Certain New Elucidations of Shakespeare 45 



the finest characters in EHzabethan or any hterature. He is 

 hardly an ' inert,' a ' static ' figure, as Quiller-Couch insists. 

 Goodness is not inert, as the world has learned, but a living 

 force."* How Antonio is led to agree to the conditions — and 

 Shylock did not at first conceive anything so deadly, but was 

 stung into the terms he made — is exquisitely detailed. Nor are 

 the other Venetians ' wasters ' or ' rotters ' in spite of their past- 

 mastery in small talk, nor do they impress us as more ' cold- 

 hearted ' than hangers-on in other ' high-life ' circles. Shake- 

 speare needed to set them going, at the opening of the play, to 

 avoid precipitating the proper business of the scene. And, for 

 plausibility, one is to remember that there are always men in 

 plenty who, with moderate incomes and much leisure, manage 

 to club and dine with folk of Antonio's sort. 



After finding fault with the play variously for more than a 

 dozen pages, Quiller-Couch makes what he calls a personal con- 

 fession. This, which seems to the present writer the most valu- 

 able part of the whole lecture, is summed up thus : 



Some four or five years ago I had to stage-manage The Merchant of 

 Venice. This meant that for two good months I lived in it and thought 

 of little else. Having once achieved the difficult but necessary feat of 

 getting the Trial Scene back into focus, I found a sense of the workman- 

 ship growing in me, and increasing to something like amazement. 



There we have it. The difficulties of dramatic technic must be 

 dealt with from the stage side, as well as the author's point of 

 view. When the illusion of actuality is set up, unrealities and 

 absurdities disappear. It is useless to explain away what seem 

 logical inconsistencies by academic argument. The author 

 finishes the discussion with this paragraph : 



"This a play," wrote Hazlitt, "that in spite of the change of manners 

 still holds undisputed possession of the stage." It does yet; and yet on 

 the stage, sophisticated by actors, it had always vexed me, until, coming to 



24 Quiller-Couch quotes the lines (II. viii. 35-49) which complete the 

 portraiture, but seems not to react fully to their purport. The Christ- 

 nature might conceivably be spoken of as ' static,' since inoperative except 

 by influence. Antonio's refinement and delicacy, as well as nobility of 

 disposition, are undeniable. The play is conditioned upon the transcendent 

 qualities in this man. 



147 



