Shakespeare Read A Long
is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice (Antonio) must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. Though 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 the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech on humanity. Also notable is Portia’s speech about “the quality of mercy”. Critic Harold Bloom listed it among Shakespeare’s great comedies.
Next up for our Shakespeare Read A Long.
I’ve not read this before and look forward to it.
I always learn so much from our discussions.
Antonio (Act 1, Scene 1)
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
Antonio (Act 1, Scene 1)
“Let me play the fool.”
Gratiano (Act 1, Scene 1)
“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
Bassanio (Act 1, Scene 1)
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
Gratiano (Act 1, Scene 1)
“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 (Act 1, Scene 2)
“God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.”
Portia (Act 1, Scene 2)
“How like a fawning publican he looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian.”
Shylock (Act 1, Scene 3)
“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. What news on the Rialto?”
Shylock (Act 1, Scene 3)
“If I can get him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.”
Shylock (Act 1, Scene 2)
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
Antonio (Act 1, Scene 3)
“I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind. “
Bassanio (Act 1, Scene 3)
“Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.”
Morocco (Act 2, Scene 1)
“It is a wise father who knows his own child.”
Lancelot (Act 2, Scene 1)
“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.”
Jessica (Act 2, Scene 6)
“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 enfold.”
Morocco (Act 2, Scene 7)
“Young in limbs, in judgement old.”
Morocco (Act 2, Scene 7)
“The portrait of a blinking idiot”
Aragon (Act 2, Scene 9)
“Let him look to his bond.”
Shylock (Act 3, Scene 1)
“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?”
Shylock (Act 3, Scene 1)
“Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?”
Singer (Act 3, Scene 2)
“The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. “
Portia (Act 4, Scene 1)
“How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
Portia (Act 5, Scene 1)
