r part with
the remembrance of it.

XIX.

ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

It was perhaps an auspicious portent, it certainly is an interesting
fact, that the first play that was ever acted in America at a regular
theatre and by a regular theatrical company was Shakespeare's comedy of
_The Merchant of Venice_. Such at least is the record made by William
Dunlap, the first historian of the American theatre, who names
Williamsburg, Virginia, as the place and September 5, 1752 as the date
of that production. It ought to be noted, however (so difficult is it to
settle upon any fact in this uncertain world), that the learned
antiquarian Judge C.P. Daly, fortified likewise by the scrupulously
accurate Ireland, dissents from Dunlap's statement and declares that
Cibber's alteration of Shakespeare's _Richard the Third_ was acted by a
regular company in a large room in Nassau Street, New York, at an
earlier date, namely, on March 5, 1750. All the same, it appears to
have been Shakespeare's mind that started the dramatic movement in
America. The American stage has undergone great changes since that time,
but both _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Richard the Third_ are still
acted, and in the _Merchant_, if not in _Richard_, the public interest
is still vital. In New York, under Edwin Booth's management, at the
Winter Garden theatre, January 28, 1867, and subsequently at Booth's
theatre, and in London, under Henry Irving's management, at the Lyceum
theatre, November 1, 1879, sumptuous productions of the _Merchant_ have
brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of
the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to
weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy,
and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the
austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but
upon the chief related characters in the comedy--upon Bassanio and
Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and
pensive Antonio, the august Duke and his stately senators, and the
shrewd and humorous Gobbo. More than one painting has depicted the
ardent Lorenzo and his fugitive infidel as they might have looked on
that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of
heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the
blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime,
illimitable, unfathomable spect