Poignant Speech

On Monday night I took in an outdoor play at Oxford Castle. I wanted to experience some local culture before I left, so I attended a showing of The Merchant of Venice. It was very contemporary in style, which I was a bit weary of in the beginning. But they stuck with traditional Shakespearean dialect, which made me happy.

It was the first time that I had heard the play, and was quite impressed. I have read 4 of Shakespeare's plays - Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet - all of them in highschool, and I enjoyed most of them. I haven't read any since. So this was a nice treat.

I was very moved by this famous Shylock monologue:

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 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 villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.