Reference to Context: The Merchant of Venice

5. "let the forfeit / Be nominated for an equal pound / Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken / In what part of your body pleaseth me." Act I Scene iii. Spoken by Shylock to Antonio, proposing the terms of the bond in what he calls a merry sport. It is the forfeiture clause on which the whole plot turns, and Antonio accepts it in the next speech.

6. "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind." Act I Scene iii, the last line of the act. Spoken by Bassanio to Antonio, after Shylock has left to fetch the money and Antonio has called him a gentle Jew who grows kind. Bassanio is the only character who says out loud that generous terms may hide a bad purpose, and the play proves him right.

7. "All that glisters is not gold, / Often have you heard that told." Act II Scene vii. The opening of the scroll found in the golden casket by the Prince of Morocco at Belmont. It tells him that he has chosen by outward show, and it states the play's theme of appearance against reality in its most quotable form.

8. "My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!" Act II Scene viii. Reported by Solanio to Salarino in a street in Venice, mimicking Shylock's cries after Jessica's elopement. The mockery is the point: Shylock's grief for his daughter and his money is being performed for laughs by men who despise him.

9. "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" Act III Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to Salarino and Solanio in a Venice street, after they ask what a pound of Antonio's flesh could possibly be good for. He argues that a Jew is the same as a Christian in every respect, and concludes that the sameness extends to revenge, which the Christians themselves taught him.

10. "It was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." Act III Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to Tubal, on hearing that Jessica traded a ring for a monkey in Genoa. Leah was his wife, so the ring was her gift before their marriage, and this is the one moment in the play where his loss is clearly not about money.

11. "The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. / In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt / But, being season'd with a gracious voice, / Obscures the show of evil?" Act III Scene ii. Spoken by Bassanio at Belmont, thinking aloud before he chooses among the caskets. He is reasoning that outward show is untrustworthy, taking his first example from a corrupt legal argument delivered attractively, and this reasoning leads him to choose the leaden casket and win Portia.

12. "The Duke cannot deny the course of law, / For the commodity that strangers have / With us in Venice, if it be denied, / 'Twill much impeach the justice of the state." Act III Scene iii. Spoken by Antonio to Salarino in a Venice street, after Shylock has refused to hear him and left. He is explaining that the Duke has no power to release him, because Venice depends on foreign merchants who will only trade where contracts are enforced regardless of the parties.

13. "If every ducat in six thousand ducats / Were in six parts, and every part a ducat, / I would not draw them, I would have my bond." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock in the ducal court of Venice, refusing Bassanio's offer of six thousand ducats for a debt of three thousand. A ducat is a gold coin of Venice, and the point is that no multiple of the money will satisfy him, because he wants the forfeiture and not the debt.

14. "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Portia, disguised as the young doctor of laws Balthazar, in answer to Shylock's question "On what compulsion must I?" She concedes in the first line that mercy cannot be forced, and argues instead that it blesses both giver and receiver and is the attribute in which earthly power most resembles God's.

15. "Wrest once the law to your authority. / To do a great right, do a little wrong." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Bassanio to the disguised Portia, begging her to bend the law to save Antonio. She refuses, on the ground that no power in Venice can alter an established decree because it would be recorded as a precedent and many errors would follow it.

16. "A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! / O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!" Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock, praising the disguised Portia after she refuses to bend the law for Antonio. Daniel was the young judge of the Apocrypha who saved an innocent woman by cross-examination, and Gratiano throws the same words back at Shylock a few minutes later when the judgment turns.

17. "Is it so nominated in the bond?" Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, refusing to provide a surgeon to stop Antonio's wounds because the bond does not require one. It is the most fatal line he speaks, because it commits him in open court to the rule that nothing counts unless it is written, which is the rule then used to defeat him.

18. "Tarry a little, there is something else. / This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood. / The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh'." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by the disguised Portia, at the moment Shylock has been awarded the forfeiture and is preparing to cut. She holds him to the exact words of his own document, so that shedding one drop of Christian blood would forfeit his lands and goods to the state of Venice.

