The New Gospel

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft in the Rialto have you rated me about my moneys and my usances: still have I born it with patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. … Fair sir, you spit upon me on Wednesday last; you spurn’d me such a day; another time you call’d me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys? 

He [Antonio] hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my loses, 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 diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d 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, do we not seek revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

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:

‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Cowards die many times before their deaths,

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d: cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhousel’d [without communion], disappointed [without penance], unanel’d [without extreme unction]; no reck’ning made [without confession], but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head.  O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

I am in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.  

I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as to go o’er.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.  It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

What’s done cannot be undone.

In religion, what damned error, but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with text, hiding the grossness with fair ornament.  There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

What a piece of work is a man!  how noble in reason!  how infinite in faculty!  in form and moving how express and admirable!  in action how like an angel!  in apprehension how like a god!  the beauty of the world!  the paragon of animals!  

How would you be, if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are?  O, think on that; and mercy then will breathe within your lips, like man new made. 

I am thy father’s spirit,

Doomed for a certain time to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away.

But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?  “Forgive me my foul murder [of Hamlet’s father]”?  That cannot be since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder:  my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen ... What then? What rests? Try what repentance can.  What can it not?  Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? ... My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go. 

Out, damned spot! out, I say … who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him … Here’s the smell of blood still.  All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.  Oh, oh, oh!  … Wash your hands … 

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, and for thy maintenance commits his body to painful labor both by sea and land, to watch the night in storms, the day in cold, whilest thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; and craves no other tribute at thy hands but love, fair looks, and true obedience; too little payment for so great a debt.  Such duty as the subject owes the prince even such a woman oweth to her husband; and when she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour, and not obedient to his honest will, what is she but a foul contending rebel and graceless traitor to her loving lord?  I am ashamed that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace, or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, when they are bound to serve, love, and obey.  Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, unapt to toil and trouble in the world, but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts?