JESSICA.
That were a kind of bastard hope indeed; so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me.
LAUNCELET.
Truly then I fear you are damn’d both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla your father, I fall into Charybdis your mother. Well, you are gone both ways.
JESSICA.
I shall be saved by my husband. He hath made me a Christian.
LAUNCELET.
Truly the more to blame he, we were Christians enow before, e’en as many as could well live one by another. This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.
Enter Lorenzo.
JESSICA.
I’ll tell my husband, Launcelet, what you say. Here he comes.
LORENZO.
I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelet, if you thus get my wife into corners!
JESSICA.
Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo. Launcelet and I are out. He tells me flatly there’s no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter; and he says you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians you raise the price of pork.
LORENZO.
I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly! The Moor is with child by you, Launcelet.
LAUNCELET.
It is much that the Moor should be more than reason; but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for.