The play began with some second-rate actors, who went through the first scene with the usual affected stage strut and tone. Hiram thought he never witnessed anything more unnatural and ridiculous. Even in the second, where Portia and Nerissa hold a dialogue, he was rather disgusted than otherwise. The machinery had scarcely been adjusted for the third scene, when a storm of applause burst from all parts of the house; clapping of hands, stamping of feet, bravos, and various noises of welcome commingled, and Hiram beheld an old man enter, somewhat bent, dressed in a Hebrew cap and tunic, having a short cane, which would serve either for support or as a means of defence. As he advanced, he cast sidelong, suspicious, and sinister glances from beneath bushy, beetling eyebrows.
At first Hiram was inclined to believe it was a real personage, so natural was his entrance—so destitute of all trick, or of anything got up.
'That's Kean,' whispered Hill.
Hiram held his breath as the words of the Jew broke distinctly on the house:
'Three thousand ducats—well.'
He entered at once with the deepest interest into the play. With head leaning forward, eyes open wide and fixed on the speaker, he drank in every word. From the first he sympathized with the main character. When Shylock went on to say: 'Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tipolis, another to the Indies. I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England; and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men. There be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves—I mean pirates; and there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks. The man is notwithstanding sufficient:'—Hiram unconsciously shook his head, as if he doubted it.
His whole soul was now centred in the performance. When it came to the trial, in the fourth act, he turned and twisted his body, as if he could with difficulty abstain from advising Shylock to accept the offer of Bassanio: 'For the three thousand ducats here is six.'
It does not appear that Hiram felt any sympathy for the merchant who was to lose the pound of flesh; but for Shylock, when turned out of court stripped of all he had, it was intense. When at last he exclaims:
'Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that:
You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live:'
Hiram leaned back, and exclaimed audibly: 'It's too bad, I declare!'