicleia survives, and the story reaches a happy ending.

It was translated into English in 1569 and was popular enough to ensure that Shakespeare's audience would get the allusion without trouble.

Olivia claims Viola/Cesario as her husband and the mix-up is growing dangerous for the latter, when in comes a bleeding Sir Andrew. He and Sir Toby have mistaken Sebastian for Viola/Cesario and attacked him. They were well banged as a result. As the sniveling Sir Andrew says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 175-76

The coxcomb, from the object worn on a fool's head (see page II-17), gradually came to be a familiar appellation for the head.

Toby comes on the scene too, bleeding and deeply humiliated. Then comes Sebastian, and his appearance solves the entire mix-up at once. Even Antonio understands, and we can be sure he will not be seriously punished.

The Duke now discovers that Viola/Cesario is a girl and that she loves him. He asks to see her in her woman's clothing and she replies that that clothing is with the Captain who brought her on shore and he is in prison through the action of Malvolio. (This is the first mention of any such thing. The reason for Malvolio's action is not explained, nor for Viola's failure to do anything about it. It is clearly an afterthought.)

Nevertheless, it gives an excuse to bring in Malvolio. The joke at his expense is explained and all agree he has been ill used. He is not mollified, however, but instead goes snarling off, his last words being:

—Act V, scene i, line 380

To be sure, Olivia expresses her sympathy again after he leaves and the Duke sends after to have him pacified and brought back, but that last line stands.

If Malvolio represents Puritanism, Shakespeare's insight was not wrong. Puritans were revenged on the theater. They continued to grow stronger until, under their leadership, Parliament rose in revolt against King Charles I in 1642. After years of fighting, the Puritans and their allies won a final victory in 1648 and the King was executed in 1649. Malvolio, in the person of Oliver Cromwell, controlled England and the theaters were closed down.

In 1660, to be sure, with Cromwell dead, the son of Charles I was brought back from exile and was made King Charles II. There followed a time of gaiety and frivolity and the stage was given over to "Restoration comedy"-mere froth and not even an echo of Shakespeare.

22. All's Well That Ends Well

All's well that ends well was written about 1602. Though it ends happily and is therefore technically a comedy, it lacks a carefree fun and happiness of the previous comedies. It is, indeed, rather an unpleasant play, like Troilus and Cressida (see page I-71), which was written shortly before.

The play opens with a group of people dressed in mourning onstage. The first to speak is the Countess of Rousillon, who has recently lost her husband (hence the mourning). She has fresh cause for sorrow, too, and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 1-2

What's happening is that her son, Bertram, the young Count of Rousillon, is going to Paris to be brought up at the court of the King of France and his mother hates to part with him.

Rousillon is treated in this play as part of France, and indeed (as Rous-sillon-the French use two s's), so it is-today. It is located just north of the Pyrenees at their eastern edge adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea. Its chief city is Perpignan.

Through much of its history, however, it was not part of France. While the Pyrenees are the general boundary between France and Spain, Rousillon was, from 1172 on, part of the kingdom of Aragon (see page I-526), located just south of the mountains.

It was not till 1450 that France was sufficiently united and sufficiently free of the English menace (see page II-562) to turn its attention to the spread of Spanish power across the mountain range. King Louis XI of France (see page II-651) sent expeditions southward and Rousillon became French in 1465. In 1493, however, Louis' son, Charles VIII, more interested in invading Italy, handed Rousillon back to Aragon to win Aragonese good will for his venture.

By that time Aragon had formed a union with Castile, and modern Spain had taken shape. Spain was at the height of its power then and held on to Rousillon till 1659, at which time it became permanently French.

Thus, when All's Well That Ends Well was written, Rousillon was Spanish, not French. Shakespeare obtained his plot from one of the tales in the Decameron by Boccaccio, which dealt with Beltram of Rossiglione. But the Decameron was published in 1353 and at that time Rossiglione (which, presumably, is Rousillon) was Aragonese, not French, and yet Boccaccio portrayed Beltram as a Frenchman.

Not that it's important, of course, for as far as the play is concerned, Rousillon might have been any other name-an imaginary one, for that matter.

An elderly lord, Lafew, reassures the Countess, saying:

—Act I, scene i, lines 7-8

It is useless to try to find out who the King of France is. No actual King of France unmistakably fits the events in the play, and he is not named either in this play or in the Decameron source.

It turns out that the King is suffering from a lingering, chronic disease and that cure is despaired of. One medieval French king who did suffer from a lingering, chronic disease was Charles VI (see page II-464), who reigned from 1380 to 1422 and was mentally ill most of the time. There is no other comparison, however, and we might as well accept the fact that the King, as well as everything else in the play, is fictional.

The Countess regrets the death of a physician so skilled that he might surely have cured the King. She tells Lafew:

—Act I, scene i, lines 28-29

He was, in other words, of the city of Narbonne, and this, at least, fits well geographically. Narbonne is located some thirty miles north of Per-pignan.

Gerard de Narbon has left behind a beautiful and virtuous daughter, who is in the Countess' care. When all leave the stage, she remains and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 88-91

This is the major complication of the play. Helena, the doctor's daughter, loves Bertram, the young Count of Rousillon, and therefore loves "above her station." The doctor, however skilled, is of menial position, while Bertram is, of course, a nobleman.

Helena's soliloquy is interrupted by the entrance of Parolles, Bertram's favorite companion. Parolles professes to be a fierce warrior, dresses and talks the part, but does not fool Helena. She says, aside:

—Act I, scene i, lines 105-7

As a matter of fact, everyone who meets Parolles sees through him at once and knows him to be all talk (his very name is related to the French word for "words"). Only Bertram is deceived and takes him for genuine, which seems to be clear evidence that Bertram is rather a fool.

Helena and Parolles engage in conversation and when Helena refers to the star under which he was born, he replies, swaggeringly:

—Act I, scene i, line 199

He claims in this way to have an inborn martial personality (see page I-404). Helena says, dryly, however:

—Act I, scene i, line 203

Mars' path across the sky is generally from west to east against the background of the stars. Periodically, however, it changes direction and moves from east to west. It is then moving backward or "retrograde." The ancient Greeks labored to account for such retrograde motion but it wasn't till Copernicus elaborated the heliocentric view with the sun at the center of the solar system that the situation was made clear. Periodically, the earth in its orbit overtakes Mars and it is then that the planet seems to move backward.

Helena, by use of the term, indicates that if Parolles is born under Mars, he nevertheless moves backward and retreats hastily in battle.

The second scene opens in the King's palace in Paris. The King is involved in statecraft, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-3

Florence was the great city of the Italian Renaissance (see page I-448) and the "Senoys" are natives of Siena, a city about thirty miles south of Florence. For centuries Siena and Florence were rivals, and down nearly to Boccaccio's time, the fight remained fairly equal.

Siena, however, was already declining when the Decameron was written and it came more and more under the Florentine shadow. In 1557 Florence finally gained political control of Siena and the latter's history as an independent city-state came to an end.

The King goes on to say:

—Act II, scene i, lines 4-9

Again there is no use in searching history for any specific event that would mirror this.

In the sixteenth century there was a great rivalry between Francis I of France and the Emperor Charles V (see page II-747), the core of whose dominions within the Empire was Austria. Francis and Charles fought over Italy all through their reigns, with Charles having the better of it most of the time.

With this in mind, we can perhaps interpret the King's speech in terms of practical politics as follows. Austria has warned France that if she interferes in Italy and supports Florence, Austria will come to the aid of Siena in order to preserve the balance of power. France then adopts the prudent path of neutrality.

Yet if France cannot openly intervene, there is another method open to her. She can send "volunteers" (a device known to and used by nations in our own times). The King says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 12-14

The region in which Florence and Siena are located was known as Etruria in ancient tunes, and was inhabited by the Etruscans. The regional name was distorted to Tuscany (Toscana in Italian) in the Middle Ages.

Through the Middle Ages Tuscany did not form a separate and united political entity but was broken up among several city-states, of which Florence, Pisa, and Siena were the most important. In 1557, however, with the absorption of Siena, Florence came to be in control of the entire region. Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, was awarded the higher title of Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569 by Pope Pius V. In Shakespeare's time, then, Tuscany was on the map.

And while the court is involved with the Tuscan wars, Helena arrives.

She hopes to cure the King with some of her dead father's remedies and she also hopes to see Bertram. She carries with her the best wishes of the old Countess, who loves the girl and doesn't seem to be disturbed by the thought of a mesalliance.

Lafew is at court to introduce Helena. He asks the King if he wants to be cured, but the King has so often been disappointed that he has given up and answers, crossly, in the negative. Lafew says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 71-72

The reference is, of course, to Aesop's famous fable of the fox who could not reach the grapes and who consoled himself with the thought that he did not want them anyway, since they were probably sour.

Lafew assures the King that he can indeed get the grapes and that there is indeed a cure. He describes the cure as something

—Act II, scene i, lines 77-80

It can raise, in Lafew's hyperbole, the long dead Charlemagne, and his father Pepin (Pippen) the Short (see page II-455).

Lafew then brings in Helena and leaves her with the King, saying as he himself departs:

—Act II, scene i, lines 99-100

Cressid's uncle was Pandarus, who served as go-between for her and Troilus (see page I-79) and was thus the original pander. Lafew's "pandering" is, of course, of quite another kind.

Helena promises the King a quick recovery. In fact, he will be well

—Act II, scene i, lines 165-66

Hesperus (see page I-187) is the evening star. It sets in the western ocean (hence "occidental damp" and "moist") and it sets up to three hours after the sun, so that her light is a "sleepy lamp."

The medicine works precisely as Helena had promised and the King is quickly made well. All, even Lafew, are astonished, since all the other physicians had been utterly helpless. Even the worthless Parolles agrees, saying:

—Act II, scene iii, line 11

Galen was a Greek physician who settled in Rome in 164. He wrote many books on medicine, which were excellent for their time. They survived the fall of ancient civilization and were considered the last word on the subject throughout the Middle Ages.

The first physician to argue strenuously against blind acceptance of Galen and in favor of a new regime of mineral medicines as opposed to the old use of herbs was Theophrastus von Hohenheim, better known by his self-adopted nickname of Paracelsus. He lived from 1493 to 1541 and from Shakespeare's point of view would have been a "modern" physician.

What Parolles is saying, then, is that the King had been given up by all physicians of both the old school and the new.

The King is naturally grateful to Helena and offers her, as a reward, marriage with any of the noblemen at court. She chooses Bertram, who starts back in revulsion and horror at the thought of marrying a lowborn girl.

The King insists, however, and Bertram is forced into marriage. As soon as that is done, however, the young man determines to make it a dead letter. He orders Helena back to Rousillon without taking her to bed or even kissing her.

She goes submissively, and when she arrives, she has only a letter to show Bertram's mother, the Countess. He says he is off to the Tuscan wars and will never return as long as he is burdened with a wife he cannot accept. Nor will he ever accept her until she can produce his ring, which he will not give her, and show him a child begotten by him, for which he will give her no opportunity.

The old Countess is horrified. She is all on Helena's side, as is everyone else in the play (and in the audience) except for Parolles and, of course, Bertram himself.

But Helena begins to put into action a plan of her own. She departs from Rousillon in secret, leaving behind a letter that starts:

—Act III, scene iv, line 4

St. Jaques is James the Apostle, the son of Zebedee. According to a tradition which has no biblical backing whatever, he visited Spain and preached the gospel there. As a result, he is accepted now as the patron saint of Spain. He must, however, have returned to Judea, for the Bible records his death there at the order of Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-2).

Tradition then takes over again and has his dead body miraculously whisked to Spain, where it finally came to rest in a shrine at Compostela, a city in the northwestern corner of Spain, about six hundred miles west of Perpignan. If Helena goes there she is traveling in the direction opposite to that Bertram has taken. She is going west into farthest Spain, he east to Tuscany.

"James" is the English version of a Hebrew name of which "Jacob" is the Old Testament version. In Spanish it is Iago, and St. James is Santiago. The city in which the bones were thought to rest is Santiago de Compostela.

Helena asks the Countess to write and tell Bertram she is gone so that he can come safely home from the wars. She scolds herself, saying:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 12-14

Hercules, who was Jupiter's son by a mortal woman, naturally incurred the wrath of Juno (Hera), who was Jupiter's lawful wife. It was her enmity that visited him with periodic bouts of madness and condemned him to perform twelve labors for an unworthy cousin. Analogously, Helena considers the mere fact of her own existence to be condemning Bertram to warlike labors.

As a matter of fact, though, Helena is not quite as unselfish as she is presenting herself to be. She does not go to the shrine at all but sneaks off to Florence in disguise as a pilgrim, hoping that she may yet win her reluctant husband. There she stops to ask:

—Act III, scene v, line 35

A pilgrim who had visited the Holy Land was privileged to wear palm leaves as a token he had done so (it is a plant native to Palestine) and was therefore called a "palmer."

Helena asks the question of an old Widow, who offers her lodgings. The Widow has a beautiful and virtuous daughter, Diana, and it quickly turns out that Bertram (who is doing very well in Florence and is now a cavalry officer) is busily engaged in trying to seduce the girl.

Helena reveals her identity and persuades the two women to let her take Diana's place so that Bertram will sleep with her unknowingly, thinking she is Diana.

Diana agrees and cajoles Bertram into giving her his ring (the one he wrote in his letter that Helena would have to display before he would accept her as wife) and offers him an assignation provided he promises to stay only an hour and to refrain from speaking to her during that time. She promises to give him another ring in exchange for his after he has slept with her. So eager is he to win her that he agrees.

