In respect of characterization this play is exceedingly rich, and this too both in quantity and quality.  The persons naturally fall into three several groups, with each its several plot and action; yet the three are skilfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet so drawing in with the others, that every thing helps on every thing else; there being neither any confusion nor any appearance of care to avoid it.  Of these three groups, Antonio, Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems nevertheless to grow forth as an element of the original germ; a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essential to the well-being of the piece.  But perhaps it may be better described as a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts; itself in perfect harmony with them, and therefore perfecting their harmony with each other.

In the first entry at the Stationers’, the play is described as “The Merchant of Venice, or otherwise called The Jew of Venice.”  This would seem to infer that the author was then in some doubt whether to name it from Antonio or Shylock.  As an individual, Shylock is altogether the character of the play, and exhibits more of mastership than all the others; so that, viewing the persons severally, we should say the piece ought to be named from him.  But we have not far to seek for good reasons why it should rather be named as it is.  For if the Jew is the more important individually, the Merchant is so dramatically.  Antonio is the centre and main-spring of the action:  without him, Shylock, however great in himself, had no business there.  And the laws of dramatic combination, not any accident of individual prominence, are clearly what ought to govern in the naming of the play.

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Not indeed that the Merchant is a small matter in himself; far from it:  he is a highly interesting and attractive personage; nor am I sure but there may be timber enough in him for a good dramatic hero, apart from the Jew.  Something of a peculiar charm attaches to him, from the state of mind in which we first see him.  A dim, mysterious presage of evil weighs down his spirits, as though he felt afar off the coming-on of some great calamity.  Yet this unwonted dejection, sweetened as it is with his habitual kindness and good-nature, has the effect of showing how dearly he is held by such whose friendship is the fairest earthly purchase of virtue.  And it is considerable that upon tempers like his even the smiles of Fortune often have a strangely saddening effect.  For such a man, even because he is good, is apt to be haunted with a sense of having more than he deserves; and this may not unnaturally inspire him with an indefinable dread of some reverse which shall square up the account of his present blessings.  Thus his very happiness works, by subtle methods, to charge his heart with certain dark forebodings.  So that such presentiments, whatever the disciples of positivism may say, are in the right line of nature: