How many things by season season'd 17 are
To their right praise and true perfection! —
Peace, ho! the Moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awaked !18

Loren.

[Music ceases.

That is the voice,

Or I am much deceived, of Portia.

Portia. He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, By the bad voice.

Loren.

Dear lady, welcome home.

Portia. We have been praying for our husbands' welfare, Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.

17 A rather unpleasant jingle in season and season'd. The meaning is, that, by being rightly timed, the things are tempered and made fit for their purpose; hence relished.

18 Endymion was a very beautiful youth: Juno took a fancy to him, whereupon Jupiter grew jealous of him, and cast him into a perpetual sleep on Mount Latmos. While he was there asleep, Luna got so smitten with his beauty, that she used to come down and kiss him, and lie by his side. Some said, however, that Luna herself put him asleep, that she might have the pleasure of kissing him without his knowing it, the youth being somewhat shy when awake. The story was naturally a favourite with the poets. Fletcher, in The Faithful Shepherdess, tells the tale charmingly, —

How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,

First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;

How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,

His temples bound with poppy, to the steep

Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,

Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest.

No note at all of our being absent hence;

Nor you, Lorenzo ; — Jessica, nor you. [A Tucket19 sounds. Loren. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet: We are no tell-tales, madam; fear

you not. Portia. This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick;

It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,

Such as a day is when the Sun is hid.

Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their Followers.

Bass. We should hold day with the Antipodes,2 If you would walk in absence of the Sun.

20

Portia. Let me give light, but let me not be light ;21
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,
And never be Bassanio so for me:

But God sort all!22 You're welcome home, my lord.
Bass. I thank you, madam. Give welcome to my
This is the man, this is Antonio,

To whom I am so infinitely bound.

friend:

Portia. You should in all sense 23 be much bound to him, For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.

Anto. No more than I am well acquitted of.
Portia. Sir, you are very welcome to our house :

19 A tucket is a peculiar series of notes on a trumpet. Probably the word is from the Italian toccata, which is said to mean a prelude to a sonata.

20 This is making Portia pretty luminous or radiant. To "hold day with the Antipodes" is to have day at the same time with them. But Bassanio is deep in love with Portia : and so am I. Who is not?

21 Twice before in these scenes, we had had playing upon light: here it is especially graceful and happy. See page 142, note 18.

22 Sort here has the sense of the Latin sortior: "God allot all," or dispose all.

23 Is sense used for reason here? So it would seem. all feeling or sensibility? Perhaps all sense is put for

senses.

Or does it mean in

every sense or all

It must appear in other ways than words,

Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.24

Grati. [To NERIS.] By yonder Moon I swear you do me

wrong;

In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk.

Portia. A quarrel, ho, already! what's the matter?

Grati. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring

That she did give to me; whose posy was
For all the world like cutler's poetry
Upon a knife,25 Love me, and leave me not.

Neris. What talk you of the posy or the value?
You swore to me, when I did give it you,
That you would wear it till your hour of death;
And that it should lie with you in your grave:
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,
You should have been respective,26 and have kept it.
Gave it a judge's clerk! no, God's my judge!
The clerk will ne'er wear hair on's face that had it.
Grati. He will, an if he live to be a man.

Neris. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.
Grati. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth,

A kind of boy; a little scrubbed 27 boy,

No higher than thyself, the judge's clerk;

24 This complimentary form, made up only of breath.

25 Knives were formerly inscribed, by means of aqua fortis, with short sentences in distich. The posy of a ring was the motto.

26 Respective is considerate or regardful; in the same sense as respect is explained, page 83, note 20. The word is repeatedly used thus by Shakespeare; as in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1: “Away to Heaven respective lenity, and fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!"

27 Scrubbed is here used in the sense of stunted; as in Holland's Pliny: "Such will never prove fair trees, but scrubs only." And Verplanck observes that the name scrub oak was from the first settlement of this country given to the dwarf or bush oak.

A prating boy, that begg'd it as a fee:

I could not for my heart deny it him.

Portia. You were to blame. -I must be plain with you
To part so slightly with your wife's first gift;
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger,
And riveted with faith unto your flesh.

I gave my love a ring, and made him swear
Never to part with it; and here he stands :

I dare be sworn for him, he would not leave it,
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth
That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,
You give your wife too únkind cause of grief:

An 'twere to me, I should be mad at it.

Bass. [Aside.] Why, I were best to cut my left hand off, And swear I lost the ring defending it.

Grati. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away

Unto the judge that begg'd it, and indeed
Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk,
That took some pains in writing, he begg'd mine:
And neither man nor master would take aught
But the two rings.

Portia.

What ring gave you, my lord?
Not that, I hope, which you received of me.
Bass. If I could add a lie unto a fault,
I would deny it; but you see my finger
Hath not the ring upon it, - it is gone.

Portia. Even so void is your false heart of truth.

By Heaven, I will ne'er come in your bed

If

If

you did know to whom I gave the ring,

you

did know for whom I gave the ring, And would conceive for what I gave the ring, And how unwillingly I left the ring,

When nought would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.
Portia. If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain 28 the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.
What man is there so much unreasonable,
If you had pleased to have defended it
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
To urge the thing held as a ceremony?
Nerissa teaches me what to believe:

I'll die for't, but some woman had the ring.

Bass. No, by mine honour, madam, by my soul,

No woman had it; but a Civil Doctor,2 29

Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me,
And begg'd the ring; the which I did deny him,
And suffer'd him to go displeased away;

Even he that did uphold the very life

Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady?

I was enforced to send it after him:

I was beset with shame and courtesy ;

30

28 Contain was sometimes used in the sense of retain. So in Bacon's Essays: "To containe anger from mischiefe, though it take hold of a man, there be two things."

29 A Civil Doctor is a doctor of the Civil Law.

30 "Shame and courtesy" is here put for shame of discourtesy. The Poet has several like expressions. In King Lear, i. 2: "This policy and reverence of age"; which means "This policy, or custom, of reverencing age." Also in i. 5: "This milky gentleness and course of yours"; that is, milky and