Helena then arranges to have herself reported as having reached Santiago de Compostela and to have died there.

Parolles, meanwhile, has won the contempt of all the officers, and they scheme to maneuver him into betraying his real character. Parolles has been sent out on a dangerous mission for which, out of sheer stupid braggadocio, he has volunteered. He is captured by his own colleagues and is blindfolded.

Pretending to be foreigners of strange speech, they question him through a mock interpreter. At the merest hint of torture, he tells everything he knows and reviles the very men who (unknown to him) are holding him prisoner. He even defames Bertram.

Thus, of one officer, he says:

—Act IV, scene iii, line 264

Nessus was the centaur who tried to rape Hercules' wife, Deianeira (see page I-380).

When he has completely unmasked himself for the coward he is, his blindfold is removed and he realizes that he is ruined. He decides to make the best of it, however, and later, in fact, he enters the service of the kindly Lafew and does well enough.

With Helena's reported death, Bertram can return to Rousillon, but first he wants to go through with the seduction of Diana. This takes place offstage, but we gather that Helena has safely substituted herself. Bertram has kept the bargain, stayed an hour, refrained from speaking, and accepted the ring (Helena's ring, which she, in turn, had received from the King of France). And Helena has the ring Bertram gave Diana.

Helena is therefore also ready to return, taking the Widow and Diana with her. She intends to see the King and says to her companions:

—Act IV, scene iv, lines 8-10

Marseilles is the great French port on the Mediterranean, about 280 miles west of Florence and 140 miles northeast of Roussillon. If Helena goes to Marseilles, she is two thirds of the way home.

She is counting on the King's continuing gratitude, for she says her services were such that

—Act IV, scene iv, lines 6-8

In the thirteenth century Mongol tribes from central Asia swept westward and penetrated deep into Europe, reaching almost to the Adriatic in 1240. This gave Europe a scare from which it didn't recover for a long time.

The Mongols called themselves Tatars, but to the Europeans this became Tartars (from Tartarus, see page I-40). The Tatars, considered as creatures from hell, were naturally considered the epitome of heartlessness, and Helena felt that even they would feel gratitude for services such as hers.

Helena has gone through a great deal and there is more yet to go through, but she keeps up her spirits with a stouthearted:

—Act IV, scene iv, line 35

The word "fine," from the French fin, means "end" here. Helena is saying that the nature of the end crowns the work, making it success or failure. This so summarizes the play-which, from Helena's point of view, is nothing but misery all the way to very nearly the end-that it has become the title of the play.

Yet is it possible the play once had a different title?

An English clergyman, Francis Meres, wrote a book in 1598 in which he compared contemporary English authors with classical and Italian ones, and, in the process, he listed Shakespeare's plays. He included one named Love's Labor's Won. This is the only play ever attributed to Shakespeare that we have no record of under the title mentioned. Either it's a lost play or we have it under a different title.

If the latter, it must be one that isn't mentioned by Meres under its own title and one that had already been written by 1598. One possibility is The Taming of the Shrew, in which Petruchio must labor hard indeed to establish love between himself and Katherina (see page I-462). There is, however, a reference in a 1603 account book to both The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labor's Won.

The most popular theory, therefore, is that it refers to All's Well That Ends Well and to Helena's hard labor to win Bertram. But, alas, that means that the play would have had to be written several years before it was.

It's a problem that may never be solved completely, but I would like to suggest a possibility I have not seen advanced. Shakespeare may perhaps have written Love's Labor's Won in, say, 1597, and because it was a failure, rewrote it extensively and produced it as All's Well That Ends Well, with no record of the earlier version except for the casual mention of Meres, writing between the two.

There is an interval before the resolution in the last act in which the Countess has the last of several confrontations with a Clown. None of these serves to advance the plot, but each is intended as comic relief. In this last, the Clown mentions "grace" and promptly expands it into wordplay by saying to Lafew:

—Act IV, scene v, lines 21-22

This equates "grace" and "grass," and Nebuchadnezzar is brought in because according to the biblical account (Daniel 4:28-37) he was punished for his arrogance by being stricken with a madness that drove him out into the fields and caused him to eat grass for seven years.

The Clown also refers to the devil as having an English name, for he is

—Act IV, scene v, lines 43-44

It is quite appropriate to speak of the devil as the "prince of darkness," for our modern conception of the devil comes, in part, from the Persian notion of a dualistic cosmic order in which the forces of light and good under Ahura Mazda fight a continuing giant battle against the forces of darkness and evil under Ahriman.

And a prince of darkness would naturally be a Black Prince like the famous eldest son of Edward III (see page II-260).

Bertram has now come back to Rousillon. When Helena reaches Marseilles, she finds that the King has gone to Rousillon and she follows. All are now converging on Rousillon for the climax.

Bertram is generally blamed by all for his treatment of Helena, but since Helena is dead, the slate is washed clean and preparations are made for a second marriage, to none other than Lafew's daughter.

A token must be given to the new bride and Bertram hands over the ring which he had (as he thought) obtained from Diana. It is really Helena's ring, however, which she obtained from the King; and the King recognizes it. Despite Bertram's denial, the King is firm in that recognition, saying:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 101-4

Plutus was the god of wealth, and was equated with gold in particular. It was believed in medieval times that there was some substance which could be used to turn less valuable metals into gold and this was called "the philosopher's stone." This same substance could also cure any disease and was "the elixir of life." Though medieval alchemists never found this substance, they were sure it existed in the earth, else how was the gold in its bowels formed?

Plutus, therefore, can be spoken of as knowing the medicine (a reference to the elixir of life) that produces gold, so that it was a "multiplying med'cine" because it multiplies the earth's store of gold.

The King begins to suspect that Bertram got the ring by foul play, that Helena was murdered. Bertram is arrested and suddenly Diana enters, claiming Bertram as her husband.

Desperately, Bertram tries to blacken Diana as a camp follower of the army in Tuscany, and the growing confusion is only straightened out when Helena appears, alive after all.

She shows Bertram's ring, and refers to the fact that she is now pregnant with Bertram's child. She has fulfilled Bertram's conditions and he must now accept her as his wife. Bertram cries out to the King:

—Act V, scene Hi, lines 315-16

Those are his last words in the play, and all's well that ends well.

23. The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice

Of the plays included in this section, Othello is the only one to represent a major Shakespearean tragedy which will bear comparison to such plays as Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. It seems to have been written in 1603, after Hamlet and before the other two.

Othello is remarkable in that its hero is a "Moor." To Shakespeare a Moor was not clearly distinguished from a black and, given the parochial feeling of Europeans of the time (and, to a large extent, since) concerning men who differed in religion (Moors) or skin color (blacks), these would serve as natural villains, with their mere difference sufficient to account for their villainy. In Titus Andronicus Aaron the Moor (see page I-401) is a villain of this sort, and in The Merchant of Venice the Prince of Morocco (see page I-520), while a valiant soldier, is scorned by Portia, who derides the color of his skin.

In Othello, however, the Moor is pictured in another fashion, as an exotic figure who exerts a powerful sexual attraction over a white girl, partly because of the wide difference between him and the men she is accustomed to. This is not so uncommon a thing. In the early 1920s Rudolph Valentine played the title role in the motion picture The Sheik and caused millions of women to swoon in ecstasy, despite (or possibly because of) the fact that he was a "Moor" and must be a Mohammedan.

The Moor, as an exotic and therefore romantic figure, was used by an Italian writer of tales, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, who wrote under the name of Cynthius. A hundred of his stories were collected into a book called Gli Hecatommithi (The Hundred Tales) and published in 1565. One of these stories begins: "There once lived in Venice a Moor, who was very valiant and of a handsome person…" No reason is given for a Moor living in Venice; no discussion as to his religion is brought out. What was needed for the story, apparently, was someone at once romantic and of a passionate southern nature.

This story was taken by Shakespeare, who kept close to many of the details of the plot.

The play opens in the city of Venice (see page I-499) late at night. Two Venetians are having an earnest discussion over some point that is not immediately apparent. One of them, Roderigo, is rather petulant over what he feels to be a double cross on the part of the other, Iago.

Iago insists that he is not double-crossing, that he does indeed hate a person who is not yet identified. He gives his reasons. Influential men, it seems, have asked the unnamed to make Iago his lieutenant and have been refused. Another has been chosen for the post and he is

—Act I, scene i, lines 16-19

Iago is almost sick with anger at having been passed over for such a one. Cassio is an "arithmetician," that is, one who studied the art of war out of books, instead of in actual battle. And he is a Florentine rather than a Venetian, and Florence, in Shakespeare's time, was renowned for trade, rather than war.

The reference here to Cassio's "fair wife" is a puzzling one. This wife does not appear in the play nor is she ever referred to again. In the Cynthius original, the character who is equivalent to Cassio does have a wife and perhaps Shakespeare intended to use her at first. If he did, he abandoned the idea and did not bother to correct the line.

Iago goes on, with gathering anger:

—Act I, scene i, lines 25-27

When Venice gained territories in the eastern Mediterranean (see page I-592) she took on burdens as well, and the greatest of these was the task of opposing the Ottoman Turks, who became dominant in the Balkan peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean in the course of the fourteenth century.

Rhodes, an island off the southeast shores of Asia, Minor, was under the rule of Italian adventurers after the Crusaders' conquest of parts of the East. It remained under Western control for nearly three centuries while Turkish power spread over Asia Minor and into the Balkans.

In 1480 the Turkish sultan, Mohammed II, laid siege to Rhodes and was beaten off. In 1522 the later sultan, Suleiman I the Magnificent (see page I-520), finally took it.

Cyprus is a larger island, near the eastern end of the Mediterranean. It too was captured by Crusaders, but in 1489 it came under the control of Venice. Venice's expansion over some of the shores and islands of the eastern Mediterranean involved her in wars with the Turks, and over the space of two and a half centuries there were to be five of these.

The fourth of these wars was fought from 1570 to 1573. This was after Cynthius had written the tale Shakespeare used as model. It took place in Shakespeare's boyhood, however, and it may possibly have been in his mind as he wrote.

—Act I, scene i, lines 29-30

Clearly now we are talking about Othello, the Moor of Venice, and Iago's scorn is seen in the twisting of "Worship" into "Moorship." An "ancient" is what we now call an "ensign" (see page II-398), a lesser position than that of lieutenant even in our own navy. We can be sure Iago is not the man to take this lying down.

Roderigo comments discontentedly upon how everything seems to be going well for the Moor:

—Act I, scene i, lines 63-64

As we are soon to find out, what is bothering Roderigo is that the Moor is doing very well in his courtship of Desdemona, the lovely daughter of Brabantio, one of Venice's most powerful and wealthy senators. Roderigo would like to have Desdemona for himself.

The use of the term "thick-lips" is the first indication that Shakespeare is talking about a true black, rather than merely a Moor of north Africa, who, despite a swarthy complexion, would not be a black. (In Cynthius' story, on the other hand, there is no indication whatsoever that the Moor was a black.)

There are other such references. Thus, Iago's first impulse of revenge is to warn Brabantio in the coarsest possible way, so as to ensure he will take frantic action against the Moor. Before Brabantio's house they call and yell till the senator comes to the window. Then Iago shouts out his warning:

—Act I, scene i, lines 83-86

It is to Othello, of course, that Iago refers with the phrase "old black ram."

When Brabantio proves hard to persuade that his daughter has eloped with Othello, Iago, impatient of his incredulity, says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 106-9

To the ancient Greeks, all who did not speak Greek were "barbarians," and when Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean that was modified to include those who did not speak Greek or Latin. Since the most prominent barbarians in the last centuries of the Roman Empire were the German-speaking tribesmen to the north, the word came to take on a derogatory tinge and to mean "uncivilized" and "brutal" as well as merely "foreign."

The Italians of the Renaissance period, having rediscovered the Greco-Roman pagan past, picked up the habit. To them, the Europeans north of the Alps and the Africans south of the Mediterranean were barbarians. All Europe could agree with respect to the Africans anyway, and north Africa came to be called "Barbary." The people of north Africa are still called Berbers today, and that is but another form of the word.

Iago, in referring to Othello as a "Barbary horse," is now using Moor in its more correct sense, with reference to northern Africa rather than black Africa.

Brabantio is finally persuaded to search through the house to see if his daughter is at home, and while he is doing so, Iago takes his leave so as not to be identified. Roderigo is to carry on himself and Iago leaves him instructions as to how to guide the search. He says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 155-56

"Sagittary" might be the name of the inn at which Othello is lodging, but there is no clear indication of it. "Sagittary" is the equivalent of the Latin Sagittarius ("archer") and it is just possible that the name is that of an arsenal where weapons of war are stored. Venice did indeed have a famous one, and Othello, who is pictured in the play as Venice's most capable general, might well be engaged in inspection and stocktaking, even during his honeymoon.

Brabantio, unable to find his daughter, rouses his family and friends to take revenge on Othello.

Meanwhile, Iago has reached Othello again and (with an appearance of bluff honesty) warns him of Brabantio's hostility. Othello, who has indeed eloped with and married Desdemona, shrugs it off, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 16-18

The Signiory is the ruling body of Venice. It comes from the same Latin root as "senior" or "senator," so that the name signifies it is a body of elders who put their experience and wisdom to the task of ruling the state.

The government of Venice was, in many ways, the admiration of Europe.

Although originally fairly democratic, it became a closed oligarchy about 1200. From then on for six hundred years a few great families ran the state according to a rigid ideal of duty. (Of course they took, as their reward, the lion's share of the city's wealth for themselves.) In all this time there was but one dangerous revolt against the oligarchy-in 1310-and that was firmly crushed.

