COSTUME. FOR the costume of the Greeks in the heroical having been the principal object of the sculpages we must look to the frieze of the Parthenon. tors. But, nevertheless, although not one It has been justly remarked, that we are not to figure in all the groups may be represented as consider the figures of the Parthenon frieze as fully attired according to the custom of the affording us a close representation of the country, nearly all the component parts of the national costume," harmony of composition ancient Greek dress are to be found in the frieze. Horsemen are certainly represented but afterwards horse-hair was substituted. The with no garment but the chlamys, according to the practice of the sculptors of that age; but the tunic which was worn beneath it is seen upon others, as well as the cothurnus, or buskin, and the petasus, or Thessalian hat, which all together completed the male attire of that period. On other figures may be observed the Greek crested helmet and cuirass; the closer skull-cap, made of leather, and the large circular shield, &c. The Greeks of the heroic ages wore the sword under the left arm-pit, so that the pommel touched the nipple of the breast. It hung almost horizontally in a belt which passed over the right shoulder. It was straight, intended for cutting and thrusting, with a leafshaped blade, and not above twenty inches long. It had no guard, but a cross bar, which, with the scabbard, was beautifully ornamented. The hilts of the Greek swords were sometimes of ivory and gold. The Greek bow was made of two long goat's horns fastened into a handle. The original bow-strings were thongs of leather, knocks were generally of gold, whilst metal and silver also ornamented the bows on other parts. The arrow-heads were sometimes pyramidal, and the shafts were furnished with feathers. They were carried in quivers, which, with the bow, was slung behind the shoulders. Some of these were square, others round, with covers to protect the arrows from dust and rain. Several which appear on fictile vases seem to have been lined with skins. The spear was generally of ash, with a leaf-shaped head of metal, and furnished with a pointed ferule at the butt, with which it was stuck in the ground -a method used, according to Homer, when the troops rested on their arms, or slept upon their shields. The hunting-spear (in Xenophon and Pollux) had two salient parts, sometimes three crescents, to prevent the advance of the wounded animal. On the coins of Etolia is an undoubted hunting-spear. The female dress consisted of the long sleeveless tunic (olola or calasiris), or a tunic with shoulder-flaps almost to the elbow, and fastened by one or more buttons down the arm (axillaris). Both descriptions hung in folds to the feet, which were protected by a very simple sandal (solea or crepida). Over the tunic was worn the heplum, a square cloth or veil fastened to the shoulders and hanging over the bosom as low as the zone (tania or strophum) which confined the tunic just beneath the bust. Athenian women of high rank wore hair-pins (one ornamented with a cicada or grasshopper, is engraved in Hope's 'Costume of the Ancients,' Plate 138), ribands or fillest, wreaths of flowers, &c. The hair of both sexes was worn in long, formal ringlets, either of a flat and zigzagged or of a round and corkscrew shape. The lower orders of Greeks were clad in a short tunic of coarse materials; over which slaves wore a sort of leathern jacket, called diphthera; slaves were also distinguished from free men by their hair being closely shorn. The Amazons are generally represented on the Etruscan vases in short embroidered tunics with sleeves to the wrist (the peculiar distinetion of Asiatic or barbaric nations), pantaloons, ornamented with stars and flowers to correspond with the tunic, the chlamys, or short military cloak, and the Phrygian cap or bonnet. Hippolyta is seen so attired on horseback contending with Theseus. Vide Hope's 'Costumes.' THE MERCHANT OF VENICE,' like 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream,' was first printed in 1600; and it had a further similarity to that play from the circumstance of two editions appearing in the same year-the one bearing the name of a publisher, Thomas Heyes, the other that of a printer, J. Roberts. The play was not reprinted till it appeared in the folio of 1623. In that edition there are a few variations from the quartos. All these editions present the internal evidence of having been printed from correct copies. 