Gratiano.  Let me play the fool:  With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; And let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.  Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?  Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish?  I tell thee what, Anthonio—­I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;—­There are a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond:  And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be drest in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; As who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark’!  O, my Anthonio, I do know of these, That therefore only are reputed wise, For saying nothing; who, I am very sure, If they should speak, would almost damn those ears, Which hearing them, would call their brothers fools.  I’ll tell thee more of this another time; But fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool’s gudgeon, this opinion.

Gratiano’s speech on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit in taking off the force of passion, is as full of spirit and good sense.  The graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, after the tragic business is dispatched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespeare’s knowledge of the principles of the drama.  We do not mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa and their husbands about the rings, which is amusing enough, but the conversation just before and after the return of Portia to her own house, begining ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank’, and ending ’Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, and would not be awaked’.  There is a number of beautiful thoughts crowded into that short space, and linked together by the most natural transitions.

When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock we expected to see, what we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the venom of his heart congealed in the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge.  We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from other actors, not from the play.  There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single line, ’Bassanic and old Shylock, both stand forth,’—­which does not imply that he is infirm with age—­and the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old at all.  It would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion.  That he has but one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other person in the piece:  and if he is intense and inveterate in the pursuit of his purpose, he shows the utmost elasticity, vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining it.