THE CLOWN.
The clown in this play is a mere country fellow. The term fool applied to him in Act V. Scene 2, means nothing more than a silly fellow. He has not sufficient simplicity for a natural fool, nor wit enough for an artificial one.
It will probably be discovered at some future time that this play was borrowed from a French novel. The dramatis personæ in a great measure demonstrate this, as well as a palpable Gallicism in Act IV. Scene 1, viz. the terming a letter a capon.
[MERCHANT OF VENICE.]
ACT I.
Scene 1. Page 397.
Salar. There, where your argosies, with portly sail
Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,
Or as it were the Pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers.
Argosies are properly defined to be "ships of great burthen," and so they are described almost wherever they are mentioned. Mr. Steevens has quoted Rycaut's Maxims of Turkish polity, to show that the term originated in a corruption of Ragosies, i. e. ships of Ragusa. However specious this may appear, it is to be observed that Rycaut, a writer at the end of the seventeenth century, only states it as a matter of report, not as a fact; and he seems to have followed the slight authority of Roberts's Marchant's map of commerce. If any instance shall be produced of the use of such a word as ragosie, the objection must be given up. In the mean time it may be permitted to hazard another opinion, which is, that the word in question derives its origin from the famous ship Argo: and indeed Shakspeare himself appears to have hinted as much; for the story of Jason is twice adverted to in the course of this play. On one of these occasions Gratiano certainly alludes to Antonio's argosie when he says,