The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare Right Now!

“When it is paid according to the tenor,” says Shylock. “It doth appear you are a worthy
judge; you know the law—your exposition hath been most sound. I charge you, by the law
whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, proceed to judgment!
“By my soul I swear there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me!” A faint smile
flickers on the lawyer’s lips, but Shylock reiterates: “I stay here on my bond!”
Antonio is exhausted. “Most heartily I do beseech the court to give the judgment.”
“Why then, thus it is,” Balthasar tells him. “You must prepare your bosom for his knife,—”
“O noble judge!” cries Shylock, “O excellent young man!”
“—for the intent and purpose of the law hath full relation to the penalty which here appeareth
due upon the bond.”
“’Tis very true!” says Shylock. “O wise and upright judge! How much more elder art thou
than thy looks!”
The doctor points a slender finger at Antonio’s chest. “Therefore lay bare your bosom.”
“Aye, his breast!—so says the bond, doth it not, noble judge?” asks Shylock eagerly.
“‘Nearest his heart’—those are the very words!”
“It is so. Are there balances here to weigh the flesh?”
Shylock nods. “I have them ready.”
“Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, to stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to
death?”
“Is it so nominated in the bond?”
“It is not so expressed; but what of that? ’Twere good you do so much for charity.”
Shylock makes a great show of poring over the document. “I cannot find it; ’tis not in the
bond.”
Balthasar turns to Antonio. “You, merchant, have you anything to say?”
“But little. I am resigned and well preparèd,” he says quietly, ready to pay the penalty. “Give
me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well! Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you. For herein
Fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom: it is ever her use to let the wretched man
outlive his wealth, to view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow an age of poverty—from which
lingering penance of such misery doth she cut me off!
“Commend me to your honourable wife. Tell her the process of Antonio’s end; say how I
loved you. Speak me fair in death, and, when the tale is told, bid her be judge whether Bassanio
had not once a love!
“Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, as he repents not that he pays your debt!” He
smiles at Bassanio with a flash of his old humor: “For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, I’ll pay
it presently with all my heart!”
“Antonio, I am married to a wife who is as dear to me as life itself,” Bassanio tells him, “but
life itself, my wife, and all the world are not with me esteemed above thy life! I would lose all,
aye, sacrifice them all here to this devil, to deliver you!”
Thinks the scholar, Your wife would give you little thanks for that, if she were by to hear you
make the offer!
Gratiano moves to Antonio’s side. “I have a wife, whom I protest I love! I would she were in
heaven, so she could entreat some power to change this currish Jew!”
Thinks the law clerk from Padua, ’Tis well you offer it behind her back! The wish would make
else an unquiet house!
Shylock is disgusted. These be Christian husbands! I have a daughter; I would that any of the
stock of Barrabas had been her husband rather than a Christian! But aloud he says only, “We
trifle time. I pray thee, pursue sentence.”
At a nod from the duke, the professor raises a hand to pronounce judgment. “A pound of that
same merchant’s flesh is thine. The law doth give it; the court awards it.”
“Most rightful judge!” says Shylock, bowing.
“And you must cut this flesh from off his breast: The court awards it, and the law allows it.”
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