The Merchant of Venice

“Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,
To whom I am a neighbor and near bred.
Bring me the fairest creature northward born,
Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles,
And let us make incision for your love
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.”

--William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

The first first two lines of this famous quote were included in the frontispiece of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans.