The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan taken out on behalf of his dear friend, Bassanio, and provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, with seemingly inevitable fatal consequences.

W. G. Clark; W. A. Wright (eds.) The Works of William Shakespeare, vol. 2 (Cambridge and London: Macmillan and Co., 1863)

Act I

Scene i

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you.
- Antonio, l. 1

I have much ado to know myself
- Antonio, l. 7

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted.

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place.
- Antonio, l. 42

Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper.
- Salarino, l. 50

They’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
- Salarino, l. 55

You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care.
- Gratiano, l. 74

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
- Antonio, l. 77

Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
- Gratiano, l. 79

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
- Gratiano, l. 84

There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond;
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, 'I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!'
- Gratiano, l. 88

I do know of these,
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing.
- Gratiano, l. 95

Fish not, with this melancholy bait,
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.
- Gratiano, l. 101

For silence is only commendable
In a neat’s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.
- Gratiano, l. 111

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them: and when you have them, they are not worth the search.
- Bassanio, l. 114

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
The self-same way with more advised watch,
To find the other forth; and by adventuring both,
I oft found both.
- Bassanio, l. 140

In Belmont is a lady richly left;
And she is fair, and fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages.
- Bassanio, l. 161

Her name is Portia; nothing undervalued
To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia:
- Bassanio, l. 165

Her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
- Bassanio, l. 169

Scene ii

My little body is aweary of this great world.
- Portia, l. 1

They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs; but competency lives longer.
- Nerissa, l. 5

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.
- Portia, l. 10

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

The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.
- Portia, l. 16

He doth nothing but talk of his horse.
- Portia, l. 36

I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth.
- Portia, l. 45

God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
- Portia, l. 50

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.
- Portia, l. 76

I will do any thing, Nerissa, ere I’ll be married to a sponge.
- Portia, l. 87

If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana.
- Portia, l. 95

I dote on his very absence.
- Portia, l. 99

Scene iii

My meaning, in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me, that he is sufficient.
- Shylock, l. 14

Ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves.
- Shylock, l. 20

To smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.
- Shylock, l. 30

How like a fawning publican he looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian.
- Shylock, l. 36

If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation; and he rails,
Even there where merchants most do congregate,
On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,
Which he calls interest.
- Shylock, l. 41

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
- Antonio, l. 94

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug;
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say,
'Shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you? Should I not say
'Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness,
Say this, —
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys?'
- Shylock, l. 101

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?
- Antonio, l. 127

O father Abram, what these Christians are,
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of others!
- Shylock, l. 155

I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.
- Bassanio, l. 174

Act II

Scene i

Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun.
- Prince of Morocco, l. 1

Scene ii

An honest exceeding poor man.
- Old Gobbo, l. 45

The young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased; or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 55

The very staff of my age, my very prop.
- Old Gobbo, l. 60

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 70

Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may; but, at the length, truth will out.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 71

I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling of an eye.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 154

But hear thee, Gratiano:
Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice;
Parts that become thee happily enough,
And in such eyes as ours appear not faults;
But where thou art not known, why, there they show
Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain
To allay with some cold drops of modesty
Thy skipping spirit; lest, through thy wild behavior,
I be misconstrued in the place I go to,
And lose my hopes.
- Bassiano, l. 165

Scene iii

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me
To be ashamed to be my father’s child!
But though I am a daughter to his blood,
I am not to his manners.
- Jessica, l. 17

Scene iv

I know the hand: in faith, 'tis a fair hand;
And whiter than the paper it writ on
Is the fair hand that writ.
- Lorenzo, l. 11

Scene v

There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,
For I did dream of money-bags to-night.
- Shylock, l. 17

It was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 24

The vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife.
- Shylock, l. 29

There will come a Christian by,
Shall be worth a Jewess' eye.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 41

Fast bind, fast find,
A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.
- Shylock, l. 53

Scene vi

All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.
How like a younker or a prodigal
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind!
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails,
Lean, rent, and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!
- Gratiano, l. 12

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
- Jessica, l. 35

Must I hold a candle to my shames?
- Jessica, l. 41

For she is wise, if I can judge of her;
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true;
And true she is, as she hath proved herself;
And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,
Shall she be placed in my constant soul.
- Lorenzo, l. 53

Scene vii

All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll'd:
Fare you well, your suit is cold.
- Prince of Morocco, reading Portia's note, l. 65
  "All that glitters is not gold." Cf. Alain de Lille

Scene viii

Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,
But stay the very riping of the time.
- Salarino, quoting Antonio's advice to Bassanio; l. 39

I think he only loves the world for him.
- Salanio, of Antonio's love for Bassanio; l. 50

Scene ix

Like the martlet,
Builds in the weather on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casualty.
- Prince of Arragon, l. 28

I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits,
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.
- Prince of Arragon, l. 31

O, that estates, degrees and offices
Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
- Prince of Arragon, l. 41

The fire seven times tried this;
Seven times tried that judgment is,
That did never choose amiss.
Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow's bliss:
There be fools alive, I wis,
Silver'd o'er; and so was this.
Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head:
So be gone: you are sped.
- Prince of Arragon, reading Portia's note, l. 63

The ancient saying is no heresy,
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
- Nerissa, l. 82

A day in April never came so sweet,
To show how costly summer was at hand,
- Servant, l. 93

Act III

Scene i

If my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.
- Salarino, l. 6

The bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam.
- Salanio, l. 25

Let him look to his bond.
- Shylock, l. 39

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!
- Shylock, l. 75

No ill luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding.
- Shylock, l. 80

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.
- l. 102

Salarino: Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what's that good for?
Shylock: To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my 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.
- l. 44

Scene ii

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engender'd in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.

Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music.
- Portia, l. 43

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
  Reply, reply.
It is engender'd in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
  Let us all ring fancy's knell;
  I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell.
All: Ding, dong, bell.
- Musicians, l. 63

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being season’d with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?
- Bassanio, l. 75

There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue in his outward parts.
- Bassanio, l. 81

Look on beauty,
And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it.
- Bassanio, l. 88

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.
- Bassanio, l. 97

Thou gaudy gold,
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee.
- Bassanio, l. 101

An unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractis’d;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn.
- Portia, l. 160

Madam, you have bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins.
- Bassanio, l. 176

Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words
That ever blotted paper!
- Bassanio, l. 253

The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
The best-condition’d and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies.
- Bassanio, l. 294

Scene v

Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.
- Launcelot Gobbo, l. 14

Let it serve for table-talk;
Then, howsoe’er thou speak’st, ’mong other things
I shall digest it.
- Lorenzo, l. 79

Act IV

Scene i

Some men there are love not a gaping pig;
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat;
And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ the nose,
Cannot contain their urine.
- Shylock, l. 47

A harmless necessary cat.
- Shylock, l. 55

What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?
- Shylock, l. 69

If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no power in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgement: answer; shall I have it?
- Shylock, l. 101

I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground.
- Antonio, l. 114

We turned o’er many books together.
- Clerk, reading; l. 156

I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
- Clerk, reading; l. 160

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer, doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
- Portia, l. 179

A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!
O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!
- Shylock, l. 218

Shylock: Is it so nominated in the bond?
Portia: It is not so express'd: but what of that?
'Twere good you do so much for charity.
Shylock: I cannot find it; 'tis not in the bond.
- l. 254

Commend me to your honourable wife:
Tell her the process of Antonio's end;
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death;
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
- Antonio, l. 268

Antonio, I am married to a wife
Which is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not with me esteem’d above thy life:
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil, to deliver you.
- Antonio, l. 277

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are, 'a pound of flesh:'
Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.
- Portia, l. 301

An upright judge, a learned judge!
- Gratiano, l. 318

A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!
Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.
- Gratiano, l. 328

A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.
- Gratiano, l. 335

Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that;
You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live.
- Shylock, l. 369

I am content.
- Shylock, l. 382

He is well paid that is well satisfied.
- Portia, l. 410

Act V

Scene i

In such a night...

Lorenzo: The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,
And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night.
Jessica: In such a night
Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew,
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself.
And ran dismay’d away.
Lorenzo: In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Jessica: In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Æson.
Lorenzo: In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.
Jessica: In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith
And ne’er a true one.
Lorenzo: In such a night
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
- l. 1

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
- Lorenzo, l. 54

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
- Jessica, l. 69

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
- Lorenzo, l. 83

How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
- Portia, l. 90

A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by.
- Portia, l. 94

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended
- Portia, l. 102

How many things by season season’d are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awaked.
- Portia, l. 107

This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
- Portia, l. 124

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
- Portia, l. 130

These blessed candles of the night.
- Bassanio, l. 220

Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
Of starved people.
- Lorenzo, l. 294

We will answer all things faithfully.
- Portia, l. 299

Quotes about The Merchant of Venice

The Portia of our Chambers.
- Rumpole of the Bailey (various episodes); Rumpole's perennial epithet for Phyllida Trant (later Erskine-Brown)

I reviewed the other moments scholars cite to prove Shylock's "humanity." There were two lines of Shylock treasuring his dead wife's ring, unlike the play's Christian men who give their wives' rings away. But unlike the other men, Shylock never gets his ring back—because his daughter steals it, and becomes a Christian, and inherits what remains of his estate at the play's triumphant end. Then there was the trial scene, where modern actors often make Shylock seem tragic rather than horrific. But that was performance, not text. Finally, scholars point to the many times Shylock explains why he is so revolting: Christians treat him poorly, so he returns the favor. But for this to satisfy, one must accept that Jews are revolting to begin with, and that their repulsiveness simply needs to be explained. None of it worked. And then I saw just how deep the gaslighting went: I felt obligated to make it work, to contort this revolting material into something that excused it. I have a doctorate in literature. I am aware that Shakespeare's plays contain many layers and mean many things. But the degrading hideousness of this character is obvious even to a ten-year-old, and no matter how many more layers the play contains, that is unambiguously one of them.
- Dara Horn, "Commuting with Shylock", in People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (2021)

This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the worst. … And this is the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us … in the tale of the "Merchant of Venice"; in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and free, beyond every other Shakespearian conception of men,—is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn.
- John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), sec. 3

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