Word: venetian
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...Venetian Affair, Maclnnes...
...Venetian Affair, Maclnnes...
Janissaries of Sultan Selim II wrested control of the island from Venetian merchant princes in 1571, and quickly demonstrated to the Cypriots the basic style of Ottoman administration. The defender of the Cypriot city of Famagusta, one Marcantonio Bragadino, had held off the Turkish troops for nearly a year, and when Famagusta finally fell, the Turks slowly and publicly flayed him alive. Bragadino's straw-stuffed skin was paraded through the city, and the lesson was not lost on the Cypriots...
...balconies fill with strollers at intermissions, the walls, as Johnson says, seem "papered with people." Intricate grilles along the balconies, crystal lights against the inner wall, and a golden bead curtain across the full sweep of the glass wall that faces the plaza give the room a noble, vaguely Venetian glow. It is the perfect place in which to pop a champagne cork...
...that, Shakespeare's audiences must have roared approval. And again when Shylock, an alien, is shown to be subject to another Venetian law: that an alien attempting a citizen's life must forfeit half his goods to the state, half to the victim. The play was boffo in a day when every Englishman had to be his own lawyer to survive, and if it seems dated now, it is still perhaps the most concise summary of justice triumphant over dry legalism that English literature has yet produced...