Other states might have their extravagant royal families, their court intrigue, civil wars, broils, disruptions; Venice went on in the even tenor of its ways, trading, fighting, prospering, and making all its decisions in the cold light of self-interest.

It is not surprising, then, that Shakespeare in this play portrays the government of Venice to be unemotional and coldly rational at all times.

Othello calmly awaits the coming of Brabantio and his party. When a group of men enter with torches, it seems at first this must be they, but Iago, peering toward them, says:

—Act I, scene ii, line 32

Since Janus is commonly represented with two heads (see page I-502) and since the entire play is a demonstration of the two-facedness of Iago, it is entirely proper that he swear by Janus.

The party that has entered turns out to be under the leadership of Cassio, Othello's new lieutenant. Cassio says to Othello:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 35-37

The north Italian word for "duke" is "doge," and this form of the word is associated primarily with Venice (though Genoa also had its doges).

The first Doge of Venice assumed the position possibly as early as 697. The last Doge stepped down in 1797, when Napoleon cavalierly put an end to the Venetian republic. There had been a continuous line of doges for eleven centuries, a most amazing record.

The most unusual doge on the whole list is Enrico Dandolo, who assumed the position in 1192 at the age of eighty-four. Not only was he old, but he was blind as well, yet in 1203 (when he was ninety-five!) he was the indomitable leader of the Crusaders' expedition against Constantinople and carried that expedition through to victory.

In later centuries, though, the Doge was pretty much a figurehead and it was the impersonal oligarchy, the Signiory, that ran the republic.

Before Othello can answer the summons, Brabantio and his party arrive. Angrily, Brabantio accuses Othello of having used enchantment, as otherwise his daughter couldn't possibly have

—Act I, scene ii, lines 69-70

Again a reference to Othello as a black. Othello, noble, powerful, accomplished, high in all men's regard, would be a good match for the girl but for his skin color. Yet it is interesting that Brabantio makes no mention of religion. Nor is the matter of religion mentioned anywhere in the play.

And yet if we take Othello seriously and don't dismiss it as simply a romance in which we need not peer too closely at the details, we must suppose that Othello was born a Mohammedan. It is inconceivable that the Venetians would trust a Mohammedan to lead their armed forces against the Mohammedan Turks; we must therefore further assume that Othello was a converted Christian.

For a while it seems that fighting will break out, but Othello preserves a magnificent calm and, in any case, Brabantio too has been summoned to the Signiory.

In the council chamber, the Signiory is gravely considering the news that a Turkish fleet is at sea, with its destination uncertain. Calmly, they weigh what evidence they have and decide the Turks are aiming for Cyprus.

When Othello enters, the Duke says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 48-49

There have been numerous tribes of Turks who have made their mark in history, and those against whom the Crusaders fought in the twelfth century were the Seljuk Turks.

Two centuries later a group of Turks under Osman I (or Othman, in Arabic) began to win successes. The particular Turks under this ruler and under his successors were called Osmanli Turks or, more commonly, though incorrectly, Ottoman Turks. It was under the Ottoman rule that Turkish power reached its heights.

Under Orkhan I, the son of Osman I, all of Asia Minor was taken, and in 1345 Orkhan took advantage of a civil war among the Byzantines to cross over the Dardanelles. Thus the Turk entered Europe, never to leave.

In 1453 the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople and by Shakespeare's time they ruled a vast empire covering western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe. It had passed its peak at the time Othello was written but so slightly that the decline was not yet visible, and it still seemed (and was) the most powerful state in Europe.

It is only after speaking to Othello that the Duke notices Brabantio, who instantly pours forth his tale of anger and woe, accusing the Moor once again of having used enchantment.

Othello offers to send for Desdemona so that she might bear witness herself and meanwhile gives his own account. He has often been a guest at Brabantio's house, he says, and at his host's request would tell of his adventurous life and the strange things he has seen:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 142-44

"Anthropophagi" is Greek for "man-eaters." The word "cannibal" came into use only after Columbus' voyage, when man-eating habits were discovered among a group of Indians inhabiting the smaller islands of what are now called the West Indies. One of the names given them was "Caniba," and from that came "cannibal."

Actually, Shakespeare is taking a little bit out of Pliny here.

Gaius Plinius Secundus (the full name of the writer commonly called Pliny the Elder) was a Roman scholar who lived in the first century a.d. He was a prolific writer who tried to prepare a one-man encyclopedia of human knowledge culled from all the writers he could get hold of. In a.d 77 he published a thirty-seven-volume book called Natural History which digested two thousand ancient books and which was translated into English in 1601 (just two years before Othello was written) by Philemon Holland.

Pliny accepted rumors and travelers' tales and much of what he included was a farrago of legend and distortion, but all was so wondrous and interesting that the volumes survived the vicissitudes that followed the fall of the ancient world when other, more serious volumes did not.

Othello explains how Desdemona listened to his tales and came first to admire him and then to love him. Desdemona arrives and bears out Othello's tale, and Brabantio must give in. But in doing so, he sardonically warns that since Desdemona has proven capable of deceiving her father, she might deceive her husband as well.

All leave but Roderigo and Iago. Roderigo is in despair, for Othello seems to have won utterly. Iago, on the other hand, is not concerned. He has contempt for women and it seems to him that Desdemona cannot long remain in love with an old Moor. All Roderigo has to do is go to Cyprus with plenty of money (which, of course, Iago intends to charm into his own pockets) and wait his chance.

Then when Roderigo leaves too, Iago ruminates on the Moor and on his own plans for revenge, saying:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 377-81

This must be nonsense. From all we can guess about Othello from the picture Shakespeare paints, he is not this sort of man. But Iago, intent on revenge, is busy working up his sense of grievance and will seize upon anything to do so. The revenge must involve Cassio as well. He says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 383-84

And he gets his idea.

The scene shifts to Cyprus, where Montano, the Venetian governor, is awaiting events. There has been a great storm, which two Gentlemen on watch have witnessed. That tempest has, however, also served to abort the Turkish menace. A Third Gentlemen enters and says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 20-22

There is no further mention of military matters and Othello has no chance to display his quality as a general. That is too bad, for thirty years before the play was written there had been a Venetian-Turkish war that would have offered a good model for a battle.

In 1570, when Shakespeare was six years old, Turkish forces had indeed invaded Cyprus, as in Othello they had merely threatened to do.

Venice, which controlled the island at the time, felt she could not face Turkey alone. She appealed for help to the Pope, who in turn appealed to the most dedicated of all the Catholic monarchs in Europe, Philip II of Spam.

While the Christian forces of Europe were slowly gathering for the counterattack, the Turks were advancing in Cyprus and were steadily beating back the Venetians. Nicosia, in the center of the island (and the capital of modern Cyprus), was taken on September 9, 1570, while Famagusta on the eastern shore was under siege. Turkish vessels penetrated the Adriatic.

It wasn't till the summer of 1571 that the Christian fleet was ready to sail and challenge the Turks. The fleet was put under the command of Don John of Austria, an illegitimate half brother of Philip II.

Famagusta had fallen, meanwhile, and in October 1571 the Turkish fleet was concentrated near a city on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, a city which to Italian traders was known as Lepanto. It was six hundred miles northwest of Cyprus and seven hundred miles southeast of Venice itself.

On October 7, 1571, the allied fleet reached Lepanto and attacked the Turks in the last great battle to be fought with galleys, that is, by large ships driven by banks of oars. There were nearly 500 ships on both sides carrying over 60,000 soldiers in addition to the oarsmen. The Venetian ships distinguished themselves in the fighting that followed, and, in the end, it was a great Christian victory. About 50 Turkish galleys were destroyed and 117 captured. Thousands of Christian slaves were liberated, and the news that the invincible Turks had been catastrophically defeated electrified Europe.

And yet Shakespeare did not make use of such an event. He might have allowed Othello to defeat the Turks offstage and gain a Lepanto-like victory as easily as he allowed the storm to do the job.

But then Lepanto must surely have seemed less glorious in England than elsewhere. It was a victory for Philip II of Spain, who was England's great enemy in Shakespeare's time. In 1588, only seventeen years after Lepanto, he had launched a huge Armada against England. The English defeated it and what was left of the Spanish fleet was destroyed in a storm.

It was the storm that defeated Philip II, rather than the earlier battle that gave him victory, that may have been in Shakespeare's mind.

One by one the Venetians arrive at Cyprus, having weathered the storm. First Cassio, then Desdemona, Iago, and Roderigo, and finally Othello. Othello, completely happy to be with his Desdemona, to have Cyprus safe, and the Turks gone, proclaims a holiday.

Now it is up to Iago to use that holiday as an excuse to get Cassio drunk -the first step in his plan.

Iago sets up a drinking party. Cassio protests he has a weak head for liquor but Iago will not listen. In no tune there is drinking, comic songs, and foolish prattle. At one point, Iago sings a song that begins:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 86-87

It is a nonsense song, brought to Iago's mind by talk of England, and England did indeed have a King Stephen.

In 1135 King Henry I died, leaving as an heir a single daughter named Matilda. The nobility did not approve of a woman ruler, however, and turned to the old King's nephew, Stephen.

Stephen was crowned and kept his throne till his death in 1154. His reign, however, was a disastrous one. There was almost continuous civil war, first with Matilda and then with her son, Henry. Scotland took advantage of England's troubles to extend her sway southward, and the English nobility grew turbulent and independent of the crown.

And yet Stephen was a genial, good-natured man who was popular with the people, especially the Londoners, and might well have inspired good-natured comic songs in his honor.

And now the plot begins to work. Cassio, quickly drunk, staggers away. Iago had earlier arranged with Roderigo to have him pick a fight with Cassio, and meanwhile he tells Montano, with apparent reluctance and great concern, that Cassio is often drunk.

Roderigo comes running back, with Cassio in clamorous pursuit. Montano tries to restrain Cassio and in no time they are fighting and Montano is wounded. Iago sends Roderigo to set the alarm bell ringing and soon Othello, roused from bed, is on the scene.

Othello wants to know what happened and Iago tells him accurately, omitting only the fact that he himself had arranged everything. Othello has no choice but to discharge Cassio.

Yet Iago's game is not over; it is merely beginning. Cassio's discharge is well and good and now Iago may become lieutenant in his place. By now, though, Iago is after bigger game and cannot be stopped.

Critics have often maintained that Iago lacks real motive for his villainy and continues out of "motiveless malignity." It seems to me, however, that this simply isn't so. To many people there is a fierce delight in pulling strings, in the feeling of power that comes out of making others into marionettes whom one can manipulate at will.

The excellent results of Iago's maneuvering, so far, had whetted his appetite for more of the same, and we might suppose that by this time Iago could even forget his own wrongs in the sheer delight of watching himself twitch those about him into annihilation.

Thus, he twitches another string and encourages Cassio to hope for rehabilitation. But poor Cassio is too abashed to approach Othello. He says:

—Act II, scene iii, lines 302-4

The Hydra is the many-headed monster whom Hercules slew in the second of his twelve labors (see page I-237).

Iago, however, has the cure for Cassio's pessimism and pulls another string. All Cassio need do is ask Desdemona to intercede with Othello, and he can reach Desdemona through her lady in waiting, Emilia, who happens to be Iago's wife. With the dawn of hope, Cassio agrees to try.

The plan begins well. Cassio sees Emilia and then Desdemona, and the latter agrees to intercede with Othello.

As Cassio leaves Desdemona, however, Iago and Othello arrive on the scene and Iago, looking after Cassio, mutters:

—Act III, scene iii, line 34

He won't explain himself, but it is enough to insert the first uncertainty into Othello's mind concerning Desdemona and Cassio. Then, when Desdemona begins to plead for Cassio, that can but increase the uncertainty.

After Desdemona leaves, Iago, with infinite cleverness, manages to fire Othello into jealousy by the very manner in which he himself refuses to say anything. The very show of reluctance on Iago's part gives Othello the greater room for imagining the worse, and Iago warns him in terms that but feed his fear, saying:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 165-67

Because of these verses, the expression "green-eyed monster" has become a common metaphor signifying jealousy and its mundane meaning is lost. The "green-eyed monster" is obviously the cat, which plays with the mouse it catches, releasing it only to catch it again, over and over. In the same way, jealousy torments the one who experiences it, for he cannot ever be made secure. Every proof to the contrary releases him only briefly, till some new incident rouses the jealousy again.

Othello understands the torments of jealousy and he will not sit still to be a prey to it. He will have the matter put to the test, either to be proven or disproven. After Iago has left, he muses:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 259-61

The language used here is that of falconry. In medieval times it was an aristocratic sport to train falcons, hawks, and other birds of prey to hunt game, and, like every other specialized activity, it developed its own vocabulary.

A haggard is an untamed hawk; one that is caught after it is adult so that any taming is superficial and so that there always remains a tendency to revert to the wild. Jesses are small leather straps around the hawk's leg which are usually supplied with a ring that can be attached to the glove on the hawker's hand. To whistle her off would be to let her go.

Actually, though, Othello is already convinced of Desdemona's infidelity. When she comes in to call him gaily to dinner, she sees something is wrong and asks if anything ails him. He answers, ominously:

—Act III, scene iii, line 283

He touches his forehead, and to the Elizabethan audience, any reference to the forehead means the horns that sprout there and signify cuckoldry.

The innocent Desdemona offers him her handkerchief to bind his head but he pushes it roughly away and it falls to the ground unnoticed by her.

