IX SHAKESPEARE PLAYS—I I Irving did not think of playing _The Merchant of Venice_ until he had been to the Levant. The season of 1879–80 had been arranged before the end of the previous season. We were to commence with _The Iron Chest_; Irving had considerable faith in Coleman’s play and intended to give it a run. It was to be followed in due course, as announced in his farewell speech at the end of the second season, by _The Gamester_, _The Stranger_, _Coriolanus_, and _Robert Emmett_—a new play by Frank Marshall. It was rather a surprise, therefore, when on October 8, before the piece had run two weeks, he broached the subject of a new production. It had been apparent to us since his return from a yachting trip in the Mediterranean that he was not so much in love with the play as he usually was with anything which he had immediately in hand. Even if a play did not seem to possess him, I never saw him show the slightest sign of indifference to it in any other case. On that particular evening he asked Loveday and me if we could stay and have a chop in the Beefsteak Room. He was evidently full of something of importance; it seemed a relief to him when supper was finished and the servant who waited had gone. When we had lit our cigars he said quietly: “I am going to do _The Merchant of Venice_.” We both waited, for there was nothing to say until we should know a little more. He went on: “I never contemplated doing the piece, which did not even appeal very much to me, until when we were down in Morocco and the Levant. You know the _Walrus_” (that was the fine steamer which the Baroness Burdett Coutts had chartered for her yachting party) “put into all sorts of places. When I saw the Jew in what seemed his own land and in his own dress, Shylock became a different creature. I began to understand him; and now I want to play the part—as soon as I can. I think I shall do it on the first of November! Can it be done?” Loveday answered it would depend on what had to be done. “That is all right,” said Irving. “I have it in my mind. I have been thinking it over and I see my way to it. Here is what I shall have in the ‘Casket’ scene.” He took a sheet of notepaper and made a rough drawing of the scene, tearing out an arch in the back and propping another piece of paper in it with a rough suggestion of a Venetian scene. “I will have an Eastern lamp with red glass—I know where is the exact thing. It is, or used to be two or three years ago, in that furniture shop in Oxford Street, near Tottenham Court Road.”