* Conservative Wordsmith Susan Baldwin writes: Could Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon, have spoken the same words as the Jewish merchant Shylock in William Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice? I thought it would be interesting to project Mitt Romney into Shakespeare’s Shylock character in Act III's well-known defense passage. Shylock was a Jew, and Mitt Romney is a Mormon, yet the underlying sentiment is similar.
The following passage is from Act III, Scene 1, of The Merchant of Venice. I have added the word "Mormon" wherever the word "Jew" appears, and the words "an evangelical Christian" next to the words "a Christian." Read the exquisite words of William Shakespeare about the importance of religious tolerance.
ACT III
Scene 1
Venice. A street
SHYLOCK
"I am a Jew (Mormon). Hath not a Jew (Mormon) eyes?
Hath not a Jew (Mormon) 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 (an evangelical 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?" 1
*Shakespeare's Shylock
Image:Charles Buchel Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Shakespeare's Shylock
commons.wikimedia.org
1 The Merchant of Venice
by William Shakespeare
Related Links
http://www.wsu.edu/
~delahoyd/shakespeare/
merchant3.html
http://www.pbs.org/
wgbh/masterpiece/
merchant/ntof_shylock.html - Click this link to view the video clip of Shylock's defense, courtesy of OnlineClassics.com, from The Television Film.
http://encarta.msn.com/
text_761562101__1/
Shakespeare.html
http://www.mittromney.com/
http://www.mittromney.com/
Ann-Romney/index
http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/
http://www.mittreport.com/
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Conservative Wordsmith Susan Baldwin, author of the Conservative Wordsmith Weblog, appreciates your thoughts and comments.