The handkerchief is a very special one, a gift to Desdemona from Othello. Now it lies there and Emilia picks it up. Her husband, Iago, had often asked her to steal it for him (we are not told why) and now she can give it to him.

Iago is elated on receiving it. He sees how he can use it in his plan. When Othello enters, Iago muses with grim satisfaction on the perturbed appearance of the general. He says to himself, concerning Othello:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 327-30

There has always been a use for the equivalent of tranquilizers, for there have always been tensions. Before the days of modern chemistry, tranquil-izing herbs were found in nature, and of these the chief was a certain species of poppy which was originally grown along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean for the sake of its edible seeds.

Undoubtedly, other parts of the plant were nibbled on and it must have been noticed that nibbling the fruit eased small pains and discomforts, reduced tension, and encouraged sleep. It was eventually discovered that one could express juice from the fruit and use that as a sedative. The Greek word opion is a diminutive form of the word for juice, and in Latin that becomes opium.

One wonders if the famous lotus-eaters in the Odyssey, who ate of the lotus and wished nothing more than to dream away their lives in tranquil content, were not really poppy-eaters.

There is a less exaggerated mention in the Odyssey of a tranquilizing drug. When Helen and Menelaus are hosts to Telemachus (the son of Ulysses) in Sparta, they serve wine to which Helen adds a drug "that banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humor." A little opium might do that too. In Greek, the name of the drug Helen uses is nepenthes, meaning "no sorrow."

As for mandragora, that is an older form of mandrake (see page I-336).

Othello's state of mind has brought Iago himself to danger, for in his present frenzy, he demands proof or he will have Iago's life. Without flinching, Iago makes up the necessary lie. He says he once shared a bed with Cassio, who talked in his sleep and revealed his affair with Desdemona. He then adds the climactic bit when he says that the handkerchief Othello gave Desdemona is now in the possession of Cassio.

That does it. Othello is reduced to such a pitch of mad fury that he cries for blood. Coolly, Iago urges Othello to be patient and his intentness on revenge may vanish. But Othello says:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 450-57

The "Pontic Sea" is the Black Sea, which is connected to the Mediterranean through narrow straits. At its southwest corner is the Bosporus, about twenty miles long and no more than half a mile wide at its narrowest. It runs just about north and south and at its southern end widens out into a small body of water which we call the Sea of Marmara. (The ancient Greeks called it the "Propontis," meaning "before the Pontus," since a Greek traveler leaving the Aegean Sea must travel through the Propontis before getting to the Pontus.)

The Propontis narrows to a second strait, the Dardanelles, or, to the Greeks, the Hellespont (see page I-466).

The Mediterranean Sea, into which the Hellespont opens, is a warm sea. The sun beats down upon it and sometimes the hot, dry winds blow northward out of the Sahara Desert. Much water is lost by evaporation and only a small part of it is replaced by river water. Only one major river flows into the Mediterranean and that is the Nile; and after its long trip through desert regions not as much water is delivered into the Mediterranean by the Nile as one might suppose from the length of the river. The other rivers that flow into the Mediterranean-the Ebro, Rhone, Po, Tiber -don't count for much, despite their historic associations.

The result is that if the Mediterranean were existing in isolation it would gradually dry and shrink to a smaller size than it is.

It is quite otherwise with the Black Sea, which is distinctly cooler than the Mediterranean and free of the Saharan winds. There is less evaporation, to begin with. This smaller amount of evaporation is more than made up for by the giant rivers that flow into it-the Danube, Dniester, Bug, Dnieper, and Don.

If the Black Sea existed in isolation, it would overflow.

The result is that the waters of the Black Sea pass constantly through the straits and pour ceaselessly into the Mediterranean without ever any ebb to this steady flow, and it is to this that Othello refers. (Water is also constantly pouring into the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar.)

Othello intends death now, as soon as the case is proved. He orders Iago to arrange the assassination of Cassio. Iago now has everything he wants. Cassio has been amply paid back for daring to move over his head-to the death. Othello has been destroyed; the noble general he once was he can never be again.

There remains Desdemona. She has not offended Iago. He seems to have a momentary qualm about her. When Othello orders him to kill Cassio, Iago says:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 471-72

Yet the immediate effect of this is to drive Othello further into his maddened rage, so that he cries out:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 472-75

We might even imagine that Iago's soft request for mercy was designed to provoke this anger; that without any personal hatred for Desdemona at all, he nevertheless enjoyed pushing the buttons.

Desdemona has by now realized she has lost her handkerchief and is very disturbed. Othello (testing whether she has given it to Cassio, as Iago said) asks for it, and the nervous Desdemona, forced to admit she doesn't have it on her person, is afraid to say she has lost it. Othello harshly warns her that the handkerchief is important; it has magic properties and is a love charm:

—Act III, scene iv, lines 70-72

The aged sibyl is an image used often by Shakespeare (see page I-452), and we may well believe that Othello accepts the truth of sibyls as he does of Pliny's wonders.

Still Desdemona can't produce the handkerchief and still she fearfully denies it is lost. Othello stalks off in a rage.

Iago now sets about supplying the last touch. He has planted the handkerchief in Cassio's chambers. Cassio finds it, likes it, and gives it to his mistress, Bianca (a courtesan), to copy over so that he will have a similar handkerchief after he returns this one to its rightful owner, whoever that might be.

Iago then finds occasion to draw Cassio aside, with Othello watching from a place where he can see but not hear. Iago teases Cassio with the great love Bianca has for him. Cassio preens and smirks with the usual male self-satisfaction over such matters and Othello can only assume (in his fevered state) that he is laughing over his amour with Desdemona.

And then Bianca enters and throws the handkerchief back at Cassio, for she has decided it must belong to another one of his girlfriends. Of course, Othello recognizes it at once and the case is proven for him. The handkerchief he gave to Desdemona, she gave to Cassio, who thinks so little of it he passes it on to a courtesan. Othello is ready to kill Desdemona.

But the outside world intervenes. A deputation of important Venetian officials has arrived under the leadership of one Ludovico. They bring a message recalling Othello to Venice now that the war danger is gone and appointing Cassio as his successor.

Othello greets them with the necessary ceremony but is so far gone in his jealous madness that he cannot put a good face on matters even for the sake of the Venetian deputation. When Desdemona innocently tries to speak in Cassio's favor to the Venetians, Othello strikes her.

The horrified Ludovico upbraids Othello and exclaims at the sight of the weeping Desdemona. But the raving Othello says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 244-46

In other words, if tears falling to earth could act as semen to make the earth pregnant and bring forth life, Desdemona's tears would cause it to bring forth crocodiles.

This refers to a well-known legend concerning crocodiles. (Othello is a veritable compendium of legends.) Crocodiles were supposed to moan and sigh, so that passers-by might think human beings in distress were somewhere nearby. If any were softhearted enough, or curious enough, to turn aside in search of them, the crocodile's jaws snapped shut, and it would then continue to weep even while eating.

The story is quite untrue, but the phrase "crocodile tears" has entered the language to represent any form of hypocritical grief. The implication is that Desdemona's modesty and virtue are tissues of hypocrisy. The irony, of course, is that the play is filled with crocodile tears; they are all Iago's and Othello doesn't see them.

When Othello stalks off, Ludovico wonders if he is sane, and Iago seizes the opportunity to encourage that thought of possible insanity without actually committing himself to it.

But by now Iago has almost more strings in his hand than he can properly handle. Thus, when Othello takes himself to Desdemona's chamber to give her a bitter tongue-lashing, Emilia openly wonders if Othello might not be the victim of malicious slander. Then too, Roderigo has been gulled and robbed by Iago to the point where he can take no more. He threatens to talk to Desdemona directly and request the return of his jewels.

We can be pretty sure that Desdemona has never received any jewels but that Iago, as go-between, has kept them. Iago, therefore, must begin to shut mouths.

He begins by promising Roderigo that he will have Desdemona the very next night if he can manage to keep Othello on the island that long. Iago explains that Othello has been recalled and ordered to a distant country (another lie). This is to force Roderigo to act, for it will seem to him that Desdemona is about to move utterly beyond his grasp. Iago says:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 224-26

Mauritania was the name given in ancient times to the northwest shoulder of Africa, the region now called Morocco. It may be used here as a vague term, meaning "land of the Moors," that is, north Africa generally.

Iago arranges to have Roderigo attempt to find occasion to kill Cassio, since the death of Othello's appointed successor would force the Moor to remain on the island for a while. (From Iago's standpoint, this will get rid of the hated Cassio, and Othello has ordered him to do that; and he will find occasion, we can well imagine, to take care of Roderigo too.)

Matters now rush to their horrible climax. It is night and Desdemona, in almost unbearable depression, goes to bed.

Cassio, returning from time spent with his ladylove, is set upon by Roderigo. They fight and both are wounded. Men come running, and Iago, finding that Cassio is not dead, makes the best of matters by killing Roderigo and shutting his mouth at least.

While that is going on, Othello is trying to do his part. He comes upon Desdemona sleeping and even now finds he still hesitates. He looks from the candle he carries to the sleeping woman and says:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 8-13

Prometheus, in the Greek myths, had first made man the gift of fire, stealing it from the sun (see page I-437). A later myth also made him the creator of man. He was supposed to have made clay models into which he breathed life.

Othello's reference to "Promethean heat" is therefore a double-barreled allusion. It refers to Prometheus' connection with the sun's fire; not just ordinary fire but a special kind. Secondly, it refers to Prometheus' ability to infuse cold and lifeless clay with the warmth of a living human body; and that ability Othello lacks.

Othello no longer raves. He goes about the task of killing with a cold sorrow. Desdemona wakes and Othello accuses her of having given the handkerchief to Cassio. He will not accept her denial but tells her Cassio is dead (he assumes Iago has done his work properly), and Desdemona's terror at that news seems to him to be the final admission.

He strangles her with her pillow and even while he is forcing his weight down on her fragile neck, there is a clamor at the door. Emilia demands entrance. Othello closes the bed curtains and lets her in. Emilia has come to tell of the deadly fight between Roderigo and Cassio.

Othello says calmly:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 108-10

It has always been tempting to think that changes in the heavens bring about analogous changes on the earth (something that is the basis of the pseudo science of astrology). The regular changes of the moon from new to full and back again would seem to imply that certain passions or foibles of men would wax and wane in sympathy.

In particular, mental abnormalities would wax with the moon, and there are the well-known legends that men turn into werewolves under the full moon, that witchcraft is most dangerous then, and so on. Spells of madness would vary with the moon's phases too by this line of thought, and the very word "lunatic" is derived from the Latin word for the moon.

And of course, if the moon approached more closely to the earth than usual, its effects would be multiplied.

But now Othello finds out Cassio is not killed, merely wounded. That staggers him.

A faint cry from the bed reveals that Desdemona is not quite dead, either. She lives only long enough to try one last time to shield Othello, and weakly claims she killed herself.

Othello, trying desperately to cling to the certainty that he did the right thing, boldly proclaims he killed her for her infidelity, and now Emilia comes into her own. She shrieks her utter faith in Desdemona's virtue.

Others, including Iago, come bursting in in response to Emilia's cries and find Desdemona dead. Iago must admit he told Othello of Desdemona's unfaithfulness, and now comes his doom. The matter of the handkerchief comes up and Emilia reveals the truth. She had found the handkerchief and given it to Iago.

Then-too late, too late-Othello understands. He tries to kill Iago, who evades him, stabs Emilia, and runs.

Emilia dies, but Iago is brought back a prisoner. Othello looks at him through the hellish mist that now surrounds him and says, brokenly:

—Act V, scene ii, line 282

This takes us back to one of the more joyous aspects of the pagan religions of the Greeks and Romans. They peopled the woods and wilds with spirits representing the free, animal fertility of life. The Greek satyrs and the Roman fauns were pictured as men with goats' horns and hindquarters, possibly because goats were always pictured as lustful animals. (Then too, goats may well have been the first creatures to be domesticated for meat and milk and it was important that they be lustful and multiply.) The most important of the satyrs was Pan himself.

The sexually strait-laced Jews (and, later, Christians) viewed all fertility deities with disapproval and suspicion, and to the Jews the satyrs (or similar creatures in Eastern cults) were sairrim, which the King James Bible translates as "devils." They tempted mankind to sin.

The devil, Satan, is usually pictured, even today, with horns, tail, and other goatish characteristics. He is still a satyr or, in particular, Pan. Medieval legends had it that the devil could take on many undevilish disguises, but that he could not abandon all his marks. Whatever he did, there remained one trace of goatishness; that is, a goat's cloven hoof. Hence the expression "to show the cloven hoof," meaning to reveal the hidden evil in one's character.

Othello looks toward Iago's feet to see the cloven hoof that would indicate the devil and interrupts himself mournfully with his "-but that's a fable."

He has learned! Till now he has believed the fables from Pliny, he has believed in magic handkerchiefs and sibyls, in crocodiles and moon-bred lunacy-and, of course, in Iago too.

Now, for the first time, he has discovered the necessity of skepticism-far too late.

As all of Iago's lies and trickeries are exposed, the confused Othello wants to know but one thing. Why did Iago do it? The audience wants to know too, since the revenge went far beyond anything necessary to punish Iago's grievances. But Iago says:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 299-300

Ludovico threatens to make him talk under torture, but it seems reasonable to suppose that no torture will make Iago talk. This failure to say why has irritated many, but, in my opinion, it should not. Iago's pleasure at manipulating lives was intense and it is something we can all understand, for, in a much milder way, it is present in all men-and yet it is not something that can be easily explained.

Now it is only necessary to take Othello back to Venice so that he might be tried for murder.

