Read it through once

—And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his jew’s heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in _Love’s Labour Lost_. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s theory of equivocation. The _Sea Venture_ comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket.