"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."
THE revival of " The Merchant of Venice" at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, in spite of one very glaring and vexatious fault,— a fault of the first magnitude,—is one calculated to give a great deal of pleasure to English theatre-goers. In the first place, it brings Shakespeare's rich and careless genius before us with a sort of vivid- ness that no reading of his plays can ensure. The three monstrous improbabilities of the plot, two of them at least moral impossi- bilities,—we refer of course to the consent of a shrewd Venetian merchant to give a bond for a pound of flesh to the personal enemy whom he had most often insulted,—the extraordinary device of taking a foreign barrister's legal opinion as the judgment of a Venetian Court of law,—and the mad freak of Portia's father in making her promise her hand and wealth to the man who should guess that her portrait was contained in the leaden casket, and not in the golden or the silver one,—a guess easy enough to any shrewd adventurer, who had the very moderate sagacity to reflect that the conventional moralist always insists on the deceitfulness of outside glitter,—these three gross extravagances of the plot, we say, certainly heighten instead of diminishing the charm of the play, by adding to the freedom and ease with which occa- sions are provided for the display of the passion of re- venge, revenge gloating over its hopes, and revenge suddenly defrauded of its prey, and by giving ready and large oppor- tunities for contrasting the generous chivalry of friendship and of love, in the case of Antonio and of Portia, with the malignant tenacity of Shylock's vindictiveness. Recklessness in the invention or treatment of incident, if accompanied, as it is in Shakespeare, with consummate skill in the delineation of char- ' atter, unquestionably adds to the largeness and directness of the effects. What can be better adapted for the purpose of delineat- ing crafty and cruel vindictiveness than a straightforward bargain' to cut a pound of flesh from the neighbourhood of a man's heart if a bond be not paid on the proper day? What can give more scope to the delineation of the keen and chivalrous woman's wit of Portia, than the calm assumption that by borrowing the dis- guise of a famous doctor of laws she could gain the opportunity both of splitting hairs like the lawyers and of deciding, with the authority of a Venetian Judge, on the literal interpretation of an impossible bond, and also, unlike the lawyers, of displaying some- I thing more than a just anxiety to secure the victim of her ingenuity a way of escape out of the toils she was drawing round him, if only he were not too cruelly bent on ven- geance to avail himself of it ? And what could give larger scope for the portraiture of a lively woman's hopes and fears as to her own fate, than the device of compelling every one of her suitors to select among the three caskets that which he thought most likely to contain her own likeness? Of course, Shake- speare did not invent, but borrowed all these fanciful incidents; but by borrowing them he showed how greatly he preferred these wide-opened doors for dramatic action and expression,—these sim- ple and conspicuous opportunities for the delineation of character and passion,—to those finer and more artistically-contrived occa- sions which would, as judged by experience, be infinitely more natural. Whether the incident were probable or not, Shakespeare cared.little or nothing, so long as it gave him an ample stage for painting man and woman as he knew them. No civilised State in the world ever permitted a man to contract to allow his own murder in case he failed to meet his pecuniary engagements, or would have entertained for an instant the notion of legally empowering a private citizen to wrench its own prerogative of capital punish- ment out of its own hands. And probably nobody knew this better than Shakespeare. But he evidently regarded incident, in the character mainly of a large framework for the apt delineation of passion and character. There is not one of Shakespeare's plays which shows this habit of his of indulging freely and most suc- cessfully in the use of improbable, not to say impossible incident, as impressively as "The Merchant of Venice."