Othello, however, has one last thing to say. With an effort, he manages to pull himself together into almost the man he once was and speaks once more, a little in self-pity, much more in self-hate. He asks them all to tell the tale honestly, saying:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 339-44

In many editions of the play, the phrase "like the base Judean" is made to read "like the base Indian." It seems to me that "Judean" is much the more preferable. If "Indian" is used, the allusion is obscure; if "Judean" is used, it is brilliantly apparent.

In Matthew 13:45-46, Jesus is reported as saying "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."

It is easy to envision Jesus (who, in the Christian view, represented the kingdom of heaven) as being the pearl of great price more valuable than all else in the world besides. The Jews, in rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, would then be pictured as throwing away the pearl of great price. In particular, Judas, who betrayed Jesus, would be the "base Judean."

From this point of view, the extent of Othello's self-hatred is clear. He compares his murder of Desdemona with the crucifixion of Jesus, and himself with Judas.

—Act V, scene ii, lines 348-52

With the last word, before anyone can stop him, Othello stabs himself, falls upon Desdemona in a final kiss, and dies.

This last pathetic passage cannot be taken literally. Aleppo is a city in what is now northwestern Syria, and (except for a brief period in 969) it has been Moslem for over thirteen centuries. If Othello killed a Turk in Aleppo, he was killing him in the midst of a city of Turks and it is not likely he would have got away alive.

He must mean something else…

The Moslems and Jews were marked off from the Christians by being circumcised; that is, a flap of skin at the end of the penis was removed. "Uncircumcised dog" was a common derogatory phrase for Christians among the Moslems, indicating that they were outside the pale of the true religion. Othello's use of the reverse phrase in his last agony is like a return to his origins.

After all, if Othello was Moslem originally, conversion to Christianity in later life could not utterly wipe out the tricks of speech he had learned as a young man. Furthermore, he would still be circumcised; baptism may cause one to be born again in the spiritual sense, but it cannot grow a new foreskin.

Othello therefore pictures himself as having returned to his origins, of having forgotten the Christian virtues of forgiveness, of having become "a malignant and a turbaned Turk." He beat a Venetian (Desdemona). He also traduced (defamed) himself; robbing himself of his own fame and reputation by his actions; and insofar as he was the representative of the state in Cyprus, he traduced the state.

So he took by the throat "the circumcised dog" (himself) and killed him.

It is the end. The destruction has been complete, and Iago's plot has worked itself out to the final bit. That Iago himself is trapped and is to be destroyed by torture must seem quite irrelevant to him. The victory is his.

Ludovico says to Iago bitterly:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 357-60

A "Spartan dog" is a bloodhound, one that is trained to hunt and kill, and therefore a cruel and bloodthirsty person.

But does Ludovico expect Iago's conscience to be touched? It is precisely "the tragic loading of this bed" that is his victory, and one can imagine that Iago, wounded and pinioned and with the certainty of agonizing torture awaiting him, must, as he looks upon the bed, smile.

So the play ends-and the manner of its ending reflects history too, in a way, for all that the play is utter fiction from beginning to end.

The Battle of Lepanto, however much of a glorious victory it seemed to Europeans, and however much of a psychological boost it gave them, had no military value. Within a year the Turks had replaced their losses and were as powerful as ever at sea. The Christian allies, having won their victory, quarreled among themselves and did nothing more. The Venetians were left to face the Turks alone. The war on Cyprus continued to go against them, and in 1573 the Venetians yielded and ceded Cyprus to the Turks, who were to keep it for three centuries.

And so, just as Othello's coming to Cyprus may be compared to the victory at Lepanto, so his death seems to signify the valuelessness of that victory and the ultimate loss of Cyprus to the enemy.

24. Measure For Measure

In this play, written in 1604, Shakespeare takes the opportunity to study the relationship of justice and mercy. He had done so in The Merchant of Venice, but there he had not been consistent. Portia had demanded mercy of Shylock, but when the tables were turned she did not show it (see page I-539).

We all favor mercy for those with whom we sympathize, but are not nearly as keen when mercy is sought for those we hate. In this play Shakespeare carries through the notion of mercy to ultimate consistency, and in offering mercy to the villain makes many critics unhappy. In presenting an unpleasant situation so that the offering of mercy becomes hard indeed, more critics are made unhappy. The result is that Shakespeare's great play of mercy is usually considered one of his unpleasant comedies, like All's Well That Ends Well.

The setting of the play is in Austria. This setting Shakespeare takes over from a tale by Cynthius; a tale from the same collection, in fact, from which he had a year earlier or less taken the plot for Othello (see page I-609).

Cynthius' tale begins with the Emperor Maximian appointing a new judge over the city of Innsbruck. There was a real Emperor Maximian who ruled over the Roman Empire, along with Diocletian, from 286 to 305, but there is no indication that the play takes place in Roman tunes.

The name may have been inspired to Cynthius by the fact that two Holy Roman emperors named Maximilian ruled in the sixteenth century. The first, Maximilian I, ruled from 1493 to 1519, and the second, Maximilian II, became Emperor in 1564. He was on the throne when Cynthius' collection was published in 1565.

The two Maximilians, like all the emperors after 1438, were members of the House of Habsburg, who ruled, specifically, as archdukes of Austria.

Shakespeare shifts the scene from Innsbruck, a provincial town in western Austria, to Vienna, the capital, but he is writing a Renaissance romance, and all the characters have Italian names. Thus, the Archduke of Austria and presumably Holy Roman Emperor (but referred to only as "Duke" in the play) is Vincentio.

The Duke is planning to retire for a while from the tasks of government and intends to appoint a deputy to wield his powers. He suggests his candidate to an aged lord, Escalus, who approves and says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 22-24

Angela is given the post, though he is reluctant, and the Duke then leaves in great haste.

The scene then shifts to a Viennese street, where we are introduced to Lucio, who is listed in the cast of characters as "a fantastic." He is fantastic in costume and conversation, in other words; he is avant-garde, ahead of the fashion, a gay man about town.

He is talking to two unnamed Gentlemen and says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-3

Nothing further is mentioned of this, of any threat of war, of the King of Hungary; nor is there any hint as to who "the other dukes" might be.

Hungary is Austria's eastern neighbor. Through the Middle Ages it was an extensive and often powerful kingdom which was, however, weakened by the existence of a turbulent aristocracy whose quarrels among themselves worked to the ruin of all.

Hungary had reached its height a little over a century before Measure for Measure was written, when, from 1458 to 1490, Mathias Corvinus ruled. He temporarily broke the power of the Hungarian nobility, spread his power northward over Slovakia and Silesia, and in 1485 even conquered Vienna. He made Vienna his capital and ruled over Austria.

Corvinus died in 1490 and his weak successor gave up the earlier conquests and let the nobility gradually regain their power. The real disaster, however, came in 1526, when the Ottoman Turks (see page I-520) invaded Hungary and destroyed the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohacs. By 1540 the major part of Hungary had been made part of the Ottoman Empire and the western fringe was taken over by the Austrian Duke, Ferdinand I.

The talk shifts almost at once to internal affairs. It seems that a wave of puritanism is sweeping over Vienna and a moral crackdown is in process. Older laws against sexual immorality, which had been allowed to lapse, are now being drawn noose-tight and houses of prostitution in the suburbs are being closed down.

What's more, a young nobleman, Claudio, is being haled off to prison for moral offenses. He is engaged to Juliet, but the marriage had been delayed while the matter of a dowry was being negotiated and meanwhile Juliet has managed to get pregnant.

The Duke's deputy, Angelo, a man of rigid and unassailable virtue (his very name means "angel"), is applying the law against unmarried intercourse to the extreme and Claudio will be slated for execution.

Claudio, in this deep trouble, stops to talk to his friend Lucio and complains of being thus struck down by penalties:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 168-74

The sun travels once around the zodiac in one year. Nineteen zodiacs are therefore nineteen years.

Lucio advises Claudio to appeal to the Duke, but the Duke is not to be found. Claudio therefore asks Lucio to hasten to a nunnery where his (Claudio's) sister is about to take her vows. Perhaps she will plead with Angelo on his behalf and win him over.

But the Duke has not really left after all. He wishes to observe affairs while remaining unobserved, see how the moral reform will work out, and so on. The Duke explains this to a monk, Friar Thomas, saying that even Angelo, his deputy, doesn't know the truth:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 13-15

In Shakespeare's time Poland was much larger than it is today. It bordered on Austria (and what had once been Hungary) to the northeast, and included large sections of what is now the Soviet Union. It extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was almost at the peak of its territorial expansion. But the aristocracy in Poland, as in Hungary, was uncontrollable and kept the central government weak.

Lucio reaches Isabella (Claudio's sister) at the nunnery. She has not yet made her final vows and she may speak to him. He tells her of Claudio's situation. Claudio cannot make amends by marrying the girl he has made pregnant because Angelo is intent on setting an example. Lucio has no great hopes that Angelo can be swerved from this, for the man is icily virtuous. Lucio describes Angelo as

—Act I, scene iv, lines 57-59

The implication is that he cannot feel the stirrings of passion and cannot sympathize with those who do. Under the lash of virtue he would insist upon a rigid justice that would be as cruel as anything vice would demand.

Yet, as a last resort, Lucio urges Isabella to go to Angelo and plead with him. He might be softened by a girl's request.

The chances of success are sum, however, for in the next scene Angelo is shown in conversation with Escalus and he insists on the letter of the law firmly. Strict justice and nothing but justice is what he demands, and he gives orders that Claudio be executed the next morning at 9 a.m.

The gravity of the developing situation with respect to Claudio is lightened by a scene in which a comic constable, Elbow, has arrested Pompey, who works as servant in a brothel, and Froth, who has been a customer there. Both are brought before Angelo and Escalus for judgment.

When Pompey begins to testify, however, he does so with a long-windedness that weaves round and round the point without ever coming to it. It drags in even the exact time of the death of Froth's father. Pompey says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 123-24

Froth answers with grave precision:

—Act II, scene i, line 125

"Hallowmas," which is also "All Hallows' Day," is a day set aside for the celebration of all the saints generally, known and unknown, and it is also known as "All Saints' Day." The celebration is on November 1, which happens, by no great coincidence, to be an important pastoral holiday of the ancient Celts. Many of the ancient customs of the earlier pagan holiday have come down to us, transfigured by Christian disapproval, and have given us a melange of witches and hobgoblins.

The night, naturally, is the best time for the spirits of darkness, and since in ancient times (among the Jews, for instance) the twenty-four-hour day included the sunlit period plus the night before, rather than the night after, it was the night of October 31 that was witch time. This is the "All-hallond Eve" that Froth refers to, or "All Hallows' Eve" or "All Saints' Eve," or, as it is best known today, Halloween.

Angelo, whose virtue leaves him no room for humor, leaves in disgust, allowing Escalus to render judgment, and saying:

—Act II, scene i, lines 133-34

In Shakespeare's time Russia was just impinging on west European consciousness (see page I-154). At that time Russian territory had already reached the Arctic Ocean, and in 1553 an English trade mission under Richard Chancellor reached that nation through the one port that was open to the sea powers of the West-Archangel, on the Arctic shore.

It was this which gave England the notion of Russia as an essentially Arctic nation; a notion that was never quite wiped out of European consciousness. There were parts of Russia that were farther south than any part of England, even in the sixteenth century, before still further expansion southward had taken place. What counted, though, was the latitude of Archangel, which is only a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. "When nights are longest there" (in December and January) they are over twenty-three-hours long-though much of that time is twilit

The mild Escalus, left to deal with Pompey and Froth, lets them go but warns them nut to be picked up again, for he does not wish to see them before him once more. He says to Pompey:

—Act II, scene i, lines 247-49

The reference is, of course, to the Roman general Pompey and his defeat by Julius Caesar (see page I-257).

Claudio's moment of execution is approaching, and now his sister, Isabella, comes to plead for his life. Yet she is as strictly virtuous as Angelo and has no great sympathy for her brother's sexual offense. She says (very Angelo-like):

—Act II, scene ii, lines 29-30

Naturally, her cold plea doesn't touch Angelo and she is at once ready to give up. Lucio, however (who is the pattern of goodhearted vice throughout the play and makes a good contrast to the two examples of marble-hearted virtue), urges her to plead more passionately.

Fired at last, Isabella turns to the only legitimate pleas that can turn aside justice:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 59-63

Thus is the conflict of the play set forth clearly: justice versus mercy.

And as Isabella grows more eloquent, Angelo begins to thaw-but not out of mercy. He is attracted not so much by the reasoning as by the reasoner. He asks Isabella to return the next morning, and when he is left alone, he discovers to his surprise that he too has finally felt the stirrings of passion.

At the second meeting between Isabella and Angelo, Angelo is ready to offer the mercy that Isabella has begged, but only at the price of Isabella herself. It is now Isabella's turn to be unbendingly virtuous. She refuses the price even if that means her brother must die, doing so without hesitation, and marches off to inform her brother of that fact.

Claudio is horrified at the news Isabella brings him and, at first impulse, agrees that it is better for himself to die than for his sister to lose her virtue. But then he begins to think about death and he quails, saying:

—Act III, scene i, lines 118-32

This sounds a great deal like the various descriptions of the sufferings of the damned in hell in Dante's Divine Comedy.

