The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

" Dear Bassanio," said Antonio, " let him have the ring; let my love and the great service he has done for me be valued against your wife's displeasure." Bassanio, ashamed to appear so ungrateful, yielded, and sent Gratiano after Portia with the ring; and then the clerk Nerissa, who had also given Gratiano a ring, she begged his ring, and Gratiano (not to be outdone in generosity by his lord) gave it to her. And there was laughing among these ladies to think, when they got home, how they would tax their husbands with giving away their rings, and swear that they had given them as a present to some woman.

And now Portia and Nerissa entered the house, and dressing themselves in their own apparel, they awaited the arrival of their husbands, who soon followed them with Antonio; and Bassanio presenting his dear friend to the lady Portia, the congratulations and welcomings of that lady were hardly over, when they perceived Nerissa and her husband quarrelling in a corner of the room. Gratiano explained, " Lady, it is about a paltry gilt ring that Nerissa gave me, with words upon it like the poetry on a cutler's knife: Love me, and leave me not."

" What does the poetry or the value of the ring signify?" said Nerissa. "You swore to me when I gave it to you, that you would keep it till the hour of death; and now you say you gave it to the lawyer's clerk. I know you gave it to a woman."—" By this hand," replied Gratiano, " I gave it to a youth, a kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, no higher than yourself; he was clerk to the young counsellor that saved Antonio's life." Portia

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said, " You were to blame, Gratiano. I gave my lord Bassanio a ring, and I am sure he would not part with it for all the world." Gratiano, now said, " My lord Bassanio gave his ring away to the counsellor, and then the boy, his clerk, that took some pains in writing, he begged my ring."

Portia, hearing this, reproached Bassanio for giving away her ring, she said, that she knew some woman had the ring. Bassanio said with great earnestness, " No, by my honour, no woman had it, but a civil doctor, who refused three thousand ducats of me, and begged the ring, which when I denied him, he went displeased away. What could I do, sweet Portia?"

Then Antonio said, " I once did lend my body for Bassanio's sake; and but for him to whom your husband gave the ring, I should have now been dead. I dare be bound again, my soul upon the forfeit, your lord will never more break his faith with you."—" Then you shall be his surety," said Portia; " give him this ring, and bid him keep it better than the other."

When Bassanio looked at this ring, he was strangely surprised to find it was the same he gave away; and then Portia told him how she was the young counsellor, and Nerissa was her clerk; and Bassanio found, to his unspeakable wonder and delight, that it was by the noble courage and wisdom of his wife that Antonio's life was saved.

And Portia again welcomed Antonio, and gave him letters which by some chance had fallen into her hands, which contained an account of his ships, that were supposed lost, being safely arrived in the harbour.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

There was a law in the city of Athens which gave to its citizens the power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter's refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, this law was seldom or never put in execution.

One old man, however, whose name was Egeus, actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning Duke of Athens), to complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this cruel law might be put in force against his daughter.

Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience, that Demetrius had formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to dis

It has been conjectured that " A Midsummer Night's Dream " was written to celebrate the marriage of some exalted personage in Court circles. It belongs probably to the winter of 1595. Hints of its plots and characters have been traced to a number of sources, notably to Montemazor's " Diana," where occur some incidents which perhaps suggested to Shakespeare the effects of the flower-juice laid upon the lids of the dying lover. There is some proof that it was played before Elizabeth, the passages referring to " single blessedness" and to the " fair Vestal throned by the West" being perhaps designed to please the ears of England's Virgin Queen. " ' As you like it,' " says Professor Taine, " is a half dream." " A Midsummer Night's Dream" is completely one. It does not brim over in slight conversations, in supple and skipping prose; it breaks forth into long rhyming odes, dressed in magnificent metaphors, sustained by impassioned accents, such as a warm night, odorous and starspangled, inspires in a poet who loves.

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traction. But Hermia not obeying her father's command, Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to altar the laws of his country; therefore he could only give Hermia four days to consider of it: and at the end of that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death.