Belmont. A room in PORTIA'S house. Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and Attendants PORTIA I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile.
There's something tells me, but it is not love, I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand me well,--And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,--I would detain you here some month or two Before you venture for me. I could teach you How to choose right, but I am then forsworn;So will I never be: so may you miss me;
But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, They have o'erlook'd me and divided me;One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours. O, these naughty times Put bars between the owners and their rights!
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long; but 'tis to peize the time, To eke it and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election. BASSANIO Let me choose For as I am, I live upon the rack. PORTIA Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess What treason there is mingled with your love. BASSANIO None but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love:
There may as well be amity and life 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. PORTIA Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything. BASSANIO Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. PORTIA Well then, confess and live. BASSANIO 'Confess' and 'love'
Had been the very sum of my confession:
O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
But let me to my fortune and the caskets. PORTIA Away, then! I am lock'd in one of them:
If you do love me, you will find me out.
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And watery death-bed for him. He may win;And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch: such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, And summon him to marriage. Now he goes, With no less presence, but with much more love, Than young Alcides, when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, With bleared visages, come forth to view The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules!
Live thou, I live: with much, much more dismay I view the fight than thou that makest the fray.
Music, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself SONG.
Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engender'd in the eyes, With gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell I'll begin it,--Ding, dong, bell. ALL Ding, dong, bell. BASSANIO So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts:
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk;And these assume but valour's excrement To render them redoubted! Look on beauty, And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence;And here choose I; joy be the consequence! PORTIA [Aside] How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy!
O love, Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy, In measure rein thy joy; scant this excess.
I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit. BASSANIO What find I here?
Opening the leaden casket Fair Portia's counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?
Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion? Here are sever'd lips, Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs The painter plays the spider and hath woven A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men, Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes,--How could he see to do them? having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his And leave itself unfurnish'd. Yet look, how far The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow In underprizing it, so far this shadow Doth limp behind the substance. Here's the scroll, The continent and summary of my fortune.
Reads You that choose not by the view, Chance as fair and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you, Be content and seek no new, If you be well pleased with this And hold your fortune for your bliss, Turn you where your lady is And claim her with a loving kiss.
A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave;I come by note, to give and to receive.
