Many thankes for their paines did the king give them,
Asking young Richard then, if he would wed; 110
"Among these ladyes free, tell me which liketh thee?"
Quoth he, "Jugg Grumball, Sir, with the red head,
She's my love, she's my life, her will I wed;
She hath sworn I shall have her maidenhead."
Then Sir John Cockle the king call'd unto him, 115
And of merry Sherwood made him o'erseer,
And gave him out of hand three hundred pound yearlye:
"Take heed now you steele no more of my deer;
And once a quarter let's here have your view;
And now, Sir John Cockle, I bid you adieu." 120
[57]. for good hap: i. e. for good luck; they were going on a hazardous expedition. P.
[60]. Maid Marian in the Morris dance, was represented by a man in woman's clothes, who was to take short steps in order to sustain the female character. P.
[GERNUTUS THE JEW OF VENICE.]
Percy's Reliques, i. 224.
In Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, (i. 278,) and Malone's Shakespeare, (v. 3, 154, ed. 1821,) we are referred to a great many stories resembling that of the present ballad. Two or three of these are found in the Persian, and there can be no doubt that the original tale is of eastern invention. The oldest European forms of the story are in the Gesta Romanorum, (Wright's Latin Stories, Percy Soc. viii. 114, Madden's Old English Versions, p. 130,) the French romance of Dolopathos (v. 7096, et seq.), and the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, written in 1378, but not printed till 1558.
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is known to have been played before 1598, and there is some reason to believe that it was produced as early as 1594. The resemblance in many particulars between the play and the narrative in the Pecorone is conclusive to the fact that Shakespeare was acquainted with the Italian novel, directly or by a translation. In Gosson's School of Abuse, (1579,) mention is made of a play called The Jew, in which was represented "the greediness of worldly choosers, and bloody minds of usurers." It is possible that Shakespeare may have made use of the incidents of this forgotten piece in the construction of his plot, but as our knowledge of the older play amounts literally to the description of it given by Gosson, nothing positive is to be said on that point. Silvayn's Orator, translated from the French by Anthony Munday in 1596, affords the earliest discovered printed notice, in English, of the bond and forfeiture, in a "Declamation, Of a Jew, who would for his debt have a pound of flesh of a Christian;" and a striking coincidence between the Jew's plea for the execution of the contract, and the reasoning of Shylock before the Senate, may be regarded by some as of weight sufficient to offset the evidence presented to show that the Merchant of Venice was on the stage in 1594.