The Merchant of Venice Act 3 Scene 1

So — what's the news at the Exchange?

Well, the story is still going round unchallenged that Antonio has had a ship with a rich cargo wrecked in the

Channel — the Goodwins, I think they call the place, a very dangerous sandbank, and deadly, where the carcasses of many a fine ship lie buried — so they say, if my old gossip Rumour is a woman who keeps her word.

I wish she were as much of a liar in this as any woman who ever nibbled ginger or convinced the neighbours she was crying over her third husband's death. But it's true — without going the long way round or straying off the plain road of talk — that the good Antonio, the honest Antonio — oh, if only I had a title good enough to keep his name company —

Come on, get to the point.

Eh, what's that? Well, the end of it is that he's lost a ship.

I hope that proves to be the end of his losses.

Let me say amen to that quickly, before the devil gets in the way of my prayer — because here he comes, in the shape of a Jew.

Well, Shylock — what's the news among the merchants?

You knew — nobody better, nobody better than you — about my daughter running off.

That's true enough. I personally knew the tailor who made the wings she flew away with.

And Shylock for his part knew the bird had its feathers — and it's in the nature of all of them to leave the mother.

She's damned for it.

Certainly — if the devil gets to be her judge.

My own flesh and blood, to turn against me!

Get away with you, you old carcass. Does it still rebel at your age?

I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.

There's more difference between your flesh and hers than between black stone and ivory, and more between your two bloods than between red wine and

white. But tell us — have you heard whether Antonio has had any losses at sea or not? (The insult is that his daughter cannot really be his: too pale, too fine. It is the same black-and-white grammar the play uses on Morocco, turned on a Jew, and offered as a joke to a man who has just said 'my own flesh and blood'.)

There's another bad bargain of mine. A bankrupt, a spendthrift, who hardly dares show his face at the Exchange — a beggar who used to come so sleek onto the trading floor. Let him mind his bond. He used to call me a usurer — let him mind his bond. He used to lend money as a Christian courtesy — let him mind his bond.

Come on — I'm sure that if he defaults you won't take his flesh. What good is that to you?

To bait fish with. If it feeds nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He has humiliated me and cost me half a million; laughed at my losses, sneered at my profits, insulted my people, obstructed my deals, cooled my friends towards me, inflamed my enemies — and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hasn't a Jew got eyes? Hasn't a Jew got hands, organs, a body, senses, feelings, passions? Fed with the same food, wounded by the same weapons, prone to the same diseases, cured by the same medicines, warmed and chilled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, don't we bleed? If you tickle us, don't we laugh? If you poison us, don't we die? And if you wrong us, shan't we take revenge? If we're like you in everything else, we'll be like you in that too. If a Jew wrongs a Christian, what's the Christian's meekness? Revenge. If a Christian wrongs a Jew, what should the Jew's forbearance be, going by the Christian example? Why — revenge. The villainy you teach me I will carry out, and it'll be difficult but I'll improve on the lesson. (The speech is usually quoted as far as 'don't we die?' and stopped there. It does not stop there, and it is not two speeches. The argument runs in one line — we are the same in body, therefore we are the same in the right to revenge — and Shakespeare gives the case for shared humanity to the man who is about to use it as a warrant.)

Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and would like to speak to you both.

We've been all over looking for him.

Here comes another of the tribe. You couldn't match a third unless the devil himself converted to

Judaism. (Tubal has not spoken a word yet. His entire introduction to the audience is a joke about there being no third Jew in Venice short of recruiting Satan, and the two men then leave without addressing him.)

Well, Tubal — what news from Genoa?

Have you found my daughter?

I kept arriving in places where I heard of her, but I can't find her.

There — there, there, there! A diamond gone that cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt.

The curse never fell on our people until now — I never felt it until now. Two thousand ducats in that one, and other precious, precious jewels. I wish my daughter were lying dead at my feet with the jewels in her ears. I wish she were in her coffin at my feet with the ducats buried with her. No news of them? Is that it? And

I don't even know what's been spent on the search. Loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, and so much spent finding the thief, and no satisfaction, no revenge — and no bad luck moving anywhere except what lands on my shoulders, no sighs but the ones I breathe, no tears but the ones I shed.

Yes — other men have bad luck too. Antonio, as I heard in Genoa —

What? What, what? Bad luck? Bad luck?

— has had a merchant ship wrecked coming from

Tripoli.

Thank God. Thank God. Is it true? Is it true?

I spoke to some of the sailors who got out of the wreck.

Thank you, good Tubal. Good news, good news! Ha, ha — heard in Genoa —

Your daughter spent, in Genoa, as I heard, eighty ducats in a single night.

You're sticking a dagger in me. I'll never see my gold again. Eighty ducats at one sitting — eighty ducats! (Tubal alternates. A loss of Antonio's, then a loss of Shylock's, four times over, and Shylock swings each time. The play never says whether Tubal is doing it deliberately.)

Several of Antonio's creditors travelled with me to Venice, and they swear he can't avoid going bankrupt.

I'm very glad of it. I'll torment him. I'll torture him. I'm glad of it.

One of them showed me a ring he'd got from your daughter in exchange for a monkey.

Damn her. You're torturing me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. Leah gave it to me when I was a bachelor. I wouldn't have traded it for a whole wilderness of monkeys. (Leah is almost certainly his dead wife, and this is the only glimpse of his marriage in the play — four lines, arriving in the middle of his most vengeful scene. He is not upset about the ring's value. He is upset that it was worth nothing to her.)

But Antonio is certainly finished.

No — that's true. That's very true. Go, Tubal, hire me a sheriff's officer. Book him a fortnight in advance. I will have the heart out of him if he defaults, because with him gone from Venice I can trade on whatever terms I like.

Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue. Go, good

Tubal — at our synagogue, Tubal.