'The Merchant of Venice' is one of the plays of Shakspere mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, and it is the last mentioned in his list. Stephen Gosson, who, in 1579, was moved to publish a tract called 'The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of the commonwealth,' thus describes a play of his time:"The Jew, shown at the Bull, representing the greedyness of worldly choosers, and the bloody minds of usurers." Whatever might have been the plot of The Jew' mentioned by Gosson, the story of the bond was ready to Shakspere's hand, in a ballad to which Warton first drew attention. He considers that the bal lad was written before The Merchant of Venice.' But this ballad of 'Gernutus' wants that remarkable feature of the play, the intervention of Portia to save the life of the Merchant; and this, to our minds, is the strongest confirmation that the ballad preceded the comedy. Shakspere found that incident in the source from which the balladwriter professed to derive his history :— "In Venice towne not long agoe, A cruel Jew did dwell, Which lived all on usurie, As Italian writers tell." It was from an Ialian writer, Ser Giovanni, the author of a collection of tales called 'Il Pecorone,' written in the fourteenth century, and first published at Milan in 1558, that Shakspere unquestionably derived some of the incidents of his story, although he might be familiar with another version of the same tale. "It is well known," says Mrs. Jameson, "that The Merchant of Venice' is founded on two different tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner, Shakspere has rejected altogether the character of the astutious lady of Belmont, with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel. With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized on with avidity, and made the best or the worst of it possible; and he has substituted the trial of the caskets from another source." That source is the Gesta Romanorum.' "a In dealing with the truly dramatic subject of the forfeiture of the bond, Shakspere had to choose between one of two courses that lay open before him. The Gesta Romanorum' did not surround the debtor and the creditor with any prejudices. We hear nothing of one being a Jew, the other a Christian. There is a remarkable story told by Gregorio Leti, in his Life of Pope Sixtus the Fifth,' in which the debtor and creditor of The Merchant of Venice' change places. The debtor is the Jew, the revengeful creditor the Christian; and this incident is said to have happened at Rome in the time of Sir Francis Drake. This, no doubt, was a pure fiction of Leti, whose narratives are by no means to be received as authorities; but it shows that he felt the intolerance of the old story, and endeavoured to correct it, though in a very inartificial manner. Shakspere took the story as he found it in those narra. tives which represented the popular prejudice. If he had not before him the ballad of 'Gernutus' (upon which point it is difficult to decide), he had certainly access to the tale of the Pecorone.' If he had made the contest connected with the story of the bond between two of the same faith, he would have lost the most powerful hold which the subject possessed upon the feelings of an audience two centuries and a half ago. If he had gone directly counter to those feelings (supposing that the story which Leti tells had been known to him, as some have supposed), his comedy would have been hooted from the stage. "The Prioress's Tale' of Chaucer belonged to the period when the Jews were robbed, maimed, banished, and most foully vilified, with the universal consent of the powerful Characteristics of Women,' vol. i., p. 72. and the lowly, the learned and the ignorant: "There was in Asie, in a gret citee, It was scarcely to be avoided in those times that even Chaucer, the most genuine and natural of poets, should lend his great powers to the support of the popular belief that Jews ought to be proscribed as "Hateful to Crist, and to his compagnie." But we ought to expect better things when we reach the times in which the principles of religious liberty were at least germinated. And yet what a play is Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,'-undoubtedly one of the most popular plays even of Shakspere's day, judging as we may from the number of performances recorded in Henslowe's papers! That drama, as compared with the Merchant of Venice,' has been described by Charles Lamb, with his usual felicity:-" Marlowe's Jew does not approach so near to Shakspere's as his Edward II. Shylock, in the midst of his savage purpose, is a man. His motives, feelings, resentments, have something human in them. If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' Barabas is a mere monster, brought in with a large painted nose, to please the rabble. He kills in sport-poisons whole nunneries-invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as, a century or two earlier, might have been played before the Londoners, by the Royal command, when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet." The Jew of Malta' was written essentially upon an intolerant principle. 'The Merchant of Venice,' whilst it seized upon the prejudices of the multitude, and dealt with them as a foregone conclusion by which the whole dramatic action was to be governed, had the intention of making those prejudices as hateful as the reaction of cruelty and revenge of which they are the cause. |