George Arliss with subdued strength plays Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" this week at the Plymouth. He has throttled down the weeping and wildly gesticulating Shylocks to his own restrained taste. Moderation is born of the knowledge that orating Shylocks have long lain in the alley, that age's resignation to evil is in Shylock's limbs, and that this play is leaving the category of the one-part show. When Lorenzo has flown with Jessica and the old man knocks at the door of his house, there is no crescendo from wonder to premonition to fear to sorrow, no last, wild "Jessica!" He waits, one hand in his old brown gown, even drifts into reverie. He knocks again, no louder. As his knuckles strike, the curtain slowly falls.

Fine touches like this lift the rest of the company into proper importance. Peggy Wood Plays Portia with a humor--in the Elizabethan sense--that erases the memory of wooden Shakespearean heroines. And she is not Junoesque. Bassanio's suit was somehow less plausible for the youth of his friend Antonio; the lines of both were carefully read. Shock-headed and slant-eyed Rummey Brent gave nonchalance to Launcelot Gobbo, and little more can be done with him in May, 1928.

Salanio, Salarino and Gratiano, ordinarily the Wynmen, Blynken and Nod of the Shakespearian first act, were as different as people really are and as alike as gentlemen's ideas are. Hugh Miller, Alfred Jingle in 'Pickwick", played a lively Gratiano to the giggling Nerissa of Spring Byington.

The sets were designed with a beauty and feeling that belied the expedition of their handling. Between curtain calls after the last act, the garden of Portia's house at Belmont was changed to the tapestried hall of the same villa. The diction and the business are the characteristic handiwork of Winthrop Ames. Cavil at such a performance as this would not simply lack reason; it would be out of key.