Salarino. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what's that good for? Shylock. 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. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (The Merchant of Venice. Act 3, Scene 1)
有一次我在YouTube 上看到影集《高堡奇人》(The Man in the High Castle) 的片段。根據IMDb的資料,該劇的背景設定是「在反烏托邦、納粹德國和軍國主義日本統治下的美國 (in a dystopian America dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan)」。我看到的那部影片的場景是在一所到處掛滿納粹黨標誌的學校。上課時,老師講到《威尼斯商人》,臺下有個女孩舉起手,舉出了夏洛克那段感人肺腑的獨白,而向老師的課程內容提出質疑:「莎士比亞寫了這段臺詞,他是在說猶太人是人嗎?老師,我們是不是不該學這段?」