The Merchant of Venice (Folger Shakespeare Library)

by William Shakespeare

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: 54 Some that will evermore peep through their eyes 55 And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper, 56 And other of such vinegar aspect 57 That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile 58 Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, 81 A stage where every man must play a part, 82 And mine a sad one.

I can easier teach 15 twenty what were good to be done than to be one of 16 the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

will buy with you, sell with you, talk 35 with you, walk with you, and so following; but I 36 will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with 37 you.

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 142 As to thy friends, for when did friendship take 143 A breed for barren metal of his friend? 144 But lend it rather to thine enemy, 145 Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face 146 Exact the penalty. 147

Farewell, and if my fortune be not crossed, 57 I have a father, you a daughter, lost.

All things that are, 13 Are with more spirit chasèd than enjoyed.

He hath disgraced me and 53 hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, 54 mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted 55 my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine ene- 56 mies—and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not 57 a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- 58 sions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the 59 same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to 60 the same diseases, healed by the same means, 61 warmed and cooled by the same winter and sum- 62 mer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not 63 bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you 64 poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall 65 we not revenge?

The villainy you teach me I 70 will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the 71 instruction

There may as well be amity and life 31 ’Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. 32

O dear discretion, how his words are suited! 64 The fool hath planted in his memory 65 An army of good words, and I do know 66 A many fools that stand in better place, 67 Garnished like him, that for a tricksy word 68 Defy the matter

The quality of mercy is not strained. 190 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 191 Upon the place beneath.

The man that hath no music in himself, 92 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 93 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; 94 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 95 And his affections dark as <Erebus.> 96 Let no such man be trusted.

Comedies also create onstage images of closed communities of right-thinking people, from which outsiders are excluded by being laughed at.

The ring exemplifies the paradox of marriage: it binds two people exclusively to each other, yet it does so within a social network in which they have inevitable ties with other people, ties on which the marriage itself depends.

This brings us to the problem of the way comedy treats outsiders, and to the cruelty that so often lies at the heart of laughter.

Unlike Jessica, she moves into this new world with confidence. Her mockery of swaggering young men as she plans her disguise is irrelevant to the story but seems to answer a need in the character to poke fun at the sex whose rules she is about to subvert. Not for the only time in Shakespeare, we see a stage full of men who need a woman to sort out their problems.

So, as we watch the lovers go off to bed, we may think of their happiness, or of the human cost to those who have been excluded; we may wonder how much it matters that this happiness was bought in part with Shylock’s money. A brilliant night, or a sickly day? We may feel that this is another harmony whose music eludes us. Or we may conclude that the happiness is all the more precious for being hard-won, and all the more believable for the play’s acknowledgment that love is part of the traffic of the world.