19. "You take my house when you do take the prop / That doth sustain my house; you take my life / When you do take the means whereby I live." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock after the alien statute has been invoked and his estate divided between Antonio and the state. He is answering the Duke's pardon of his life by saying that a life without the means of living is no pardon at all.

20. "How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Act V Scene i. Spoken by Portia to Nerissa as they approach her house at Belmont by night and see a light burning in the hall. "Naughty" here means wicked rather than mischievous, and the lines are usually taken as the play's comment on the trial she has just conducted.

Two more that are often set

"The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." Act V Scene i. Spoken by Lorenzo to Jessica in the garden at Belmont while they wait for Portia. It is a judgment on anybody indifferent to music, and it lands on Shylock, who ordered his house shut against the drum and the fife in Act II Scene v.

"I am content." Act IV Scene i. Spoken by Shylock, accepting Antonio's conditions, including forced conversion and a deed of gift of everything he dies possessed of. These are the last words he speaks in the play, and their flatness after four acts of the strongest speech in it is the effect Shakespeare wants.

Nine more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. Every passage below has appeared on a printed English I paper, and all nine are from Act IV Scene i, the trial, which is where the examiner looks first.

A. "I have possess'd your Grace of what I purpose, / And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn / To have the due and forfeit of my bond." Spoken by Shylock to the Duke at the opening of the trial, in answer to the Duke's appeal for mercy. "Possess'd your Grace" means that he has already informed the Duke of his intention, and the "holy Sabbath" is the Jewish day of rest, on which he swore the oath he now says he cannot break.

B. "Come you from old Bellario?" Spoken by the Duke to Portia as she enters the court dressed as a doctor of laws, immediately after the letter recommending her has been read. Bellario is the learned doctor of Padua, Portia's cousin, who has sent in his place the young "Balthazar" she is pretending to be.

C. "Are you acquainted with the difference / That holds this present question in the court?" Spoken by the Duke to the disguised Portia, asking whether she knows the dispute she has come to decide. Her answer, that she is "informed throughly of the cause", is what allows the hearing to proceed, and the exchange is the moment the court accepts a woman it believes to be a young man from Padua.

D. "I am a tainted wether of the flock, / Meetest for death, the weakest kind of fruit / Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me." Spoken by Antonio in court, telling Bassanio not to grieve. A wether is a castrated ram and "meetest" means fittest, so he is calling himself the diseased animal of the flock and the fruit that falls first, which is his way of accepting death as suitable rather than unjust.

E. "It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself." Spoken by Portia in the middle of the speech on mercy, arguing that mercy is above the sceptre because the sceptre shows only the force of temporal power, while earthly power comes nearest to God's when mercy tempers justice. It is the same speech as passage 14 and is the part MU has set separately.

F. "An oath, an oath! I have an oath in heaven. / Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? / No, not for Venice." Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, in answer to her statement that three times the money has been offered him. He refuses on the ground that he has sworn in heaven to have the bond, so that taking the money would be perjury, and the answer is important because it puts his refusal on conscience rather than on greed.

G. "Not on thy sole but on thy soul, harsh Jew, / Thou mak'st thy knife keen." Spoken by Gratiano while Shylock sharpens his knife on the sole of his shoe in open court. The line is a pun on "sole" and "soul": Gratiano says the blade is being sharpened not on the leather but on the man's own hardness, and he adds that no metal, not even the hangman's axe, has half the keenness of Shylock's malice. When a paper asks you to explain the figure of speech, this is the pun it means.

H. "Repent but you that you shall lose your friend, / And he repents not that he pays your debt." Spoken by Antonio to Bassanio just before the sentence is to be executed. It means that Bassanio should regret only the loss of a friend, since Antonio himself does not regret paying the debt, and it is the high point of the friendship the play sets against the bond.

