Note 398 — Chapter III · (continued 4)

What would Hegel have said of the first scene in the "Merchant of Venice"? No doubt Shakespeare's play contains very much more than such scenes, and there is a profound significance in that opening scene, for it at once emphasizes the collision of families upon which the entire tragedy turns. But is such a defence needed? There appears to be indubitably a certain deficiency in the above criticism. There is no reason that a scene in which a couple of peasants and two troopers are the dramatis personae should not be infinitely amusing provided a Shakespeare, or even a Goethe, when he is not in one of his dull moods, performs the office of teaching them how to speak.