Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/380



are several Serbian and Jugoslav tales and poems, with plots that are the same as those of some of Shakespeare's tragedies. But these tales and poems are on the whole but little known. Already in 1847, a Jugoslav poet and scholar, Stanko Vraz, drew attention to a resemblance between one of our Serbian folk-tales and the Merchant of Venice, and subsequently others, notably Jagic, Krek and Maretic established the same fact with regard to two or three other Jugoslav tales and poems. Foreign scholars have also touched upon the subject, and further established the facts, as may be seen from scattered notes by the French scholar L. Léger, or the Germans, R. Köhler, E. Rohde, E. Kroeger, F. Krauss, and Leo.

It is decidedly a matter of importance to go more deeply into this subject and to devote special study to Serbian and Southern Slav folklore in relation to Shakespeare. With this object in view I will analyse such of our popular tales as have the same subjects as the Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, and Macbeth.

No less than five Serbian and Jugoslav folk-tales recall the Merchant of Venice, and several of them contain all the principal features in the story of Shylock, i.e. the bargain between Antonio and Shylock, Portia's disguise, the celebrated judgment, and the manner in which Portia