Referenced By / The Merchant of Venice

Anime & Manga

• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Ghiaccio rants about the pronunciation of Venezia/Venice over how they're used in The Merchant of Venice and Death in Venice.

Comic Strips

• This Dilbert comic.
  Tina: If you prick us, do we not bleed like engineers?
• The New Yorker satirized the Citizens United ruling with a cartoon where a lawyer asks the judges, "If you prick a corporation, does it not bleed? If you tickle it, does it not laugh? If you poison it, does it not die?"

Fan Works

• The Stronger Evil: When Drago tries to meditate in the ninth chapter, he mutters that "the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children".
• In the Gunslinger Girl fanfic Marisa 13: Shakespeare in the Dorm the cyborg girls put on a performance of this play for their handlers. Highlights including Marisa (playing Shylock) stabbing herself for real during the "prick us do we not bleed" speech.

Film — Animated

• The famous speech is parodied by the gargoyles in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
  Victor: Yet, if you chip us, shall we not flake? If you moisten us, do we not grow moss?

Film — Live Action

• In OSS 117: Lost in Rio, a Nazi says: "I am a Nazi. Hath not a Nazi eyes? Hath not a Nazi hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
• "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" (III.i) is quoted in The Pianist. Later, a character is seen reading the play; he bought it because it was appropriate for the situation.
• In Schindler's List, when Nazi commander Amon Goeth is about to kiss his Jewish maid:
  Goeth: Hath not a Jew eyes?
• In Se7en the serial killer literally takes a pound of flesh from a victim. He makes the guy chose the spot it is taken from, just like in the play.
• In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country the Shakespeare-loving Klingon general Chang quotes the "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech during the final space battle.
• The quality of mercy speech is something of an arc-word in the dark comedy To Be or Not to Be, and it's ironically paraphrased at one point by The Quisling to argue that "Nazis are people too".
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: Wonka's line "So shines a good deed in a weary world" comes from Act 5, Scene 1.

Literature

• In Moving Pictures, Rock the troll suspects speciesism at work when his human co-star objects to a romantic subplot with him.
  Rock: If you cut me, do I not bleed?
  Soll Dibbler: No, you don't. But—
  Rock: Ah, yes, but I would. If I had blood, I'd bleed all over the place.
• Subverted in Neverwhere.
  Mr. Croup: ... if you prick us, do we not bleed?
  Mr. Vandemar: Erm, no.
• Silver on the Tree:
  Merriman: If you prick us, we bleed, if you tickle us, we laugh—only, if you poison us, we do not die, and there are certain feelings and perceptions in us that are not in you.
• The lines "The quality of mercy is not strain'd/It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" is quoted in several books by P. G. Wodehouse.
  • "The man that hath no music in himself/Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils" also comes up a few times; in Thank You, Jeeves Bertie quotes it to defend his banjolele-playing when the neighbors in his flat start complaining.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5 has an episode called "The Quality of Mercy".
• Battlestar Galactica:
  Roslin: You have your pound of flesh.
• In the Buffy episode "I Only Have Eyes For You", a poltergeist is haunting Sunnydale High, and it turns out to be the ghost of a student who had an affair with his teacher, only to kill her and himself when she rejected him. Buffy has no sympathy for the student, saying he should spend the rest of his life in prison. Xander's reaction is, "The quality of mercy is not Buffy".
  • Earlier in the episode, Buffy and Cordelia are in English class learning about the play. Cordelia completely misses the point of the antisemitism in the play by comparing Shylock's "whining" to a bicyclist Cordelia ran over, who was more focused on their own pain than Cordelia's "traumatic experience" (which she caused).
• In Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the wicked stepsisters have different names in various productions. In the 1957 original, they are Joy and Portia, both of which are Ironic Names: Joy is grumpy and Portia, named for the clever lawyer, is a Dumb Blonde.
• An episode of the German import of Monty Python's Flying Circus featured a scene of Venice... as performed by cows.
• Sports Night: In the first season episode "Sally", when Kim, Elliot, Chris, Will and Dave are all sitting around bored because it's a slow news day, Kim asks the others if they remember Salanio and Salerio, and how they brought news to the court. When Jeremy comes into the room, Kim treats him as if he's bringing news, Jeremy gets the reference, and then proceeds to tell them what's been going on in the episode.
• Parodied in 3rd Rock from the Sun when Harry interrupts a sci-fi convention to rave about their portrayal of aliens. ("Hath not an alien eyes or buttocks?")
• In the third season of Veronica Mars, Veronica mentions how Parker's parents are extracting their pound of flesh from the university administration after Parker gets raped.

Music

• One of the songs for the soundtrack of ''Dead Man Walking" (by Michelle Shocked) is called "The Quality of Mercy".

Theatre

• The quality of mercy speech is paraphrased by Psychopomp Mr. Coffee in On the Verge.
• In the play and the movie version of Six Degrees of Separation, Elizabeth is an aspiring actress, and she delivers part of "The quality of mercy" speech to show off her acting abilities. Becomes an Ironic Echo in the movie when she bitterly delivers it to the Kitteridges' doorman.
• Something Rotten!: Among the many allusions to Shakespeare, Nigel's love interest is named Portia, and Nick's wife Bea saves them from the chopping block by dressing up as a male lawyer like Portia does.

Video Games

• In the second expansion to Civilization V, Venice's unique replacement for the Great Merchant unit is called a Merchant of Venice.

Webcomics

• Freefall When Clippy is told that a human would be more vindictive than he was about being functionally brainwashed (by direct orders) into helping Mr. Kornada almost destroy the planet, he points out that robots aren't human — "If you prick us, we do not bleed. If you tickle us, we do not laugh. If you poison us, we do not die. And if you wrong us, we shall not seek revenge."

Web Original

• Cracked has one in a parody in "The 9 Most Utterly Insane Products Released by Famous Brands":
  If you prick us, do we not stomp your teeth into the curb?

Western Animation

• The Critic:
  Keanu Reeves: (as Shylock in a film adaptation) Hath not a dude eyes? If you prick us, do we not get bummed? If we eat bad guacamole, do we not blow chunks?
• Family Guy: In "Brian: Portrait of a Dog", Brian paraphrases the play in his opening statement at his trial.
  Brian: Does a dog not feel? If you scratch him, does his leg not shake?
• Futurama: In "All the Way Down", Bender is mortified at finding out he's an artificial intelligence and insists that he's real, asking "If you prick me, do I not bleed?". He then tries to prick himself to prove his point, but since he's a robot and can't bleed, he's forced to admit it's a bad example coming from him.
• Hey Arnold!: In "Rhonda's Glasses", Rhonda quotes Shylock's speech when rallying the "geeks" to revolt against the popular kids.
• During Beast's trial in an early episode of X-Men: The Animated Series:
  Beast: ... if you prick us, do we not bleed?
  Judge: Don't tempt these people, Mr. McCoy.
• What If…? (2021): In "What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?", Thor is murdered and Loki shows up looking for revenge. Nick Fury offers an alliance to track down the killer, assuring Loki that he'll get his "pound of flesh". Loki, evidently unfamiliar with the expression, declares that he intends to have the perpetrator's entire corpse.

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