Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  Bassanio beamed. His eyes shone with tears of gratitude. Antonio was his good angel. He shook him warmly by the hand and sped away to find some worthy man from whom he might borrow money against Antonio’s good name. Antonio gazed affectionately after him as he hastened, like a bright dream, among the sombrely robed men of business who thronged the Rialto. Presently he was gone, and the merchant’s strange melancholy returned . . .

  Far across the sea in Belmont, the Lady Portia’s palace was besieged by sighs. Suitors drooped and languished, sad as urn draperies, in her doorways, in her gardens, in her stables, and in her wine vaults.

  “By my troth, Nerissa,” she confided to her maid, being weighed down by all this forlorn furniture, and shadowed by a strange condition laid upon her by her dead father that she should never choose a husband but must instead be chosen, “my little body is aweary of this great world.”

  Portia’s hair was fair as sunshine and her countenance was fairer still. In stature she was, perhaps, a finger’s breadth below the middle height; but such was the grace of her form that, beside her, those of the middle height seemed too tall. Whoever gained her love would never want for sunny days, nor a dearer summer than hers. Yet this fair lady could only be won by lottery. By her dying father’s decree her fate was locked in one of three caskets, of gold, of silver, and of lead. One choice was allowed each suitor. If he chose wrongly, that was the end of his hopes.

  “What warmth is there in your affection towards any one of these princely suitors that are already come?” asked Nerissa, curious to learn if her mistress’s heart inclined any one way more than another.

  “I pray thee over-name them,” said Portia with a yawn.

  “First there is the Neapolitan prince.”

  The lady wrinkled her nose.

  “He doth nothing but talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself; I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith.”

  Nerissa laughed.

  “Then there is the County Palatine.”

  “He doth nothing but frown,” complained Portia, “he hears merry tales and smiles not. I had rather be married to a death’s head with a bone in his mouth.”

  Nerissa agreed with her young mistress. Belmont was a house of smiles.

  “How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?”

  “God made him,” pronounced Portia, “and therefore let him pass for a man.” Nothing more, it seemed, could be said in favour of Monsieur Le Bon.

  “What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of England?”

  “You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him . . . alas! who can converse with a dumb-show?”

  The other suitors fared no better in Portia’s esteem; there was a Scottish lord who did nothing but quarrel and brawl, and a German duke who did nothing but drink. “I will do anything, Nerissa,” wailed Portia, quite overcome by the thought of the wine-swilling duke, “ere I will be married to a sponge.”

  But Portia’s fears proved groundless. Her present crop of suitors was departing and there was none who cared to risk his fortune on the lottery of the caskets.

  “Do you not remember lady,” said Nerissa suddenly, “in your father’s time, a Venetian (a scholar and a soldier) that came hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat?”

  Portia frowned; then her eyes gleamed brightly.

  “Yes, yes, it was Bassanio, as I think so was he called.”

  “True madam, he of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon was the best deserving a fair lady.”

  “I remember him well,” murmured Portia, smiling to herself, “and I remember him worthy of thy praise.”

  In Venice, Bassanio had laid his hands on money. He had found a man who might be willing to lend him money against the word and bond of his friend Antonio. In a narrow street, where the water ran dark and crooked between high weeping walls, and little barred windows, like imprisoned eyes, stared dully down, he had met with a lean, bearded man in black, who smiled and frowned and smiled and frowned, and rubbed his hands together as if he would get to the bone of them. Shylock was his name, and he was a Jew.

  He was not a man to Bassanio’s liking, nor to the liking of any Venetian. But he lent money.

  “Three thousand ducats, well,” mused Shylock, rubbing his hands and frowning in his beard.

  “Aye, sir, for three months,” urged Bassanio, hovering brightly in attendance upon him.

  “Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound,” brooded Shylock, beginning to pace back and forth with such nervous rapidity that Bassanio was hard put to keep up with him.

