"
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:
"Antonio, I am married to a wife
Which is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife and all the world
Are not with me esteem'd above thy life.
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil to deliver you."
This is the language of passionate exaggeration, one might say.
Antoniois suffering in Bassanio's place, paying the penalty, so to
speak, for Bassanio's happiness. No wonder Bassanio exaggerates his
grief and the sacrifice he would be prepared to make. But Gratiano has
no such excuse for extravagant speech, and yet Gratiano follows in the
self-same vein:
"I have a wife whom, I protest, I love:
I would she were in heaven, so she could
Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.
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