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PAULINA.

"Woe the while!

O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,
Break too!"

Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 2.

In the third scene of the first act of the "Merchant of

Venice," Shylock says,

"Signior Antonio, many a time and oft

In the Rialto, you have rated me

About my monies and my usances."

The actor who first made this alteration,

"Signior Antonio, many a time,—and oft

In the Rialto, you have rated me

About my monies and my usances,"

was considered to have exercised much ingenuity, and his example has been very generally followed, both on and off the stage, it being stated that the expression "many a time and oft" is tautological, and could never have been intended by so great a master of the English language. Now, although in this passage the expression is so situated as to admit of a double reading, it is not certain that the poet intended such reading to be adopted; for, contrary to the statement generally made, that the expression is peculiar to the "Merchant of Venice," it occurs in several other portions of Shakespeare's works, where it is so situated as not to admit of such alteration:

FALSTAFF. "Well, thou has called her to a reckoning many a time and oft."

First Part Henry IV., Act 1 Scene 2. WIFE. "Most true, forsooth; and many a time and oft myself have heard a voice to call him so.

Second Part Henry VI., Act 2, Scene 1.

LUCULLUS.

told him on't."

MARCELLUS.

66

Many a time and oft I have dined with him, and

Timon of Athens, Act 2, Scene 1.
"Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live long day, with patient expectation,
To see Great Pompey pass the streets of Rome;
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tyber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds,

Made in her concave shores?"

Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 1.

To conclude, whether William Shakespeare was or was not a member of the legal profession, sufficient has probably been stated to prove that he had acquired a general knowledge of the laws of England, the accumulated wisdom of ages, the stronghold of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, the wisest, the noblest, the most fair and equitable system of jurisprudence ever respected and obeyed by the just, or calumniated and violated by the evil, or that the human race in any age or any clime has ever yet beheld!

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