The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (best feel good books .TXT) 📕

losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. Enter a Servant. Servant Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and desires to speak with you both. Salarino We have been up and down to seek him. Enter Tubal. Salanio Here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. Exeunt Salanio, Salarino, and Servant. Shylock How now, Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast thou found my daughter? Tubal I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her. Shylock Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them? Why, so: and I know not what’s spent in the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no in luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding. Tubal Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in Genoa,⁠— Shylock What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? Tubal Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis. Shylock I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true? Tubal I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck. Shylock I thank thee, good Tubal: good news, good news! ha, ha! where? in Genoa? Tubal Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, in one night fourscore ducats. Shylock Thou stickest a dagger in me: I shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats! Tubal There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break. Shylock I am very glad of it: I’ll plague him; I’ll torture him: I am glad of it. Tubal One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey. Shylock Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys. Tubal But Antonio is certainly undone. Shylock Nay, that’s true, that’s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandise I will. Go, go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal. Exeunt. Scene II

Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Enter Bassanio, Portia, Gratiano, Nerissa, and Attendants. Portia

I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,
I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile.
There’s something tells me, but it is not love,
I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand me well,⁠—
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,⁠—
I would detain you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you
How to choose right, but I am then forsworn;
So will I never be: so may you miss me;
But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o’erlook’d me and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours,
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours. O, these naughty times
Put bars between the owners and their rights!
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,
Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long; but ’tis to peize the time,
To eke it and to draw it out in length,
To stay you from election.

Bassanio

Let me choose
For as I am, I live upon the rack.

Portia

Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bassanio

None but that ugly treason of mistrust,
Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love:
There may as well be amity and life
’Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.

Portia

Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.

Bassanio Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth. Portia Well then, confess and live. Bassanio

“Confess” and “love”
Had been the very sum of my confession:
O happy torment, when my torturer
Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

Portia

Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them:
If you do love me, you will find me out.
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music: that the comparison
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And watery death-bed for him. He may