So Claudio asks his sister to sacrifice her virtue for him. We might expect from Isabella the mercy she had requested so movingly of Angelo. She might not give in to Claudio, but she might at least sympathize with his fear of death and forgive him his human weakness. She does not. As rigid and extreme as Angelo (before lust intervened), Isabella shrieks out at her brother:

—Act III, scene i, lines 144-47

But the Duke, disguised as a friar, has overheard the colloquy between brother and sister in the jail, and now he begins to take countermeasures. He insists on speaking to Isabella before she leaves and says to her:

—Act III, scene i, lines 212-14

There is no indication that this reference to Frederick implies any real person. We might point out, though, that there were a number of Fredericks involved in German and Austrian history. One of them, Frederick I Barbarossa, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1152 to 1190 and he was indeed a great warrior, the strongest of the medieval emperors. In his old age, when almost seventy, he joined the Third Crusade (the one in which Richard the Lion-Heart was involved, see page II-219) and in Asia Minor drowned in a river while bathing. This is close to having "miscarried at sea."

It turns out that this Mariana had been betrothed to Angelo, but when her brother was wrecked at sea, her dowry was lost and Angelo promptly and coldly broke the marriage contract (about par for his kind of virtue).

The Duke now proposes the exact device used by Helena in All's Well That Ends Well, which Shakespeare had written a year or two earlier. Isabella is to pretend to accede to Angelo and to insist that he stay with her only briefly and in silence. It will then be arranged to have Mariana substitute for Isabella. Angelo will pardon Claudio as payment, then be forced to marry Mariana when the truth is revealed.

Pompey now comes onstage again. Once more he is arrested on the old charge of running a house of prostitution and this time there will be no mercy. When Lucio enters, Pompey recognizes an old customer and friend and asks for him to intercede. Lucio, however, is quite heartless and makes a mere joke of it, saying:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 44-48

Again there is the reference to Pompey and Caesar that, earlier, Escalus had used. Of course, Pompey was never led in triumph behind Caesar's chariot, for he died before that could be. And even if he had not died, it was not the custom of Roman generals to be awarded a triumph for their victories over other Roman generals. The metaphor is colorful, but inaccurate.

Pygmalion is a mythical character, whose story is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. He was a King of Cyprus who had carved a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. He prayed to Aphrodite to give him a wife resembling the statue and she did better. She had the statue come to life, and Pygmalion did indeed marry her.

Lucio's reference to "newly made woman" plays on words bawdily, referring both to Pygmalion's come-to-life statue and to prostitutes who have just completed a turn. In the latter sense, they would have money that Pompey could make use of in order to bribe his way to freedom.

The Duke/Friar is also onstage and Lucio lingers to talk to him, not recognizing him as Duke, of course. Lucio quotes some rumors, saying of the Duke:

—Act III, scene ii, line 89

In 1472 Ivan III, till then Grand Duke of Muscovy, married Sophia, niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. Ivan thereupon claimed the throne of the Empire (now defunct, actually) for himself and assumed the title of Tsar ("Caesar"). In Western Europe this title was translated into "Emperor," and Russia remained under a tsar-emperor for nearly four and a half centuries.

Lucio, out of sheer high spirits and a mischievous desire to shock a holy man, goes on to repeat all sorts of slanders against the Duke. When the Friar makes plain his indignation over this, Lucio increases his slanders, accusing the Duke of unbridled lust, drunkenness, and ignorance.

Lucio goes off laughing, but he has tried to be funny at a very unfortunate time for himself. Mistress Overdone, the proprietress of a bawdy-house, is also being arrested, and she believes it was Lucio who bore witness against her. She therefore accuses Lucio, in turn, to Escalus. It seems that he has had a child by one of the prostitutes of her house. She says:

—Act III, scene ii, lines 202-5

St. Philip and St. James, two of the apostles, are together commemorated on May 1. The Hebrew name of James is Jacob. "Come Philip and Jacob" therefore means "next May 1."

The plot to deceive Angelo is completed. Mariana is introduced; it is explained to her what she must do and she agrees.

But Angelo, once he has slept with Mariana (thinking she was Isabella), fears the discovery of the sin. If he pardons Claudio, everyone will be astonished and ready to believe something unusual has happened. If Isabella talks, her tale would be accepted. If, however, Claudio is executed, who would then believe Isabella's story?

Therefore, even as the Duke/Friar waits for notice of Claudio's reprieve, a letter to the Provost (the keeper of the prison) arrives from Angelo, ordering the execution of Claudio and, in addition, of someone named Barnardine.

The Duke/Friar asks who Barnardine is and the Provost replies:

—Act IV, scene ii, lines 133-34

Bohemia (now part of modern Czechoslovakia) is the westernmost Slavic region of Europe. The fourteenth century was its golden age and its King, Charles I, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1347 to 1378. Bohemia declined after that, chiefly through internal religious strife.

After 1462 Bohemia was ruled by Hungary, and when the latter country was defeated by the Turks, Bohemia was taken over by the Austrian House of Habsburg. Bohemia remained Austrian through Shakespeare's life and for three centuries afterward.

Barnardine, it seems, has been in prison for nine years for murder and now, all reprieves having been exhausted and his crime thoroughly proved, is ready for death. The Duke/Friar considers having his head sent to Angelo in place of Claudio's. It turns out, though, that a prisoner has died that morning of fever and he happens to resemble Claudio. It is that head which will be sent to Angelo, and Barnardine as well as Claudio will remain unexecuted.

Yet when Isabella comes to receive her reprieved brother, the Duke/ Friar tells her that her brother has been executed. Her instant cry is for revenge as she shrieks:

—Act IV, scene iii, line 121

Some critics are appalled at the Duke's needless cruelty in hiding from Isabella the fact that her brother has been saved. The Duke's action seems reasonable to me, however. He was present when Isabella cruelly turned on her death-fearing brother and excoriated him, saying she would pray for his death. Well, now she had what she prayed for. That might teach her a little something about justice and mercy and she would later have an opportunity to learn a little more. (Besides, one is entitled to wonder whether she is more outraged at the death of her brother or at the fact that her sacrificed virtue-which Angelo thought he had-was so little valued by him.)

Now begins a charade arranged by the Duke. He returns to Vienna in his own guise and is so greeted. Isabella (following the instructions of the Friar, not knowing him to be the Duke) accuses Angelo of having insisted on her body as the price of her brother and then having had the brother executed anyway. Angelo denies everything and the Duke affects to believe him and orders Isabella punished.

Mariana joins in the accusation against Angelo and the whole story comes out, but still Angelo denies and still the Duke refuses to accept the accusation.

It turns out that a Friar has urged the women to make the accusation and the question turns to him. Lucio, out of sheer love of mischief, accuses the Friar of having slandered the Duke, putting his own words into the Friar's mouth.

The Duke retires, returns as Friar, and he too is ordered arrested. Lucio abuses him quite gratuitously and pulls off the Friar's hood. All freeze in astonishment as the Duke's face is revealed.

And now the Duke speaks in earnest for the first time since his return. It is his task to represent mercy and his first words are to pardon Escalus the harsh words he addressed to the Friar, not knowing that behind the cowl was the Duke.

Angelo has no choice now but to confess his guilt and ask for death. The Duke, however, is in no hurry for that. First there is a kind justice (not a cruel one) to be done Mariana. She must be given the social status that goes with marriage. Angelo and Mariana are therefore taken offstage to be married.

Isabella asks forgiveness for having, unknowingly, treated the Duke as less than a Duke and she receives pardon freely.

And then Angelo, returning as a married man, must hear sentence passed against him. The Duke offers him his own kind of justice and suggests that mercy itself would demand merciless justice, and would cry out:

—Act V, scene i, lines 412-14

It is the cry of rigid return of damage for damage and is usually recognized as among the primitive ethics of early religious development. It reminds one of the passage in the Old Testament which says: "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Leviticus 24:19-20). In a way, of course, this was an attempt at limitation of revenge. If one man knocked out another's tooth, revenge must not take the form of killing, but satisfy itself with no more than knocking out a tooth in return. Nevertheless, the doctrine of "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" sounds barbaric to those who make no such fetish of exact justice.

It is usually thought that the Old Testament doctrine quoted above was repudiated by the New Testament, for Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil" (Matthew 5:38-39).

But then later in the same sermon, Jesus says: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (Matthew 7:1-2).

This latter passage may refer to divine judgment, but it can be applied to human judgments; and whether divine or human, it is eye for eye and tooth for tooth all over again.

It is the New Testament passage which the play counters, for it is the New Testament passage that gives the play its title.

Mariana pleads for Angelo's life, but he is her husband and she loves him. It is easy for her to want mercy for the man. What about Isabella?

To Isabella, Angelo is nothing but a villain. He tried to rob her of both her virginity and her brother, and as far as she knows, the brother is indeed lost. She has no reason to want mercy, every reason to want revenge. Mariana pleads with her and slowly Isabella kneels. She says to the Duke:

—Act V, scene i, lines 448-51

That is why it was necessary for the Duke not to reveal to Isabella that her brother lived. She had to forgive Angelo at the worst. She had to learn mercy at last.

Angelo is therefore pardoned and for this many critics (as savage as Angelo) condemn the play, because they want to see the man hanged. Yet is it only for those with whom we sympathize that mercy is to be sought? If that is so, then what credit is there in mercy and why should we have expected Shylock to show mercy for an Antonio with whom he did not sympathize, or for Angelo to show mercy for a Claudio with whom he did not sympathize? It is precisely to those whom we hate that we must show mercy if the word is to have meaning at all.

But the Duke has one more person to teach-himself. After pardons are granted all round, even to the wicked murderer, Barnardine, the Duke finds there is one person he cannot pardon-the one who has sinned directly against himself. This is Lucio, who has slandered him.

The Duke orders Lucio to marry the prostitute on whom he has fathered a child and, afterward, to be whipped and hanged.

Lucio seems to be more dismayed at the disgrace of the marriage than at the rest and manages to be witty even at this last moment. Whereupon the Duke, with an effort, manages to be merciful on his own account too. He says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 521-23

Then, in his last speech, the Duke indicates pretty clearly that he intends to marry Isabella, and thus ends the play.

25. The Tempest

Although The Tempest is usually found first in editions presenting the collected works of Shakespeare, it is actually the last play to be written entirely by Shakespeare, its date being 1611. His only work afterward consisted of his contributions to Fletcher's plays Henry VIII (see page II-743) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (see page I-53).

In a way, it is pleasing that Shakespeare ended with The Tempest, for this marks a return to his sunny comedies written over a decade earlier. We may be glad that the great man ended his career on an upbeat.

What's more, The Tempest is Shakespeare's complete creation too, for it is one play in which he apparently made up his own plot.

The play opens with a ship struggling against a tempest. On board are a group of Italian noblemen, for here, as in so many of his other romances, Shakespeare uses Italy as the home of romance.

The crew is desperately trying to save the ship when the Italian aristocrats emerge from below. One speaks, saying:

—Act I, scene i, lines 9-10

The speaker is Alonso, King of Naples, and with him on the ship is his brother, Sebastian, and his son, Ferdinand. The kingdom of Naples was from about 1100 down to 1860 the political unit making up the southern half of the Italian peninsula, with Sicily usually (but not always) included. Its capital was the city of Naples.

Alonso is not a typically Italian name. It is a Spanish one, a variant of Alfonso. Both Sebastian and Ferdinand are names best known in history as belonging to Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, rather than to Italians. This is not surprising, for Naples in Shakespeare's time was closely connected with Spain.

In 1420 Naples was under the rule of the aging Queen Joanna II, who had no heirs and who feared that the French would seize her kingdom. Nearby Sicily was under the rule of Alfonso V of Aragon (see page I-545) and she made him heir to her rule. She changed her mind afterward, but Alfonso V had no mind to retire. After she died in 1435, he began a long struggle to fix himself on the Neapolitan throne. By 1443 he had succeeded and made Naples the capital of his entire dominion, including Aragon itself. He reigned as Alfonso I of Naples.

Aragon continued to rule Naples until 1479, when Aragon and Castile formed a dynastic union that gave rise to modern Spain. The united Spanish kingdom continued to rule Naples through Shakespeare's time and beyond. At the time The Tempest was written, Naples was ruled by a viceroy serving the Spanish King, Philip III…

In thinking of Naples, then, Shakespeare automatically thinks Spanish even when he treats it as an independent kingdom. (In Othello, such characters as Roderigo and Iago have Spanish names even though they are supposedly Venetians.)

Despite the royalty on board, the ship is apparently sinking and must be abandoned.

The events do not go unobserved, however. There is an island nearby -not one that can be pinned down on a map-but one that exists only in this tale. All we can say is that it ought to be located somewhere between Italy and the African shore.

Two individuals are all the truly human inhabitants the island of the play has: a man, Prospero, and his daughter, Miranda.

The daughter is terribly perturbed over the ship, which is being destroyed in the tempest, but Prospero calms her and assures her that no harm will be done. He says it is now time, at last, to tell her of their past and how they came to be on the island.

—Act I, scene ii, lines 53-55

Milan is a duchy in northern Italy (see page I-447).

Prospero, as Duke, had little interest in governing and left the actual conduct of affairs to his brother, Antonio, while he himself was concerned with scholarship:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 75-77

In the Middle Ages there were two kinds of studies: that of theology and related philosophy, which was considered the highest goal of reason; and that of the secular knowledge of the world.

The latter was suspect for a number of reasons. It had its roots in the pagan learning of the Greeks, for one thing. For another, the secular scholars (notably the alchemists) actually cultivated an air of mysticism that reinforced vague beliefs that they consorted with spirits and practiced magic. Naturally, the general public would fear such scholars and suspect that there was much more to their work than they could possibly admit.

And indeed, it becomes clear that Prospero's "secret studies" did indeed involve magic, that he could command spirits and control portions of the universe.

