²⁵ See for example Steve Patterson, ‘The Bankruptcy of Homoerotic Amity in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 50 (1999), 9–32. Patterson provides a history of ideas about friendship and love between the two characters in relation to the idea of ‘amity.’

²⁶ The story does not appear in the early medieval versions of the Gesta or in Robinson’s edition. It was, however, very well known throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, vol.2 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. 1993), 355–66.