The court, having pronounced judgment and awarded execution, tells Shylock that he himself must execute the judgment. This remarkable judge then rules that Shylock has forfeited the principal of his debt because he has refused a tender. We may freely admit that these four rulings are contrary to English law and precedent. Devecmon is at some pains to show this. But such showing is irrelevant.
English procedure is out of the question.
Shakespeare is faithfully reproducing the substance of a scene set forth in an Italian novel, Il Pecorone, composed more than two hundred years before he began to write, and describing what took place in Venice in some indefinite past age. The court quickly resolves itself into one of criminal jurisdiction, and the Jew s life and goods are declared forfeited. Let us premise some particulars. The facts being agreed upon, the judge in Nicaragua announced that he proposed to submit the case to a practicing lawyer, a jurisconsult, unless competent objections were made. The plaintiff, too, must distinctly accept the referee.