Venice’s Grand Canal is naturally the chief delight of the visiting stranger. The Canalazzo is from fifty to seventy metres wide with a length of three kilometres. A hundred and fifty or more palaces line its banks, most of them bearing famous names of history. Shopkeepers and manufacturers of various sorts occupy many of them, but they are still capable of staggering any otherwise blasé curiosity-seekers. The accompanying map with these palaces plainly marked should serve its purpose better than quires of printed pages.
Shakespeare’s “Jew of Venice” was no myth, whatever the shadowy existence of Juliet and Desdemona may have been. Venice in the middle ages had its Ghetto (a word which in Hebrew means “cut off” or “shut off”) where the Jews herded together and wore scarlet mantles in public that they might be known and recognized by faith and profession. The principal character of “The Merchant of Venice” was a very real entity, and Shakespeare, believing the saying of Tacitus, wrote him down truthfully as a man scrupulously faithful to his engagements, charitable to others of his race, but filled with an invincible hatred towards all other men.
