"Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me! Is't not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be? Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, And my next self thou harder hast engross'd: Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken; A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd. Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail; Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard; Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol: And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me."
The last couplet is to me "perforce" conclusive. But let us take it that these sonnets prove the contention of the cry of critics that Shakespeare preferred friendship to love, and held his friend dearer than his mistress, and let us see if the plays corroborate the sonnets on this point. We may possibly find that the plays only strengthen the doubt which the sonnets implant in us.
"The Merchant of Venice" has always seemed to me important as helping to fix the date of the sonnets. Antonio, as I have shown, is an impersonation of Shakespeare himself. It seems to me Shakespeare would have found it impossible to write of Antonio's self-sacrificing love for Bassanio after he himself had been cheated by his friend. This play then must have been written shortly before his betrayal, and should give us Shakespeare's ordinary attitude. Many expressions in the play remind us of the sonnets, and one in especial of sonnet 41. In the sixth scene of the second act, Jessica, when escaping from her father's house, uses Shakespeare's voice to say:
"But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit."
Here we have "the pretty follies" which is used again as "pretty wrongs" in sonnet 41. Immediately afterwards Lorenzo, another mask of Shakespeare, praises Jessica as "wise, fair, and true," just as in sonnet 105 Shakespeare praises his friend as "kind, fair, and true," using again words which his passion for a woman has taught him.
The fourth act sets forth the same argument we find in the sonnets. When it looks as if Antonio would have to give his life as forfeit to the Jew, Bassanio exclaims: