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    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    The Merchant of Venice

    By William Shakespeare

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    The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599.

    Although classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for Shylock and his famous demand for a "pound of flesh" in retribution, as well as its "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech on humanity. As a result a debate exists on whether the play is anti-Semitic. Also notable is Portia's speech about "the quality of mercy".

    Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate, he needs 3,000 ducats to subsidise his expenditures as a suitor.

    Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice, who has previously and repeatedly bailed him out. Antonio agrees, but since he is cash-poor – his ships and merchandise are busy at sea to Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England – he promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and names Antonio as the loan's guarantor.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMemorable Classics eBooks
    Release dateJun 3, 2022
    ISBN9791221369731
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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      Book preview

      The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

      SCENE II: Belmont. A room in PORTIA'S house.

      Enter PORTIA and NERISSA

      PORTIA

      By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of

      this great world.

      NERISSA

      You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in

      the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and

      yet, for aught I see, 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.

      PORTIA

      Good sentences and well pronounced.

      NERISSA

      They would be better, if well followed.

      PORTIA

      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. It is a good divine that

      follows his own instructions: I can easier teach

      twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the

      twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may

      devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps

      o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the

      youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the

      cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to

      choose me a husband. O me, the word 'choose!' I may

      neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I

      dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed

      by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,

      Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?

      NERISSA

      Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their

      death have good inspirations: therefore the lottery,

      that he hath devised in these three chests of gold,

      silver and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning

      chooses you, will, no doubt, never be chosen by any

      rightly but one who shall rightly love. But what

      warmth is there in your affection towards any of

      these princely suitors that are already come?

      PORTIA

      I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest

      them, I will describe them; and, according to my

      description, level at my affection.

      NERISSA

      First, there is the Neapolitan prince.

      PORTIA

      Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but

      talk of his horse; and he makes it a great

      appropriation to his own good parts, that he can

      shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his

      mother played false with a smith.

      NERISSA

      Then there is the County Palatine.

      PORTIA

      He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'If you

      will not have me, choose:' he hears merry tales and

      smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping

      philosopher when he grows old, being so full of

      unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be

      married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth

      than to either of these. God defend me from these

      two!

      NERISSA

      How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?

      PORTIA

      God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.

      In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but,

      he! why, he hath a horse better than the

      Neapolitan's, a better bad habit of frowning than

      the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man; if a

      throstle sing, he falls straight a capering: he will

      fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him, I

      should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me

      I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I

      shall never requite him.

      NERISSA

      What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron

      of England?

      PORTIA

      You know I say nothing to him, for he understands

      not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French,

      nor Italian, and you will come into the court and

      swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English.

      He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can

      converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited!

      I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his

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