Merchant of Venice. - Repositories

NOTES 195
nis taste, that it had sometimes to be combined with other
stories, and that its shadowy characters had to be developed
and made lifelike.
The Merchant of Venice: (i) The Bond Story.—One
reading of The Merchant of Venice will reveal two distinct
stories, that usually spoken of as The Bond Story, and that
known as The Three Gaskets. In the Elizabethan age these
were already old and had been told by many people in
many tongues. The Bond story, with some variation in details,
was known among the Hindus in India, among the Turks in
Constantinople, and among the Persians. It is found in the
Gesta Bomanorum, a collection of legends and stories \mtten
in Latin by English monks of the thirteenth or fourteenth
century. It is written in English in the Cursor Mundi, a poem
composed about 1320. Finally it appears in one of those Italian
novels so popular in Shakespeare's time, II Pecorone. In many
respects the drama corresponds very closely to this novel. In
the novel, as in Shakespeare, the merchant lends money to a
friend (his godchild in fact), in order that the latter may win a
fair lady for his wife. The generous lender is forgotten by the
ardent lover and is in danger of losing his life, when he is rescued
by the lady herself in the guise of a lawyer. Here, moreover,
the mystery of the lady's disguise is solved by the episode of
the rings, itself really a third narrative, and, except in this
novel, not united with the story of the bond. In addition to the
sources mentioned above, two English ballads have been found
relating the Story of the Jew and the pound of flesh. Possibly,
however, these ballads may have been based upon the play; the
date of their composition is uncertain. Although not in any