When asked what use a pound of Antonio's flesh would be, Shylock delivers this powerful speech on common humanity. He argues that Jews share the same human nature as Christians, including the desire for revenge.
Act 3 Scene 1, a street in Venice. Antonio's ships are rumoured wrecked, his bond to Shylock is therefore likely to be forfeit, and the city is buzzing. Solanio and Salerio, two of Antonio's friends and casual antisemites, encounter Shylock in the street. Shylock has just suffered the elopement of his daughter Jessica with the Christian Lorenzo, who has taken his money and his dead wife's turquoise ring. The young men taunt him about both losses, half mocking, half probing whether he intends to enforce the bond against Antonio. Shylock confirms he does. They press him: what use is a pound of Antonio's flesh? Shylock answers. The speech is delivered standing in a public street to two men who despise him, with the news of his daughter's flight and his commercial losses freshly broken. It is one of the few times in the play that Shylock speaks at length and without ironic indirection.
Shylock at this moment is a man who has been cornered into clarity. What he wants from Salerio and Solanio is not sympathy, which he knows they cannot give, but the acknowledgement of a logical proposition: that Jews and Christians share the same biology, the same vulnerabilities, the same appetites, and therefore — by the same logic Christians have always used against him — the same right to vengeance. The speech is structured as an argument, not a plea. Underneath the rhetoric is rage of an order that has been accumulating across the play and across Shylock's life; the loss of Jessica has stripped away whatever restraint remained. The psychological state is grief converted into argumentative violence. Shylock is not asking for the men's understanding; he is informing them, in language they cannot refute, of the bill that is about to come due. The actor's job is to find the man thinking with terrifying clarity.
The pitfall is martyring the speech. It is not a plea for tolerance; it is an indictment, and Shylock is not on his knees. Begin contained. The early questions — hath not a Jew eyes, hands, organs — are not rhetorical flourishes but a slow construction of a syllogism. Mark each item. The shift comes at "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" — that is where the argument moves from anatomy to consequence, and the speech accelerates. The final movement — "The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction" — is a threat, and it must be heard as such; the men in the street should be frightened, and the audience should feel the bond's terms become real. Tempo: slow opening, accelerating middle, dangerous landing. Resist self-pity; the speech is more powerful if Shylock has none. The losses of the day — Jessica, ducats, ring — should be present in the body but not narrated; let them sit behind the speech rather than colour it. Verse-speaking note: the speech is prose, not verse, and the rhythms are conversational; do not iambify. The accent is a directorial choice; most contemporary productions avoid stage-Yiddish entirely. Watch the room as you go; the speech is partly addressed to them and partly addressed to the larger Christian commonwealth they represent.
A central Shakespeare audition piece for men and one of the most politically charged in the canon. Strong for classical companies, MFA programmes, and any audition where the panel wants to see prose-Shakespeare, argument, and controlled rage. Demonstrates that you can hold a long thought, structure an argument across a paragraph, and play intelligence rather than indulgence. Over-used in audition rooms; panels have heard it constantly. Bring it only if you have a specific argument about the speech and are not playing it as a generic plea for tolerance. Useful as a counter-piece to a verse soliloquy; the prose rhythms show a different gear. Less useful for screen comedy or contemporary naturalism, though it travels into screen-classical work surprisingly well. The audition stakes are higher than for other Shakespeare speeches because the political content is live; panels will be alert to whether you have thought about Shylock as a man rather than as a position. If you can find the humour — Shylock is sometimes mordantly funny — you will distinguish yourself.
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. 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 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? 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.