Prospero's preoccupation with his books and studies allowed his brother, Antonio, to intrigue for the throne. Antonio came to an understanding with Alonso of Naples (the same who was on the ship caught in the tempest).

Prospero says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 121-22

The King of Naples therefore sent an army to Milan. Antonio treacherously opened the city gates so that Milan was taken and then ruled as new Duke, but tributary to Naples.

Though The Tempest is fictional throughout, there is an echo of history here. In 1535 the last native Duke of Milan, Francesco Maria Sforza, died without heirs. The duchy was taken over by Emperor Charles V (see page II-747), who in 1540 gave it to his son, who was later to be Philip II of Spain. Milan remained Spanish throughout Shakespeare's life and for nearly a century beyond. And since Naples had been Spanish before that, it is almost as though Naples had taken Milan.

As it happens, Antonio, the usurper, is also on the sinking ship, along with the King of Naples.

Once the coup d'etat had been effected, Prospero and Miranda were taken away, placed on a small ship, and set afloat on the Mediterranean. Fortunately, a sympathetic Neapolitan lord, Gonzalo, made it possible for them to survive the ordeal by secretly giving them clothing and other necessaries and, most of all, a number of the most valuable books from Prospero's library. And, as it happens, Gonzalo is also on the ship.

Miranda is affected by the tale but, in her gentle sympathy, does not think of her own danger then but only of the added trouble she must have been to her father. He denies that she was any trouble. Rather the reverse, for she was

—Act I, scene ii, lines 152-53

A cherub is a creature mentioned in the Bible. From the wording in some places, it would seem to represent the storm blast. Thus, in Psalms 18:10 it is written: "And he [the Lord] rode upon a cherub and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind."

The cherub is nowhere described in the Bible except for the indication that it had wings. It may have been represented as a fearsome creature along the lines of the eagle-winged, man-headed bulls that were so characteristic a feature of Assyrian sculpture.

Whatever its origins, however, the cherub came to be considered as an infant angel and took the place in Christian art of the cupids of pagan art. It is in the sense of infant angel that Shakespeare uses the word here.

Incidentally, the Hebrew plural is, characteristically, indicated by an "-im" suffix, so that one can speak of one cherub, but two cherubim. Such a plural is utterly foreign to English, of course, and the tendency is to consider cherubim (or cherubin) as a singular and then speak of cheru-bims or cherubins if the plural is needed. Shakespeare uses such a false singular here.

Having completed his tale, Prospero makes Miranda sleep by his magical art and proceeds about the more serious business of the day. He calls to him the chief spirit at his command:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 187-88

Ariel is a spirit of the air, wild and free, and untainted by any form of earthiness or earth-bound humanity.

The name has a biblical sound. In Isaiah 29:1 the prophet says: "Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt!" The word means "lion of God" or possibly "hearth of God" and is meant as a poetic synonym for Jerusalem.

Yet it sounds like the name of a spirit or angel, since all the angelic names in the Bible and the Apocrypha end in the suffix "-el" (God), as Gabriel, Rafael, Azrael, and Uriel. The first part of the name, "Ari-" sounds like "airy," which makes it fitting for an airy spirit.

The name Ariel is also to be found in the heavens through a queer concatenation of events.

In 1787 the German-English astronomer William Herschel discovered two satellites of the planet Uranus (which he had discovered a few years earlier) and broke with the long-established custom of naming bodies of the solar system after Greek and Roman deities. Instead, he called them Titania and Oberon (see page I-28).

In 1851 the English astronomer William Lassell discovered two more satellites, closer to the planet, and went along with the spirit names. He called the new satellites Ariel and Umbriel.

These two spirits are from the poem The Rape of the Lock by the English poet Alexander Pope, published in 1712. In the poem, Ariel is the name given to a sylph who guards Belinda, the heroine. (It seems quite reasonable to suppose that Pope borrowed the name from Shakespeare.) Umbriel, on the other hand, is a melancholy spirit, always sighing and weeping, with a name suggested by the fact that umbra is Latin for "shadow." Umbriel is always in the shadows and the name occurs nowhere else in literature.

Nevertheless, so much better known is The Tempest than The Rape of the Lock that the satellite Ariel is much more likely to be associated with the former than with the latter.

Thus, in 1948, when the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper discovered a fifth satellite of Uranus, closer (and smaller) than any of the others, he automatically allowed Ariel to suggest another name from The Tempest and the new satellite he named "Miranda."

When Ariel arrives, it appears that the tempest is no true tempest but an appearance raised by magical arts, designed to frighten the men on the ship and set the stage for Prospero's plan to set all things to rights. Ariel explains how he carried out his task of creating panic:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 196-99

Ariel was, in other words, converting himself into "St. Elmo's fire." This is the glow produced on dark, stormy nights by gathering static electricity, which is discharged from pointed objects. Such a discharge, if vigorous enough, will produce a glow.

It will appear on the points of masts or spars, for instance. If one glow is seen it is called "Helena" (in reference to Helen of Troy) and if it divides in two it is "Castor and Pollux" (the twin brothers of Helen).

There is no St. Elmo. The name is thought to be a corruption of "St. Erasmus," the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors. The glow was thought to be the visible sign of the saint guarding them during the storm.

Ariel carefully explains that no one has been hurt, although they have been separated: the King's son brought to shore alone; the other royalty brought to another place; the ship itself taken safe to harbor; and the rest of the fleet sent sadly on its way thinking they had seen the flagship, with the King on board, wrecked.

Ariel describes the place where he has bestowed the ship, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 226-29

The Bermoothes are the Bermudas, a group of small islands which, all together, are no larger than Manhattan. They had come dramatically into the news shortly before The Tempest was written.

In 1607 the English had made their first permanent settlement in what is now the United States, at Jamestown in Virginia. The settlement barely managed to survive its first few years and it required periodic infusions of new colonists and supplies from England to keep going. In 1609 a fleet of nine ships sailed westward to supply Jamestown.

A storm hit them off the Bermudas and the flagship, carrying the admiral and the new governor of Virginia, was separated from the rest. The remaining eight ships made it to Jamestown; the flagship did not and was given up for lost.

Apparently, though, it had managed to come ashore in the Bermudas and there its passengers and crew managed to eke a living until they could build two small boats that carried them west across the six hundred miles that separated them from the mainland. They showed up in Jamestown nearly a year after the storm and it was as though they had come back from the dead.

It was a sensation and the tale of the adventure filled England to the point where Shakespeare calls the islands "still-vexed" because of the association with the storm that wrecked the flagship, though the.Bermudas are not more stormy than other places. The description of the Bermudas by those who were stranded there so long was most favorable and Prospero's magic island seems modeled on the reports of Bermuda (which has remained British territory ever since).

In fact, there seems no question but that the tale of this shipwreck inspired Shakespeare to write The Tempest. There is a storm that separates the flagship from the fleet. Men are lost and yet not lost but are saved in almost miraculous fashion after spending time on an almost magical island. All Shakespeare had to do was add an Italian-style romance.

Pleased with himself, Ariel reminds Prospero that the long term of service he has rendered draws to a close and that he has been promised his freedom. Prospero, who is working out his climactic scheme, and needs only another day, is irritated, and reminds Ariel from what misery he had been rescued.

Prospero says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 257-59

The name is an invention of Shakespeare's, though it may have arisen out of the combination of Greek words for "pig" and "crow." Prospero asks Ariel where Sycorax was born and the spirit answers:

—Act I, scene ii, line 260

Argier is a distorted version of Algiers, a city on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, 650 miles southwest of Naples. It had been founded in 950 as a Moslem town and has remained Moslem ever since. To the Christians of Europe, a Moslem town would seem like a natural birthplace for a witch.

Algiers had, besides, made the news in the sixteenth century. In 1545 Emperor Charles V had sent a fleet to Algiers, hoping to capture it. That fleet had been dispersed by a storm and the attempt ended in disaster. It was easy for good Christians to suppose that the diabolical Moslems had raised the storm by means of witchcraft and so it would seem natural to associate Sycorax with that city.

Sycorax was so evil a witch, however, as to have been banished even from Algiers. She was taken to the island that later became Prospero's and was left there.

She was a powerful witch and when Ariel would not obey her wicked commands, she imprisoned the spirit in a pine tree for twelve years. She died in that interval and Ariel might have remained imprisoned forever, had not Prospero arrived and freed him. It was in gratitude for this that Ariel was serving Prospero.

When Sycorax died, however, she left something behind. She had been pregnant when brought to the island and had borne a child upon it whom Prospero describes as

—Act I, scene ii, lines 283-84

Ariel answers:

—Act I, scene ii, line 284

This Caliban, the offspring of a witch and, presumably, one of the devils that served her, is a semihuman monster, earthy, dull, and savage. The name has entered the language to mean any brutal and debased person. The name is Shakespeare's invention but it may be guessed that it was suggested by "cannibal," a word which had been made prominent by explorations of the New World (see page I-617).

Caliban is called forth to do some labor and appears, railing and cursing, misshapen and monstrous. He complains that it was his island before Prospero came and that now he has been enslaved, but Prospero insists that they had tried to treat him with humanity and kindness and that in response he had tried to rape Miranda.

Caliban, however he may wish to rebel, must do as he is told. He says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 372-74

Setebos was a god worshiped by the Patagonians of southern South America. He was first mentioned by Ferdinand Magellan, whose expedition in 1519-22 was the first to circumnavigate the world. Setebos then appeared in English in a book called History of Travel by Robert Eden, published in 1577. Apparently Shakespeare saw it there and thus another aspect of the New World entered the play.

Prospero's plans continue to progress. Ariel leads Ferdinand, the young son of the King of Naples, to the cell. Ferdinand is in deep grief for his father, who, he is certain, is dead. Nevertheless, upon first sight of Miranda he falls head over heels in love. For her part, Miranda, who never saw a young man before, is equally smitten. Prospero is delighted, but, to test the youth, pretends anger and keeps them apart.

On another part of the island, the rest of the party is sunk in grief over the loss of Ferdinand. (These multiple griefs are part of the revenge Prospero is taking.) Gonzalo, the kindhearted old lord, is desperately trying to cheer up the King with cheerful conversation. They have their lives, he points out, and the island seems fruitful and comfortable. Besides, there are other blessings to be counted, for he says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 71-74

This tells us what the trip was all about. A royal party has crossed the Mediterranean from Naples to Tunis and it was on the return voyage that the tempest brought them to this island.

Tunis is at the point where Africa approaches most closely to Italy. It is. only 90 miles west of Sicily and but 350 miles southwest of Naples.

From the eighth century on, Tunis and the country surrounding it had been Moslem, and this area is still Moslem today. It seems unlikely that Shakespeare would be describing the marriage of a Christian princess to a Moslem king.

But then, in 1535, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, had sent a naval expedition against Tunis (as ten years later he was to send one against Algiers). This earlier expedition had been successful and Tunis was taken with great slaughter. It was not a permanent conquest and did not in the least affect the Moslem character of the city, but it made a great stir and, presumably, Tunis emerged out of the shadows as the result of that victorious impingement of Christendom upon it.

The mention of Claribel causes everyone to praise her and to say that Tunis had never had so fair a queen. But Gonzalo brings up Dido (see page I-20) as a possible competitor. Adrian (one of the courtiers present) objects and says:

—Act II, scene i, line 85

To which Gonzalo replies with equanimity:

—Act II, scene i, line 86

This statement is almost true.

Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony which had been utterly destroyed (after three wars) by Rome in 146 b.c. A new city was founded on the same site in 44 b.c. at the orders of Julius Caesar and was given the same name. The new Roman city was settled by Romans and Romanized Africans, however, and had nothing in common with the older Phoenician colony but the name and the site.

Roman Carthage flourished until 698, when it was finally taken by the Arabs. With that, it died a second time and this time forever, but Tunis, a dozen miles westward along the seashore, became great in its place. Tunis is near the site of Carthage, but, strictly speaking, it is wrong to say, as Gonzalo does, that it is Carthage. In fact, Tunis (then called "Tunes") existed as a distinct and separate town when Roman Carthage was at its height.

Antonio, the usurping King of Naples, comments on the fact that Gonzalo has, in a moment, re-created the vanished city of Carthage. He says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 89-90

This is a reference to the Greek myth of Amphion and Zethus, twin brothers, whose father had been ruler of Thebes but had been deposed and killed by a younger brother. (Odd that Antonio should make such a reference.) Amphion and Zethus captured Thebes from their usurping uncle and wished to fortify it against a counterattack. They therefore built a stone wall around the city. Zethus carried the stones and piled them near the wall while Amphion, playing a magic lyre (or harp), made the pile of stones move of their own accord into the wall.

The conversation continues until Ariel enters and causes all but Sebastian and Antonio to fall asleep.

Antonio, the wicked usurping brother of Prospero, takes the opportunity to urge Sebastian to kill his brother and become King of Naples in his place. Sebastian allows himself to be tempted, but when they draw their swords to kill the King, Ariel wakes all the sleepers and Sebastian and Antonio must pretend they had heard wild beasts and had drawn their swords for that reason. (Thwarted ambition is presumably another part of Prospero's revenge.)

Meanwhile another pair of individuals are to be found wandering on the island. Trinculo, the King's jester, has escaped and is wandering aimlessly. So has Stephano, the King's butler.

Caliban sees Trinculo approaching and, in terrible fright, pretends he is dead. Trinculo finds him, doesn't know what to make of the half-human monster, but crawls under his garment to stay out of the last dregs of the tempest.