  Shylock was doubtful. He allowed that Antonio was a good man, meaning that the merchant’s credit was good—that being the only way by which a merchant’s goodness was to be measured—but all his wealth was laid out in ships at sea, and, as he put it, “ships are but boards, sailors but men . . . there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks.”

  He shook his head; and poor Bassanio looked dismayed. He sighed; and Bassanio’s heart dropped fathoms deep. Then he chuckled; and Bassanio walked on air!

  “Three thousand ducats,” said Shylock, most cheerfully. “I think I may take his bond . . . May I speak with Antonio?”

  “If it please you to dine with us,” offered Bassanio eagerly.

  The Jew took a pace back. He stared at Bassanio as if he was mad.

  “Yes, to smell pork,” he answered savagely. “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you . . .”

  A figure approached.

  “This is Signior Antonio,” said Bassanio quickly. He was fearful that he might have, unwittingly, offended the lender of money. With an anxious watch upon the Jew (lest he lose him), the young man went a few paces to meet the merchant, who was plainly pleased to have found his friend. Shylock, shrinking back against the wall, stared at the merchant.

  “How like a fawning publican he looks!” he snarled into his beard. “I hate him for he is a Christian.” Nor was this the only reason for the Jew’s hate. The merchant lent money without interest, and so brought down the cost of borrowing in Venice. Money was the Jew’s only commodity, and the Christian undermined him. The Christian could make money out of trade; the Jew, by Venetian law, could only make money out of money. Take away his money and you take away his life. For these reasons the dark Jew hated the bright Christians of Venice; and, strongest of all, he hated them because they hated him. Hate breeds hate as fast as summer flies.

  But nothing of this hatred showed as he greeted the merchant with smiles and bows and outstretched palms. All was satin courtesy. Antonio, on the other hand, regarded the cringing Shylock with unconcealed contempt. He loathed and despised the Jew and, had it not been for the purpose of supplying the need of his young friend, who looked anxiously from one to the other, he would have scorned to walk upon the same side of the street as Shylock.

  “Three thousand ducats,” said Shylock, “ ’tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve, then let me see the rate.”

  “Well, Shylock,” demanded the merchant coldly, “shall we be beholding to you?”

  Shylock smiled humbly; and sighed.

  “Signior Antonio, many a time and oft in the Rialto you have rated me about my moneys and my usances; still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spat upon my Jewish gaberdine . . . Well then, it now appears you need my help . . . ‘Shylock, we would have moneys,’ you say so . . . What should I say to you? Should I not say ‘Hath a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ or shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key . . . say this: ‘Fair sir, you spat on me on Wednesday last . . . another time you called me dog: and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?”

  “I am as like to call thee
so again,” said Antonio contemptuously; for the Jew’s long drawn out complainings had seemed to the upright merchant—whose affairs were open to the world—no better than the needless whining of a cur. Angrily, for he could see that his young friend was worried, he went on to demand a plain answer. Would the Jew, or would he not, lend the money? If the money was to be lent, then let it be done according to a bond. If the bond was broken, then the penalty must be exacted. Antonio desired no favours from the Jew.

  “Why look how you storm!” cried Shylock, shrinking before the merchant’s anger as before a taskmaster’s whip. “I would be friends with you,” he pleaded; and then, to prove his good faith, offered to lend the money and demand not a jot of interest.

  “This were kindness!” cried Bassanio, as the prospect of going to Belmont with servants in attendance and fine clothes on his back seemed within his grasp.

  Shylock, now friends with everybody (though none was friends with him), nodded and nodded and rubbed his skinny hands. They must go at once to a notary and draw up the bond. Though there was to be no interest, it was proper that there should be a bond, to be exacted only if the money lent was not repaid. And what should that bond be? Not property, not furnishings, not jewels, but—here Shylock laughed merrily, and the high-pitched sound made the barred windows seem to look sharply down—but a pound of the merchant’s living flesh! And why not? Was not money flesh and life to him? Why not then to the merchant? Shylock smiled at the humour of it with all the openness at his command. But smiles and snarls were kissing cousins to his lips. Antonio stared. Then he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. The Jew’s humour was as strange as the Jew. He was content to seal the bargain which seemed, to him, far-fetched in the extreme.

