The Merchant of Venice · William Shakespeare · Act 3, Scene 1

Shylock: "Hath not a Jew eyes?"

Characters
Shylock
Length
194 words, 1 min spoken
 
Male role
 
Drama

The situation

Salarino has asked what good Antonio’s flesh would do him.

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The text

ShylockTo bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac’d me and hind’red me half a million, laugh’d at my losses, mock’d 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 villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Text: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1515. Public domain text from Project Gutenberg. Download the text

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