So that eternal love, in love’s fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age;
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.”
Merchant of Venice
That Shakespeare, when the drama needed it, could fully and warmly enter into the devotion which one man may feel for another, as well as into the tragedy which such devotion may entail, is shown in his Merchant of Venice by the figure of Antonio, over whom from the first line of the play (“In sooth I know not why I am so sad”) there hangs a shadow of destiny. The following lines are from Act iv. sc. 1:—
Antonio: “Commend me to your honorable wife;