tted myself to the assertion that he was in seven _tableaux_, and
possessed a prologue.

It is now my pleasing duty to force you through the five acts, and the
one prologue, and the seven _tableaux_,--every one of them.

This prologue is divided as to the theatre into two parts: to left,
Sheeloque's domestic interior,--to right, a practicable canal. In the
very first line out crops Shylock's love of good bargains; and I
give the reader my word, the little Frenchmen saw that this was
characteristic, and applauded vehemently. _"Bon_," said I,--"if they
applaud the first line, what will they do with the last act?"

It need not be said that Shylock dabbles in those bills which Venetian
swells of the fifteenth century, in common with those of a later age
and more western land, will manipulate, in spite of all the political
economy from Confucius down to Mr. Mill; and in this particular instance
and prologue the names of the improvidents are Leone and Ubaldo, neither
of which, if my memory serve me, is Shakspearian. These gentlemen
considerably shake my traditional respect for sixteenth-century
Venetian _Aristos_, for they insult that Jew till I wonder where a count
and a duke have learnt such language: but they serve a purpose; they
trot Shylock out, so to speak, and give our author an opportunity
of doing his best with A 1. Shylock's great speech. Here is the
apostrophe:--

"But yesterday--no later past than yesterday--thou didst bid thy
mistress call at me from her balcony; thy servants by thy will did cast
mud on me, and thy hounds sped snapping after me,'"--whereby we may infer
they went hunting in Venice, in the fifteenth century. It must have been
rather dangerous running. Nor could the Venetian nobles of that good old
time have been very proper; for Leone and Ubaldo justify themselves by
saying they were drunk.

It is after this pretty excuse that Shylock has a soliloquy as long as
his beard,--and I hear really loud opposition to this didacticism in the
pit; but, however, this slow work soon meets compensation in violent
action. Shylock won't renew, and the nobles get indignant; so they
propose to pay Shylock with more kicks than halfpence. Here the action
begins; for Shylock protests he will bite a bit out of them; and though
one of these long-sleeved swells warns him that all threats by Jews
against Christians are an imprisonment manner, Shylock rashly prepares
for a defence. Away fly the lords after Shylock, o