Page 462 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

LAUNCELOT

Marry, you may partly hope that your [10] father got you not, that you are
not the Jew’s daughter.

JESSICA
That were a kind of bastard hope indeed! So the sins of my mother should be
visited upon me.

LAUNCELOT

Truly then, I fear you are damned both [15] by father and mother; thus when
I shun Scylla your father, I fall into Charybdis your mother; well, you are gone
both ways.

JESSICA
I shall be saved by my husband: he hath made me a Christian. [20]

LAUNCELOT
Truly, the more to blame he! We were Christians enow before, e’en as many
as could well live one by another. This making of Christians will raise the

price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a
rasher on the coals [25] for money.

Enter Lorenzo.

JESSICA
I’ll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say. Here he comes.

LORENZO
I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you thus get my wife into

corners. [30]

JESSICA

Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo: Launcelot and I are out. He tells me
flatly there’s no mercy for me in heaven because I am a Jew’s daughter, and
he says you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting

Jews to Christians you [35] raise the price of pork.