Shylock — “Hath Not a Jew Eyes?”
Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who has been mocked and spat on by Antonio and the Christians of Venice, is confronted by two of them just as he's learned his daughter has run off. Cornered, he turns and makes the case for his own humanity — and warns that the cruelty he's been taught, he will now repay. He wants them to admit he is a man, and he wants his revenge justified.
He hath disgrac’d me and hind’red me half a million, laugh’d
at my losses, mock’d 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! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it
shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
How to Play It
This is prose and it's a live confrontation — you're talking directly at the men who've tormented you, forcing them to answer. The rhetorical questions are real demands, not decoration. It builds from grievance ('He hath disgrac'd me') to the shared-humanity argument to the turn into open threat ('Why, revenge!').
The trap is playing only the wound or only the rage. The speech is a trap he's springing: reasonable, even warm, right up to the moment it becomes menace. Let the logic seduce, then let it bite.
Justly durable rather than tired — a compact, muscular argument that proves you can drive prose with a clear, escalating objective.
Powerful for men 30s–50s who can hold controlled intensity. Under a minute, and it never has to shout to land.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
A monologue is a two-person scene where the other person never speaks. Working it 1-on-1 with a working actor is the fastest way to make it land.