To have the due and forfeit of my bond.”
I don’t expect to be believed; but nevertheless I am telling the bare truth when I say that in my impersonation of “Shylock” I brought in the very piece of “business” that made Henry Irving’s “Shylock” fifteen years later, “ever memorable”, according to the papers.
When at the end, baffled and beaten, Shylock gives in:
“I pray you, give me leave to go from hence,
I am not well: send the deed after me,
And I will sign it,”
the Duke says, “Get thee gone, but do it,” and Gratiano insults the Jew—the only occasion, I think, when Shakespeare allows the beaten to be insulted by a gentleman.
On my way to the door as Shylock, I stopped, bent low before the Duke’s dismissal; but at Gratiano’s insult, I turned slowly round, while drawing myself up to my full height and scanning him from head to foot.
Irving used to return all across the stage and folding his arms on his breast look down on him with measureless contempt.
When fifteen years later Irving, at the Garrick Club one night after supper, asked me what I thought of this new “business”; I replied that if Shylock had done what he did, Gratiano would probably have spat in his face and then kicked him off the stage. Shylock complains that the Christians spat upon his gaberdine.