The same. A garden.
[Enter Launcelot and Jessica.]
LAUNCELOT GOBBO. Yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children: therefore, promise you, I fear you. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of the matter: therefore be of good cheer, for truly I think you are damned. There is but one hope in it that can do you any good; and that is but a kind of bastard hope neither.
JESSICA. And what hope is that, I pray thee?
LAUNCELOT GOBBO. Marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not, that you are not the Jew’s daughter.
JESSICA. That were a kind of bastard hope, indeed: so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me.
LAUNCELOT GOBBO. Truly then I fear you are damned 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.
LAUNCELOT GOBBO. Truly, the more to blame he: we were Christians enow before; e’en as many as could well live, one by
another. This making Christian 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.
JESSICA. I’ll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say: here he comes.
[Enter Lorenzo.]
LORENZO. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you thus get my wife into corners.
JESSICA. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo: Launcelot and I are out. He tells me flatly, there is 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 con-Verting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork.