The comedies, histories, tragedies, and poems of William Shakspere . doth sing as sweetly asthe larh, &c. The animals mentioned in this play are allproper to the countrj^, and to that part of it,to which the play relates. The wren is uncom-mon ; but its note is occasionally heard. Thecrow, lark, jay, cuckoo, nightingale, goose, andeel, are all common in Lombardy.—(M.) 3^ Scene I.— This night, methinks, is but thedaylight sick. The light of moon and stars in Italy is almostas yellow as sunlight in England. The planetsburn like golden lamps above the pinnacles andpillared statues of the city and
The comedies, histories, tragedies, and poems of William Shakspere . doth sing as sweetly asthe larh, &c. The animals mentioned in this play are allproper to the countrj^, and to that part of it,to which the play relates. The wren is uncom-mon ; but its note is occasionally heard. Thecrow, lark, jay, cuckoo, nightingale, goose, andeel, are all common in Lombardy.—(M.) 3^ Scene I.— This night, methinks, is but thedaylight sick. The light of moon and stars in Italy is almostas yellow as sunlight in England. The planetsburn like golden lamps above the pinnacles andpillared statues of the city and the tree-tops ofthe plain, with a brilliancy which cannot beimagined by those who have dwelt only in anorthern climate. The infant may there holdout its hands, not only for the full moon, butfor the old moon sitting in the young moonslap,—an appearance there as obvious to theeye as any constellation. Two hours aftersunset, on the night of new moon, we haveseen so far over the lagunes, that the nightseemed indeed only a paler day,—a littlepaler.—(M.). [_Costume of the Doge of Venice.} COSTUME. The Venice of Shaksperes own time, and themanners of that city, are delineated with match-less accuracy in this drama. To the same friendwho furnished us with some local illustrationsof The Taming of the Shrew, we are indebted for some equally interesting notices of similarpassages in this play. They go far to provethat Shakspere had visited Italy. Mr. Brownhas justly observed, The Merchant of Veniceis a merchant of no other place in the world. 583 COST The dresses of the most civilised nations ofEurope have at all periods borne a strong re-semblance to each other: the various fashionshaving been generally invented amongst thesouthern, and gradually adopted by the north-ern, ones. Some slight distinctions, however,have alwajS remained to characterise, more orless particularly, the country of which thewearer was a native; and the Eepublic of Ve-nice, perhaps, differed more than a
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