The great blot on the play as it is brought out at the Prince of Wales's Theatre every critic has perceived at once. Mr. Coghlan probably had a fancy that he could represent better than most actors have done, the depressed, crafty, and down-trodden servility of Shy- lock's nature, though he had not the physique adequately to repre- sent, scarcely even to attempt the representation of, his blood- thirsty passion. But the truth is that the one quality requires the other to bring it out. The servility is nothing without the hidden fire, and the absence of that devouring flame makes the servility almost unreal. Only in one scene does Mr. Coghlan give us any approach to satisfaction, and that is where he wishes to see Jessica dead at his feet with the jewels in her ear ; but there is more need for passion where there is vastly less expression of it, and in the trial scene the want of passion is quite oppressive ; the audience hardly feels that any kind of crisis is imminent ; the whole affair is utterly flat. Mr. Coghlan quite forgets that in the trial scene Shylock is risking everything, and knows that he is risking everything, for his revenge. Indeed, as we conceive it, the leading idea of the play is perhaps this,—that every genuine passion, bad or good, will risk great things to secure its own end. Shylock not only sacrifices all claim for interest on his money in the hope of securing his revenge, but in the trial scene refuses repeatedly double, treble, quadruple the sum named in the bond, and in addition ignores the gravely expressed displeasure of the Doge, rather than give up his claim on the pound of flesh. In the same sense, Antonio's commercial splendour is made to consist in his great and various risks, and his devotion to his friend is measured by his eagerness to risk his life to Shylock, rather than not serve Bassanio, again, wins his wife by regarding the inscription on the leaden casket " Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath," as the expression of the spirit in which a great prize can alone be won. Again, Portia, in spite of her love, and though she reminds herself that she might, if she would, teach Bassani° bow to choose aright, yet deliberately runs the risk—to her a fearful one—of his choosing wrong, rather than make her- self, as she thinks, unworthy of the man she loves. And after- wards, in the clever and audacious plot for cutting by her own wit the knot which threatens the life of her husband's friend, she risks much of shame and failure in the enthusiasm of her confidence in herself and her love for him. The motto of the play might be "Nothing venture, nothing have," but Mr. Coghlan gives us
no sense at all of the magnitude of the risk which Shylock is consciously running for the sake of his revenge, in that trial scene in which he explains how much a man will sacrifice to gratify his whim, and'that it is a whim of his to loathe Antonio, which he will risk any loss to gratify. Shylock is a gambler, and a con- scious gambler from the first,—revenge being the stake for which he gambles. But the fierce excitement of the gambling spirit Mr. Coghlan never seems to have the least dream of. He renders the paternal rage and grief, and even the agony of the Jew's avarice, far better ; but his excitement in awaiting the one throw of fortune's die on which he has risked all the passion of his character, Mr. Coghlan renders with almost ineffable feebleness.
There is no fault of the kind in Miss Ellen Terry's Portia. No finer bit of by-play than her rendering of her suspense while the two unwelcome, and the one welcome, suitors make their choice, has been seen on the English stage for many years back. She is risking in the last of these ventures not merely unhappiness, but shame, for she has lavished on Bassani° the assurance of her love, before she lets him try his fortune ; and so the venture, is all the greater, and her tenacity in gx)ingthrough with it is almost on a level with the Jew's when he risks everything for his revenge. And no one can fail to be sensible of-the quiver of her whole nature as the test proceeds, and one is made to feel that-were not her mind so keen and vigorous, the tension of the moment would be too much for her. Yet, owing to Mr. Coghlan's failure, the vivid contrast between the great venture of the 'good heart, and the great venture of the bad heart, of the play, is not brought out Indeed, the only feeble bit in Miss Ellen Terry's acting is her very calm and expository de- clamation of the speech addressed to Shylock, beginning, "The quality of mercy is not strained." Instead of making that a passion- ateappeal, she makes it a didactic analysis, and thereby the repre- sentation loses one more chance of bringing out the contrast to which we have referred. But this is the only fault of Miss Ellen Terry's Portia. Bassani° is feebly acted, and we feel the anxiety of his risk least of all, or if not least of all, far less than that of the Prince of Morocco, whose bold bearing, and rather too self- confident choice, are finely given by Mr. Bancroft.
One admirable feature in the play is the wonderfully good comic acting of Mr. Wood in the part of Launcelot Gobbo, We take it that the conscious or unconscious purpose of this splendid bit of Shakespearian humour is to present a foil to the eager and adventurous passions portrayed in the play. And certainly it is impossible to give the irrestrainable high spirits and the free nonsensical rattle of Launcelot Gobbo more perfectly than it is given by Mr. Wood. There is not a sign of effort in the part. All is genuine, irrepressible high spirits, as superior to the forced humour of the laborious actor who cuts jokes under the name of Gratiano, as is Miss Addison's Nerissa, to Miss A. Wilton's wretched Jessica, or Mr. Archer's Antonio to Mr. Standing's rather vulgar and fast Lorenzo.
Thus, in spite of the very great blot on the play which Mr. Coghlan's tame Shylock certainly involves, "The Merchant of Venice" as acted at the Prince of Wales's gives the audience a great deal of pure pleasure. The scenery, indeed, is perfect, and Portia's dresses give us positively a new vision of the capabilities of dress. And though scenery and costume can do nothing without good acting to fill the mind of the audience, it can do a good deal to console us for one or two great failures, while there remains so striking and delicate a piece of acting as Miss Ellen Terry's Portia to fascinate and interest the audience.
Previous page
