QUEEN ELIZABETH. O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhileAnd teach me how to curse mine enemies!QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days;Compare dead happiness with living woe;Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were,And he that slew them fouler than he is.Bett'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse;Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine!QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine. DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words?QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes,Airy succeeders of intestate joys,Poor breathing orators of miseries,Let them have scope; though what they will impartHelp nothing else, yet do they case the heart.DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me,And in the breath of bitter words let's smotherMy damned son that thy two sweet sons smother'd.The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need.
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.