Lor. Well, we will leave you then, till dinner-time: I must be one of these same dumb wise men, For Gratiano never lets me speak. Gra. Well, keep me company but two years more, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. Ant. Farewell: I'll grow a talker for this gear. Gra. Thanks, i' faith, for silence is only commendable In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible. [Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo. Ant. Is that any thing now? Bass. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search. Ant. Well, tell me now what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, Bass. "Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate, Ant. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; And if it stand, as yourself still do, Within the eye of honour, be assured, My purse, my person, my extremest means, Lie all unlock'd to your occasions. 120 130 Bass. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 140 I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way with more advised watch, To find the other forth, and by adventuring both Because what follows is pure innocence. I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, (150 Or bring your latter hazard back again And thankfully rest debtor for the first. Ant. You know me well, and herein spend but time To wind about my love with circumstance; And out of doubt you do me now more wrong In making question of my uttermost Than if you had made waste of all I have: That in your knowledge may by me be done, Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, 160 For the four winds blow in from every coast Hang on her temples like a golden fleece; 170 Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand, O my Antonio, had I but the means To hold a rival place with one of them, I have a mind presages me such thrift, That I should questionless be fortunate! Ant. Thou know'st that all my fortunes are at sea; To raise a present sum: therefore go forth; To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go, presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is, and I no question make 180 [Exeunt. SCENE II. Belmont. A room in PORTIA's house. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. Ner. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much It is no mean happiness as they that starve with nothing. therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. 10 Por. Good sentences and well pronounced. Por. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word "choose!" I may neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none? 29 Ner. Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their death have good inspirations: therefore the lottery, that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will, no doubt, never be chosen by any rightly but one who shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come? Por. I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection. Ner. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. Por. Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith. Ner. Then there is the County Palatine. : Por. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say "If you will not have me, choose:" he hears merry tales and smiles not I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two! Ner. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon? Por. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man; if a throstle sing, he falls straight a caper ing he will fence with his own shadow if I should marry If he would de him, I should marry twenty husbands. 70 spise me, I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him. Ner. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of England? Por. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumbshow? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour every-where. Ner. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour? Por. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and swore he would pay him again when he was able: I think the Frenchman became his surety and sealed under for another. 91 Ner. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew? Por. Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast in the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him. Ner. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father's will, if you should refuse to accept him. Por. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, set a deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do any thing, Nerissa, ere I'll be married to a sponge. Ner. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords: they have acquainted me with their determinations; which is, indeed, to return to their home and to trouble you with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father's imposition depending on the caskets. Por. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father's will. I am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for there is not one among them but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God grant them a fair departure. Ner. Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat ? Por. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so called. Ner. True, madam he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady. Por. I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy praise. Enter a Serving-man. How now! what news? Serv. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their leave and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the prince his master will be here to-night. 139 Por. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good a heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his approach: if he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me. Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. Whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks at the door. SCENE III. Venice. A public place. Enter BASSANIO and SHYLOCK. Shy. Three thousand ducats; well. Bass. Ay, sir, for three months. Shy. For three months; well, [Exeunt. Bass. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound. Shy. Antonio shall become bound; well. Bass. May you stead me? will you pleasure me? shall I know your answer? Shy. Three thousand ducats for three months and Antonio bound. Bass. Your answer to that. Shy. Antonio is a good man. 10 Bass. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary? Shy. Oh, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be landrats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds and |