e wooing of the Lady Anne, the scene in
Baynard's Castle, and the ghost scene in the tents at Bosworth, have
been praised and re-praised. They are in Shakespeare's normal mood,
neither greater nor less than twenty other scenes in the mature plays.
The really grand scene of the calling down of the curses (Act I, sc.
iii), when the man's mind, after brooding on this event for months, sees
it all, for a glowing hour, as the just God sees it, is the wonderful
achievement. Think of this scene, and think of the scenes played nightly
now in the English theatres, and ask whether all is well with the
nation's soul.

There are many superb Shakespearean openings. No poet in history opens a
play with a more magnificent certainty. The opening of this play--

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,"

is one of the most splendid of all. There is no need to pick out
fragments from the rest of the play, but the march of the line--

"Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current"--

the lines--

"then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he squeaked out aloud,
'Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury'"--

the exquisitely tender lines--

"And there the little souls of Edward's children
Whisper the spirits"--

and the orders of Richard in the last act, for white Surrey to be
saddled, ink and paper to be brought, and a bowl of wine to be filled,
show that the poet's great confident manner was formed, on all the four
sides of its perfection. The years only brought it to a deeper glow.

_The Merchant of Venice._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The ancient story of the merciless Jew is
told in the _Gesta Romanorum_, and re-told, with delicate grace, by
Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his
_Il Pecorone_ (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we
should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is
also told in the _Gesta Romanorum_. Other incidents in the play are
taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought
by some that the character of Shylock was suggested by the case of
the Spanish Jew, Lopez, who was hanged, perhaps unjustly, for
plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth, in 1594. T