Merchant of Venice. - Repositories

NOTES 197
the lovers managed by the intervention of a servant, the
robbery of the father, and his grief on the discovery, which is
represented as divided between the loss of his daughter and
ducats, may have suggested the third plot in Shakespeare's
drama, — the love and elopement of Jessica and Lorenzo.' "
Gosson's Jew and Marlowe's Jew of Malta. — There still
remain two more probabilities to be considered. In a tirade
upon the abuses of the stage, Stephen Gosson, a short time
before The Merchant of Venice was published, refers to a play
which he calls the "Jew," and in connection with it speaks of
*'the greediness of worldly chusers" and "the bloody mindes
of usurers." Critics have thought it very likely that these
words might refer to an older play than Shakespeare's, a play
in which the several stories were already combined, and which
was rewritten by Shakespeare^ or which at least formed the
outline of The Merchant of Venice. Marlowe, also, a dramatist
second only to Shakespeare at that time, had written, about
1590, a play known as The Jew of Malta. There are lines in
this play which almost surely suggested certain details of The
Merchant of Venice.
Dr. Lopez.—In conclusion, one fact of contemporary history
needs to be noted. Although, according to the law of
England, the Jews were excluded from that country during
the time of Shakespeare, yet some of them surely evaded the
law. It is interesting to know that in 1594, probably two
years before the composition of this play, a certain Dr. Lopez,
an eminent Jewish physician of London, was publicly executed
for treason. He had become impUcated in certain court
troubles by a Portuguese refugee, a man bearing the suggestive