Certain New Elucidations of Shakespeare 49 



Portia, one might ask, or' Shakespeare have done with a hermit 

 brought all the way to this Belmont company? 



.Perhaps, then, the hermit was needed, after all, in the last 

 draft of this play. As Shakespeare has partly saved his heroine 

 from unsexment at the trial by making her merety the proxy of 

 Bellario, so will he now fully soften her brash and confident and 

 mannish spirit to the womanly sweetness shown at the beginning, 

 and climaxed to us after Bassanio (III. ii. 150-176) opens the 

 leaden casket. The modiste or milliner appends corrective 

 touches when some shade or stiffness calls for relief. Shake- 

 speare uses not unlike expedients now. If others ask, as others 

 may, Why not a knight, a carrier, or Balthasar, to bring her on 

 the way, we may hold the doubting question to be self-answered. 

 We for our part wonder, — while we watch in fancy that slender 

 figure, perplexed, demure, timorous of her future and of herself, 

 lingering apart from the hermit and Nerissa on her knees at the 

 holy crosses, — whether it be indeed the Portia who, before the 

 Doge in Venice, saved Antonio. We cannot, from reading mere 

 words and lines of text, be sure. ' We must trust the Master, as 

 Quiller-Couch for all his discoveries does not, to persuade us by 

 the witchcraft of rendition. Also mention of a ' hermit ' de- 

 carnalizes thought, as suits well with the ending of the piece, — so 

 opposite in contrast with the close of A Midsummer-Night' s 

 Dream. 



And what in fine of Shylock, whom some think Shakespeare set 

 out to hold up to the world for execration? Did this character, 

 as Quiller-Couch suggests, ' take charge of his creator ' ? Here is 

 something beyond stage magic, could one but know. Brabantio, 

 patrician, upright, noble, loses his daughter, and dies of a broken 

 heart. His fate does not appeal to us. Shylock, sordid, vindic- 

 tive, bloody, loses his daughter and half his fortune. His plight 

 appeals to us. We cannot explain fully, in either case, Shake- 

 speare's method of control. We may be moved to some attempt 

 at philosophizing when we come to the paradox of Falstaff. 



151 



