"Cursed be my tribe, if I

forgive [them]."An Interpretation of Shylock’s “Doth a Jew not hath eyes” speech

from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

Rhiannon Poolaw

Advanced Composition

Dr. William Carney

29 April 2014

[They] hath disgraced [us] and hindered [us]

[one hundred] million,

laughed at [our] losses, mocked at [our] gains,

scorned [our] nation, thwarted [our] bargains,

cooled [our] friends, heated [our] enemies

—and what’s [their] reason? I am a [Native].

Hath not a [Native] eyes? Hath not a [Native] 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 [white man] 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 [Native] wrong a [white man], what is his

humility? Revenge.

If a [white man] wrong a [Native], what should his

sufferance be by [white] example? Why, revenge.

The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it

shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

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