Page:Merchant of Venice (1923) Yale.djvu/124

110 posey: Whoso chooseth me shall finde that he deserveth.

'The second vessel was made of fine silver, filled with earth and wormes, and the superscription was thus: Whoso chooseth me shall finde that his nature desireth.

'The third vessel was made of lead, full within of precious stones, and the superscription. Whoso chooseth me shall finde that God hath disposed to him.'

But whatever incidents Shakespeare may or may not have drawn from sources, the oftener one compares his play with these stories, the greater seems his genius. His characters are complex human beings; and the speech of Portia on mercy is only one of the evidences of the richness of the mind and character whence it came.

Shylock is a man as well as a Jew; and while Shakespeare took the national attitude toward Jews, and wished his readers and the spectators to rejoice in Shylock's discomfiture, he allowed Shylock to state his own case fairly, and in his comparison of himself with Christians, to reveal his human feelings. It is absurd to suppose that Shakespeare intended Shylock to be a hero, or to carry the sympathy of the audience; on the other hand, Shakespeare was not writing anti-Semitic propaganda, but a play for the theatre, in which the interest is immensely heightened by making every character a recognizable human being.