The Merchant of Venice

by William Shakespeare

But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word ‘choose’! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is 25 the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father.

But ships are 20 but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves,—I mean pirates,—and

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not As to thy friends,—for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend?— 135 But lend it rather to thine enemy; Who if he break thou mayst with better face Exact the penalty.

SHYLOCK O father Abram, what these Christians are, Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect The thoughts of others.

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be asham’d to be my father’s child!

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

When we are both accoutred like young men, I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace, And speak between the change of man and boy

Truly then I fear you are damn’d both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into 15 Charybdis, your mother; well, you are gone both ways.

This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.

he tells me flatly there’s no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter; and he says 30 you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians you raise the price of pork.

Your wife would give you little thanks for that, If she were by to hear you make the offer.

In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, 20 And with an unthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont.

gave my love a ring, and made him swear Never to part with it,