Merchant of Venice (Cont'd)

THE LAST DAYS OF SHYLOCK--Ludwig Lewisohn--Harper ($2.50).*

Playwright Shakespeare gave Ludwig Lewisohn the idea. But not even Shakespeare could make much of a play out of Revamper Lewisohn's Shylock. For Lewisohn has romanticized Shylock's melodramatic figure, gentled him down into an unconvincing shadow of his former self. You learn that Antonio's pound of flesh was safe all the time. Shylock's "knife would not have gone very deep into the bosom of his adversary.'' He would only have nicked him, got him good & scared, then shown the Christian dog he knew as much as Portia about the quality of mercy.

When the Doge's court turned the tables on Shylock he was heavily fined, forced to will the rest of his fortune to his run away daughter Jessica and her goy hus band, made to promise he would be baptized. But he knew life in Venice would be insufferable, and after his enforced baptism escaped by ship to friends in Constantinople. After an abortive Zionistic attempt to found a Jewish colony at Tiberias he sailed with a Turkish expedition against Venice-owned Cyprus, and there had a vicarious revenge on the city that had ruined him. There too he met again his lost daughter, bringing three children and bitter memories of her worth less husband. Surrounded by his grateful family Shylock died, full of years and at last in peace.

The Author. Ludwig Lewisohn, fiery champion of his ego, is famed for his auto biographical novels. He once found him self in a $200,000 libel suit brought by his first wife ("Bosworth Crocker"), who thought she recognized herself in one of them (Mid-Channel). Author Lewisohn announced last fall he would write no more analytical novels. Short, stocky, pince-nezed, middleaged, he has a voice which is "deep, elaborate, studied." He has also written : Upstream, The Island Within, Mid-Channel, Stephen Escott.

*Published Jan. 7.

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