Caliban he had tried to reclaim, had taught him speech and to name the big and lesser light, but all his pains were ‘lost, quite lost,’ and the ‘born devil’ rewarded them by an attempt on Miranda’s chastity. He is left behind, master of the island again, to take up his abode in the cell which Prospero and Miranda had inhabited, and with the added experience of Stephano’s drink, which he probably soon learned to imitate.
Antonio, the usurping brother, is said to have been penitent, but his penitence was not profound. He offered no apology, and the first words he is recorded to have uttered after his guilt was discovered were a joke upon ‘the plain fish,’ Caliban. He was forgiven, and most likely once more became malignant.
There is nothing to show us that the citizens of Milan were in much trouble when Prospero was deposed, or that they rejoiced when he was restored. They, doubtless, regretted Antonio, who
‘Set all hearts i’ the state
To what tune pleased his ear.’
The lord of the spirits, of the elves who chased the ebbing Neptune, he who had given fire to the dread rattling thunder, broke his staff and drowned his book and went back to his lonely palace. Did he never long for his island, for Ariel’s music, for his daughter’s daily presence, replaced by infrequent letters with news of the Court, her children, and Ferdinand? He may have reflected that she was happy, but nevertheless every third thought was his grave.
Merchant of Venice.—Jessica is hateful from the beginning; the disguise in boy’s clothes, the robbery of her father, and the exchange for a monkey of the jewel which belonged to her mother. I am afraid Shakespeare intended we should like her. But she is only a part of the perplexity of the play. That Shakespeare should have used the casket story is inexplicable. Not only is it, as Johnson says, ‘wildly improbable,’ it confuses Portia’s character: it is an irritating absurdity.
‘But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis.’
We have no proof that Antonio did this. He may have done it. He was the kind of person who might like popularity. If he was really guilty of ‘low simplicity,’ I sympathise with Shylock’s hatred of him. But if he was not, I understand it. Shylock was not bound to be generous. It would have been ridiculous in him, an alien in blood and religion, persecuted, spat upon.
The interest of the play departs with Shylock.
Shakespeare’s plays are organic, one character cannot be understood without the other; Hamlet without Ophelia; Romeo without Juliet. Each is in, by, and of the other; particularised by the other. I do not find this quality, at least in anything like the same degree, in Beaumont and Fletcher.