I. "Antonio, gratify this gentleman, / For in my mind you are much bound to him." Spoken by the Duke as he leaves the court, telling Antonio to reward the young lawyer who has saved him. It sets up the ring plot of Act V, because the fee the disguised Portia then asks for is the ring she herself gave Bassanio.

J. "Ay, his breast, so says the bond, doth it not, noble judge? Nearest his heart: those are the very words." Spoken by Shylock to the disguised Portia, when she asks whether the bond allows him to cut from the breast. He quotes the document from memory, and the answer matters because a moment later the same insistence on the exact words is used against him: the bond says a pound of flesh and says nothing about blood.

How to place a passage you have never seen

Look for a name. Shylock, Tubal, Nerissa, Launcelet and Gobbo can only be this play. Portia and Bassanio the same.

Look for the vocabulary. Ducats, argosies, the Rialto, gaberdine, usance, casket, bond and forfeiture all point here.

Look for the verse. If it is verse with a heavy Elizabethan flavour, in a paper whose other texts are eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, an American short story and a modern legal thriller, the odds are strongly on Shakespeare.

Then answer the attached question. Even a partial placing plus a correct answer to the question will earn most of the two marks.

What beginners get wrong

They summarise the play instead of placing the lines. Two sentences means two.

They name the speaker and stop. The attached question carries the mark, and it is usually the second half.

They misquote. If you are unsure of the words, refer to the passage instead of reproducing it wrongly: "in the speech beginning with the quality of mercy".

They mix up who says what in the trial. Gratiano, not Portia, supplies most of the abuse; Shylock, not Gratiano, first calls Portia a Daniel.

A worked answer

Question. A passage you have never prepared is printed, and you must place it in two sentences.

The passage. "The quality of mercy is not strain'd, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath."

The two-sentence answer. These lines are spoken by Portia, disguised as the young doctor of laws Balthazar, in the court of the Duke of Venice in Act IV Scene i of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in answer to Shylock's question "On what compulsion must I?" She concedes in the first line that mercy cannot be forced, and argues instead that it blesses both the giver and the receiver and is the attribute in which earthly power most resembles God's.

Why this is a full answer. Text and author, speaker and disguise, place in the play, the person addressed, the question being answered, and the argument of the passage. Six facts in two sentences, and none of them padding.

Quick revision

Four steps: text and author, speaker and addressee, what is happening, then the attached question.

Highest-value passages by act: I.i the sadness; I.ii the dead father's will; I.iii the aside, the Scripture line, the forfeiture, "fair terms and a villain's mind"; II.vii "All that glisters"; II.viii "My daughter! O my ducats!"; III.i "Hath not a Jew eyes" and the turquoise; III.ii ornament; III.iii the course of law; IV.i ducats, mercy, "a great right", Daniel, "nominated in the bond", "no jot of blood", "the means whereby I live", "I am content"; V.i the candle and the music.

Test yourself

1. Place these lines and answer: "Is it so nominated in the bond?" Spoken by Shylock in the ducal court in Act IV Scene i, refusing to have a surgeon ready to stop Antonio's wounds because the bond does not mention one. It matters because he thereby insists in open court that only what is written counts, and Portia immediately applies the same rule to defeat him.

2. Who says "A Daniel come to judgment", and who repeats it? Shylock says it first, in praise of the disguised Portia when she refuses to bend the law. Gratiano throws it back at him after the judgment turns, saying "A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!"

3. What does "naughty" mean in "a good deed in a naughty world"? Wicked. The modern sense of mildly badly behaved is later, and using it would misread the line.

4. Whose speech contains the phrase "the rate of usance", and what does it mean? Shylock's, in his aside in Act I Scene iii. Usance means the lending of money at interest, so the rate of usance is the going rate of interest in Venice, which Antonio's free lending brings down.

5. Why does MU's own note insist on the original text for reference to context? Because an abridged or retold version changes the words, and a reference-to-context question is set on the exact words. A candidate who has read only a simplified version will not recognise the passage on the paper.