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For here I read for certain that my ships
Have safely come to port. 131

—Portia And° now, Lorenzo!° {How} {?}
My clerk hath some good comforts, too, for you.

—Nerissa
Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee. [she hands him the will]
Here° do I give to you and Jessica {There}
A special deed of gift, from the good° Jew, 132 {rich}
Who wills you all he owns upon his death. 133

—Lorenzo
Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way 134
135 136
Of starving people.

—Portia [looking at the sky] It is almost morning, 137
And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
With an account so brief.° 138 Let us go in / scarce
And charge° us there with cross-examination,° 139 / probe {upon inter’gatories}
And we will answer all things faithfully.° / truthfully

—Gratziano
Let it be so. The first line of questioning° {the first inter’gatories}

131. {Are safely come to road}
come to road: found a safe harbor, come to dry land
132. One might expect that an address made in front of Jessica would be: ‘from Jessica’s father’ or ‘from old
Shylock’ rather than ‘from the rich Jew.’ (Shylock has converted to Christianity but is still considered—as is
Jessica—a Jew.)
133. {After his death, of all he dies possessed of}
/Who grants you all his possessions ‘pon death
/ Whom, upon death, bequeaths° you all he owns. / doth leaves
134. manna: heavenly food which was dropped upon the Israelites in the desert and which sustained them. The
notion of a sudden and unexpected ‘gift from heaven’ is implied in the term.
“And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing,
as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna:
for they knew not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
(KJV, Exodus 16:14-15)
135. / You drop a heav’nly manna in the way / You drop gifts from heaven in the way of | Starvèd people / You drop
heavenly manna to people | Starving below.
136. The reference to manna is not exact, since the deed of gift gives Lorenzo and Jessica nothing to sustain them.
It is a deed of gift when Shylock dies, which could be 20+ years in the future. So, Lorenzo and Jessica receive but a
promise for something which does not relieve their present now. (They are starved because they have wasted all the
money that they stole from Shylock. Even now, there is no mention, nor one word of protest spoken from a
Christian, regarding the wasteful and morally bankrupt actions of Jessica and Lorenzo.)
137. It is almost morning The fairy tale is about to end. No sunset—none but a gloomy sunrise. Here also the
roles of prince and princess are reversed: the prince is now shown to be anything but a prince; and the princes,
showing her strong, independent spirit, and superiority over her lord, is hardly a princess in need of rescue. The
couples do not ride off into the sunset, to a future of everlasting peace and bliss; they enter into the morning, with the
pairs somewhat distant and estranged.
138. {With these events at full}
139. / So you can probe us with all your questions / And charge us there with your cross-examining