All that we know about Leah is the 3 or 4 lines quoted in post #96. Hawkman wrote, "Shylock's wife perhaps?" Charles D wrote, "who I can only assume is his[Shylock's] wife." Professor Bate, reasonably, argues that there is no other reasonable inference. Back to the matter of Marlowe, Professor Parrott wrote in his general introduction: "In short, one feels in reading RICHARD 2 that the poet has graduated from the school of Marlowe and is now his own master." R2 was written about 1595, two years after the death of Marlowe, that "school" was by then closed. One might then suggest that Shakespeare was sad that such a talented rival was gone: "and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction"(MV3.1.61). Some have suggested that RICHARD 3(written before R2) was in part Shakespeare's response to Marlowe's THE JEW OF MALTA. Parrott wrote, "like Marlowe's HERO AND LEANDER, which Shakespeare must have read in manuscript, VENUS AND ADONIS is a narrative poem(written in 1593).