  “You shall not seal to such a bond for me,” muttered Bassanio, suddenly uneasy for his friend.

  But Antonio brushed aside his friend’s concern: his ships and his money would all be home again a month before the bond was due. Shylock also was eager to quiet Bassanio’s fears.

  “If he should break his day what should I gain by exaction of the forfeiture?” he demanded. “A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man, is not so estimable, profitable neither as flesh of muttons, beefs or goats.” No, no, it was only to oblige Antonio and be his friend that he had proposed so unthrifty a bond.

  The merchant believed him—and why not? What manner of man could really desire flesh instead of ducats?

  “Hie thee gentle Jew,” he laughed, as Shylock scuttled away to gather in the ducats, “the Hebrew will turn Christian, he grows kind.”

  But Bassanio shook his head. “I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.”

  Antonio smiled, and once more brushed aside his young friend’s fears and forebodings.

  Now Shylock had a daughter called Jessica, and she was as lovely as the night in Spring. Her mother must have been most wondrous for the daughter to have come by so much beauty, though mixed with Shylock’s blood. She longed with all her heart to fly from the Jew’s dark house, not to freedom, but to the prettier prison of love. She loved Lorenzo, Bassanio’s friend, and he loved her, though all that had passed between them had been sighs from a window and sighs from the street. Nor was she alone in longing to escape from her father. Shylock had a servant by name of Launcelot Gobbo who likewise pined. He was a lively youth, and could no longer endure the miserly life of locks and bolts, and keys and strong-boxes, and rooms that never saw the light of day.

  He was the first to fly away. He took his chance when it came, which was when Bassanio called to leave a letter, bidding Shylock come to supper with Antonio. Launcelot begged to be taken into Bassanio’s service, which Bassanio gladly did, for he had need of a servant now that he was to go to Belmont and try his fortune with the lady there. Gratiano, that idle talker, strolling by took it into his head (where there was room enough and to spare), to ask if he, too, might go to Belmont with Bassanio. Bassanio sighed. It was hard to refuse a friend, but harder still to oblige such a one. He pleaded that, if Gratiano came, he would behave with proper modesty, for the fair lady of Belmont would surely not look kindly on a suitor who came with a chattering idiot in his train.

  Sweet Jessica was as miserable as a widowed jackdaw when Launcelot told her of his good luck. She grieved that her father’s hated house would now be robbed of its only cheerfulness.

  “But fare thee well,” she wished him, “there is a ducat for thee . . .”

  She gave him the gold and, in addition, with much secrecy gave him a letter for his new master’s friend, the handsome Lorenzo. When Launcelot had gone she sighed most bitterly, for she was ashamed that she was her father’s child. “O Lorenzo,” she whispered, “if thou keep promise I shall end this strife, become a Christian and thy loving wife!”

  Young Launcelot, who loved and pitied his old master’s daughter with all his heart, delivered the letter as swiftly as he could. Eagerly Lorenzo read it. His eyes shone, his heart soared. The letter was such a letter as lovers dream of. His Jessica was waiting for him. She had gathered together a dowry of gold and jewels, and was waiting for him to come and take her from her father’s house.

  It was a night of carnival. Flutes and songs and drums enriched the warm air. Slow gondolas, heavy with lovers, like baskets crammed with grapes, drifted between the mansions, looped and necklaced with little lights. Strange, fantastic figures, led by torch bearers, danced and capered along the water-streets, and mocked at their mirror images as they kept rippled pace. Masks and laughter were the order of the night, save in one dark street and in one dark house where the Jew, Shylock, lived.