Stephano, who has salvaged some bottles of liquor, is carrying one and is 'drunk. He comes across the Caliban-Trinculo combination and views it as a monster with four legs and two voices. When Trinculo calls his name, Stephano is terrified and says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 102-3

Stephano refers to the proverb which is usually quoted, now, as "Who sups with the devil must needs have a long spoon."

But Trinculo identifies himself before Stephano is out of earshot. Stephano returns, pulls Trinculo out from under Caliban's garment, and says:

—Act II, scene ii, lines 110-12

A mooncalf is the name given to the occasional deformed calf born of a cow, because this was thought to be due to the malign influence of the moon (see page I-629). Eventually, the expression came to be used for any monstrous form of life.

Stephano gives Caliban a drink and the grateful Caliban (who has never tasted liquor before) wishes to worship Stephano as a god, and suggests to him that he kill Prospero and become king of the island, making Miranda his queen. Stephano thinks this is a good idea and all three troop off on this errand. There is obviously no danger, though, for Ariel is (invisibly) on guard.

Prospero, meanwhile, has put Ferdinand to work moving logs, and though the young prince is engaged in a demeaning manual labor, he loves it because it gives him a chance to be near Miranda. And Miranda, when she enters, cannot bear to see him working, and tries to carry the logs for him. The love grows with every second and Prospero, overhearing, is happy indeed.

The situation is not quite so pleasant for the King and his party. Gon-zalo is half dead with walking; and Sebastian and Antonio are still plotting the assassination. Suddenly, though, a banquet is set before them through Prospero's magic.

They are astonished, and Sebastian says, in stupefaction:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 21-24

Sebastian compares the incredible sight they have seen with two other incredibles: the unicorn and the phoenix.

The unicorn is generally pictured as a horselike creature with a single spiral horn on its forehead. Belief in this creature originated from three sources.

First, the Bible speaks of unicorns. This, however, is a mistranslation of the Hebrew re'em, which is the aurochs or wild ox. The Assyrians showed these in bas-relief in profile so that only one horn showed. In the Greek translation of the Bible, re'em therefore became monokeros (one-horn) and in Latin unicornis (one-horn).

Second, there were dim tales of actual creatures with a single hornlike structure. These were the rhinoceroses, rumors of which reached Europe from India (the earliest report on record being contained in the writings of the Greek physician Ctesias about 400 b.c.).

Finally, there was the narwhal, a species of whale in which a single tooth (not a horn) formed a long, tapering spiral. These were brought back by sailors and called horns of unicorns, for as such they could be sold for fabulous sums for their supposed efficacy against poisoning. The effect of this was to make the horn of the unicorn appear in illustrations as though it was a transplanted narwhal tusk.

The phoenix is more fabulous still and had its origins, perhaps, as an Egyptian solar myth. The Egyptians used a calendar in which the year was considered to be exactly 365 days long (instead of 365 1/4). The extra quarter-day was ignored and the individual days crept ahead of the seasons from year to year, therefore, until they had made a complete circuit in 1461 Egyptian years (or 1460 actual years). In other words, if a particular star were directly overhead at midnight on New Year's Day, it would not be overhead at midnight on New Year's Day for 1461 more years. This length of time was called the Sothic cycle because the Egyptians used Sirius as their reference star and in their language this star was called Sothis.

Perhaps this 1461-year cycle of the sun versus the Egyptian calendar was mythologized into a long-lived flaming bird which, after 1461 years, died and gave rise to a new bird like itself.

If so, the Greeks, who used a Babylonian calendar and not an Egyptian one and who therefore knew nothing of the Sothic cycle, altered the length of time to a rounder number-500 years is often mentioned. The bird is called the phoenix (from a word meaning "red-purple," as a hang-over perhaps from the Egyptian notion of a flaming sunlike bird).

There were all sorts of accretions to the myth-the nature of the flaming pyre in which the bird consumes itself, the details of the birth of the new bird, and so on. The place where the death and rebirth takes place also varies; some place the site, significantly enough, at Heliopolis, the Egyptian city at which the sun god was worshiped. Others place it in Arabia or India (on the basis that the farther east, the more wonderful).

There is only one phoenix at a time (as there is only one sun), and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if the phoenix immolated itself on a palm tree, it would be a palm tree as unique as itself. The Arabian desert is barren, so one can imagine it containing a single tree, the one on which the phoenix dies and is reborn.

Before the bemused and grateful travelers can eat, Ariel appears in horrible shape and the feast is taken away. Ariel denounces the malefactors for their treatment of Prospero. (The frustration of desire is another punishment and Alonso begins to feel remorse at his treatment of Prospero and to fear that the loss of his son is punishment therefore.) Prospero is pleased with Ariel's action and says:

—Act III, scene iii, lines 83-84

The Harpies were originally spirits personifying the storm winds-rather like the cherubs. The Greeks finally personified them as hag-headed birds, with long talons and horrible screeches. Sometimes they were described as carrying off individuals.

The most famous myth concerning them, however, involves Phineus, a soothsayer in eastern Thrace who incurred the anger of the gods. He was bunded and condemned to eternal hunger, for whenever food was placed on the table, Harpies would descend shrieking, snatching away some and fouling the rest. The Harpies were driven away at last by Jason and his men (see page I-505).

The fame of the myth fixed this particular picture of the Harpy and made it appropriate for Ariel to assume the guise of one when the feast was snatched away from the Neapolitan King and his followers.

But Ferdinand's ordeal is over. Prospero is satisfied with him and tells him that he may marry his daughter. To make up for the pain caused him, Prospero puts on a spirit show for the happy couple. The classical goddesses are brought down to bless them.

Iris comes in first, calling on another:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 60-61

Ceres (the Roman version of the Greek goddess Demeter) is the personification of the cultivated and fruitful soil, and all the food it produces. (We get our word "cereal" from her name.) She is naturally one whose blessing will ensure a fruitful marriage. After having enumerated Ceres' products, Iris says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 70-74

The "queen o'th'sky" would be Juno, of course (the Greek Hera), who is that because she is the wife of Jupiter (Zeus). Juno was considered by the Romans to have marriage and motherhood as her prime concern; she was the idealized wife. It was her place, therefore, to preside over the festivities on this occasion. The peacock was considered particularly sacred to her and these birds were supposed to draw her chariot.

Iris is the personification of the rainbow. Since the rainbow, though clearly in the heavens, seems to arch down to earth, it is easy to imagine it as a bridge linking heaven and earth, and one along which a messenger can travel. The bridge and the messenger become one and Iris is pictured here as serving Juno, in particular. The "wat'ry arch" is, of course, the rainbow, which appears after a rain, when the air is full of water droplets.

The rainbow attribute of Iris is indicated by Ceres' first words when she enters:

—Act IV, scene i, line 76

Ceres has one reservation about attending the festivities. She says to Iris:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 86-91

Dis is one of the Roman equivalents of the Greek god of the underworld, Pluto. Pluto seized Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (Ceres), and took her to the underworld to be his queen. Demeter located her only after a weary search and even then could only arrange to have her returned for part of each year. It is only in that part that Demeter allows the earth to bear crops; while Persephone is underground the earth lies blasted and cold. (This is an obvious way of mythologizing the cycle of summer and whiter, see page I-5.)

Pluto would not have fallen in love with Persephone had he not been wounded by the arrows of blind Eros (Cupid), the son of Aphrodite (Venus), which is why Ceres holds her grudge.

Actually, Venus and her son have no place at the celebration. They are the personification of erotic love and Prospero has made it plain that Miranda is to remain a virgin until the marriage rites are fully performed. Iris says, therefore, of Venus:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 92-94

Paphos (see page I-15) was a city where Venus (Aphrodite) was particularly venerated.

Juno now enters and says to Ceres:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 103-5

This "wedding masque," which occupies so much of the play, may have been deliberately inserted to apply to a real wedding at which The Tempest was to be shown; or else, since the wedding masque was there, the play was thought particularly appropriate for such a celebration.

At any rate, The Tempest seems to have had one of its early productions in the winter of 1612-13 as part of the festive preparations for the marriage of Elizabeth, the daughter of King James I, with Frederick V of the Palatinate (son of the Frederick IV who was ridiculed by Portia in The Merchant of Venice, see page I-506).

The two were married in February 1613, both bride and bridegroom being seventeen years old. Juno's statement that they be "honored in their issue" came true, as it happened. The couple had thirteen children.

Juno and Ceres sing, and with that done, a dance must be next. For that purpose, Iris makes a new call:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 128-31

The nymphs were the spirits of wild nature, pictured as beautiful young women. (The very word means "young woman.") These came in a number of varieties. The nymphs of the mountains were "oreads," those of the trees were "dryads," and those of the rivers and streams (whom Iris has called) are "naiads."

Properly speaking, if the nymphs were called, satyrs ought also to have been called, for they were the male counterpart, masculine spirits of the wild. However, the nymph-satyr association is an almost entirely erotic one (see page I-630), which we memorialize these days by the use of "nymphomania" and "satyriasis" as medical terms, and that would have been unsuitable for the celebration Prospero designed for the young people. Instead, harvestmen are called, and a chaste pastoral dance is staged.

At the conclusion of the dance, Prospero bethinks himself that Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are plotting to kill him and realizes he must get back to business. He ends the masque and when the young couple look troubled, he says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 148-58

This is a surprisingly somber speech for what is, essentially, a happy play, especially since it comes at a particularly happy time for Prospero, who sees the best part of his plan coming to such lovely fruition.

It is almost irresistibly tempting to think Shakespeare is talking to himself at this point. At the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest he was forty-seven years old, the prime of middle age by our standards, but quite old in his time. He may have felt the infirmity of the years creeping up on him and he may have been thinking more and more of death. As a matter of fact, he had only five more years left to live, for he died in 1616 at the age of only fifty-two.

These beautiful lines, then, may have been his thoughtful salute to his own inevitable death and to the end of all the "insubstantial pageants" he had invented.

It might also be viewed (without Shakespeare possibly being able to know) as an extraordinary prediction of the future life of the young couple whose real-life forthcoming nuptials were being celebrated. Young Elizabeth and Frederick, who were entering so happily into princely marriage and life, were to experience tragedy soon.

In 1619 Frederick was elected King of the Protestant nation of Bohernia (see page I-148), which was revolting against Catholic Austria. He was still only twenty-three and he could not resist the advance in title from Elector to King. This was the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, but one year of it was enough for poor Frederick. He was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague on November 8, 1620 (four years after Shakespeare's death), and he spent the rest of his life as a landless refugee, living on a pension granted him by the Protestant Netherlands. He died in 1632.

His wife, Elizabeth, lived on long enough to see her brother, Charles I, defeated by revolting Englishmen and executed in 1649. She did not return to England till 1661, when her nephew had become King as Charles II. She died the year after. For Frederick and Elizabeth, a short-lived happiness had indeed dissolved and left not a rack (cloud) behind.

And yet Juno's blessing did not go for nought (and here as elsewhere, see pages I-593 and II-192, Shakespeare's intuition led him into the making of true predictions). Frederick and Elizabeth were "honored in their issue." Not only did they have thirteen children, but one of them, Sophia, was the mother of the man who eventually became King George I of England. All the monarchs of England since 1714 have been descendants of Elizabeth and Frederick.

Caliban and the others do not prove to be hard to handle. Ariel has already lured them on through thorns arid swamps, and when they reach Prospero's cell, spirits in the shape of dogs are set to snarling at them and drive them away.

It remains only to settle matters with the King and the others, who, after the tantalizing episode of the banquet that came and then vanished, have been kept charmed into motionlessness till Prospero be ready for them.

Ariel is sorry for them and expresses his sympathy, and if Prospero has been meditating any final cruelty against his enemies he abandons it. He, a human, cannot be less kind than the inhuman Ariel.

Prospero announces that he will be satisfied to inflict no further punishment provided only the criminals are penitent. He has accomplished all he wants and it is no longer important to him that he possess his magic powers. There will be one last item to round out all and then, he says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 54-57

Many critics seem to think that this is Shakespeare's farewell to his art. He is saying he will write no more and will no longer practice the matchless magic of his literary genius. (This is, in my opinion, too sentimental an interpretation and I doubt it. For one thing, a compulsive writer like Shakespeare couldn't deliberately plan to give up writing while he was capable of holding a pen-on this one point I claim to be an authority. For another, he did continue to write in actual fact, engaging in two collaborative efforts with Fletcher: Henry Vlll and The Two Noble Kinsmen.)

Point by point, all is brought to a conclusion. The King and the others are brought in and are scolded and forgiven; while Gonzalo, at least, is praised and thanked. Prospero reveals his identity and takes back his dukedom.

What's more, Ferdinand (whom Alonso and the rest thought dead) is revealed, playing chess with Miranda-to Alonso's great joy.

Miranda, herself, is wide-eyed at all these men. She had never imagined there could be so many and she cries out in naive astonishment:

—Act V, scene i, lines 181-84

The glad exclamation of Miranda has been made into part of our language in the form of a bitter sarcasm by Aldous Huxley, who in 1932 published his book Brave New World, which pictures a future society that has been completely saturated with scientific technology but at the loss of all the human values we hold dear.

And now the crew of the ship arrive with the amazing news that despite all appearance, the vessel is in perfect shape and that not a man has been lost. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo also enter and are forgiven as having been sufficiently punished.

All are to go aboard the ship, which Ariel shall speed so that it will rejoin the fleet, and then he, himself, will be free at last.

It is a happy ending in which not one person, not one, not even the most: villainous one, Antonio, comes to any physical harm. It is as though Shakespeare in his last complete play could not leave the boards without everyone entirely happy.