Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/226

 One of the stones was a diamond worth two thousand ducats, and another was a turquoise which her mother gave to Shylock before marriage. That she exchanged in Genoa for a monkey. A critic says of these transactions, "We recognize a certain equity in their furtively taking what we think he ought to have voluntarily bestowed." This anxiety to protect Shakspeare from moral blame disregards some feminine possibilities. Jessica's offence was the very one, the only one, of which she was capable; and, like all such lapses, her act was due to circumstances conspiring with latent tendency. We are not reconciled to her behavior by recalling the pound of flesh; for the theft of the jewels is as contrary to mercy as the stipulation in Antonio's bond. But love and sex prevail: she behaves like any full-blooded nature who has been defrauded of her rights, immured in a house with the "vapor of a dungeon," cut off from amusements and sympathies, from gondolas and serenades. She spends money foolishly after she gets it, thanks to the father who scrimped her. It depends upon how deeply we mean to hate Shylock whether his howls over the transaction of the monkey delight our ears.

There are many things which we have not allowed woman to understand: she has been stinted in her education and secluded in her pursuits beyond the organic requisition of her sex. Public affairs of the highest importance pass through her mind like the blurred impression made upon her by the multifariousness of a daily newspaper; and we know what candid awkward