  The door opened, and Shylock came out. His eyes glittered angrily as he heard the sounds of distant music and light laughter. He called for his daughter and she came, gleaming softly, like a candle.

  “I am bid forth to supper Jessica,” he said. “There are my keys . . .” She took the heavy ring, which, with its dull iron garnishings, hung on her white arm like a manacle on a moonbeam. “Jessica my girl,” said the father, caught by a sudden dread, “look to my house. I am right loath to go, there is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, for I did dream of money-bags tonight.”

  He shivered in his long black gown; then a louder burst of music made him angry again. “Lock up my doors,” he commanded, as sounds of singing and dancing feet drew near. “Clamber not you up to the casements then nor thrust your head into the public street to gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces.” He shook his head. “I have no mind of feasting forth tonight: but I will go . . .”

  Breathing deeply with relief, Jessica watched her father go, his dark shape putting out the distant lights, like a cloud among stars. Then she went back within doors.

  Presently two friends of Lorenzo came by. They paused, looked up at the house, and nodded. This was the place where they were to meet. They waited, murmuring mockingly of lovers being late. Then Lorenzo came. All three wore painted masks with painted smiles that hid . . . more smiles. So that one might have wondered which were faces, which were masks. Lorenzo gazed up towards a casement that was stoutly shuttered. He called softly:

  “Ho! Who’s within?”

  The shutters opened and a light shone out, and in that light was Jessica. Pretty Jessica, anxiously disguised in costume of a boy. She looked down, saw the painted smiler looking up.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lorenzo and thy love!”

  She laughed for joy and then, bidding him catch, cast down, like a bright tear from her father’s house, a casket of jewels and gold. Then she vanished from the window to lock the doors and fill her purse and boy’s pockets with all the ducats she could carry away. So she left her father’s scowls for love’s smiles, and her father’s darkness for love’s light, taking with her his treasure and herself, who was the dearest treasure of all.

  That very night, in a close and secret gondola, Lorenzo and Jessica fled from the city and Shylock’s wrath. At the same time, or very near it, Bassanio with his friend Gratiano, and attended by L
auncelot Gobbo his new servant, embarked for Belmont and its lady. He carried with him the love and fond hopes of Antonio the merchant who, for Bassanio’s sake, had pledged his very life to the Jew.

  Even as the casket that Jessica had thrown down from Shylock’s window had contained her father’s treasure, so one of the three closed caskets in Belmont contained another father’s treasure: not gold, not jewels, but his daughter herself. In one of them was locked fair Portia’s likeness, and he who chose it would gain her hand and heart. But in which casket? The gold, the silver, or the lead? That was the question. To choose right meant happiness beyond measure; to choose wrong meant, by the harsh condition imposed on the chooser, to go forever without a wife.

  Soft lutes played delicate airs in the silken chamber where the caskets were, for a new suitor had come to Belmont to try for the lady. The Prince of Morocco, a turbaned Moor whose dark face sprang from his rich attire like ebony from snow. That he loved fair Portia was not to be doubted, for he was willing to risk all on the chance of winning her. While Portia and her maids looked uncertainly on, wondering where he would choose, he studied the three caskets, each in turn, as if his fierce eyes would probe the metal and spy the treasure within.

  “This first of gold,” murmured the dark Prince, “who this inscription bears, ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.’ The second silver, which this promise carries, ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.’ This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’ ” He shook his head.

  “The one of them contains my picture, Prince,” said Portia softly, “if you choose that then I am yours withal.”

  He flashed upon her a smile like dark fruit sliced; then returned to his contemplation of the caskets. Not lead, never lead. “Is’t like that lead contains her?” he wondered. “ ’Twere damnation to think so base a thought!” But what of silver? “O sinful thought!” he exclaimed, “never so rich a gem was set in worse than gold!” He picked up the golden casket. “Deliver me the key!” he demanded, his deep voice shaking with expectation. “Here do I choose . . .”