ture shows how much the author had yet to learn.

_The Two Gentleman of Verona_, probably written a little later, shows
improvement, but by no means perfect mastery. The first two acts still
drag, although the play moves more rapidly when it is under way. The
inability to lead up naturally to an inevitable end still persists.
The young author, well as he has managed the middle of the play, does
not wait for events to take their logical course. He winds up
everything abruptly like a man who has just changed his mind or become
tired of his task, and marries the most lovable girl in the play to a
rascal who is scarcely given time for even a pretense of reformation.

_The Merchant of Venice_, two or three years later, shows a great
advance in technique as in other ways. Notice how skillfully the
dramatist makes the different characters all influence each other's
lives, so that the interest in one becomes the interest in all. There
is one story in the relations of Shylock and Antonio, another in the
love affair of Lorenzo and Jessica, and a third in Bassanio's courtship
of Portia. There is also a fourth, a sequel to Bassanio's courtship,
in the trick which his wife plays on him with regard to the rings after
they are married. Yet we never feel an unpleasant interruption when we
are stopped in one story and started in one of the others, because the
interest of the first lives on in the second, {97} owing to the
interrelation of the people taking part in both. We leave Shylock's
story to take up Jessica's, but Jessica is Shylock's child, and our
interest in the fate of his ducats and his daughter, which began in his
story, goes on in hers. We leave Antonio's story to take up
Bassanio's; but Antonio's story was that of sacrifice for a friend, and
in Bassanio's we see the fruit of that sacrifice in his friend's joy.
Moreover, all four of the above threads of action are knotted together
in one scene where Bassanio chooses the right casket. Of the swift
succession of exciting scenes of the natural way in which these lead up
to the final end, of the lifelike truthfulness with which each little
event is made to work itself out, there is no need to speak here.

Though Shakespeare was not a third through his literary career when he
wrote _The Merchant of Venice_, he had by this time mastered the
technique of comedy; and we need trace his course in it no farther.
_Much Ado_ and _Twelfth Night_ somewhat later, and _The Tempes