Poet's Corner No.18

"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:

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued

To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia:

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,

For the four winds blow in from every coast

Renowned suitors, and 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.

O my Antonio, had I but the means

To hold a rival place with one of them,

I have a mind presages me such thrift,

That I should questionless be fortunate!"

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

THE monologue

"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."

(Shylock Monologue)