Would scatter all her spices on the stream,
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,
And in a word, but even now worth this,
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And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought
That such a thing bechanc’d would make me sad?
But tell not me, I know Antonio
Is sad to think upon his merchandise.
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ANTONIO Believe me no, I thank my fortune for it –
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.
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SOLANIO Why then you are in love.
ANTONIO Fie, fie!
SOLANIO
Not in love neither: then let us say you are sad
Because you are not merry; and ’twere as easy
For you to laugh and leap, and say you are merry
Because you are not sad. Now by two-headed Janus,
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Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper:
And other of such vinegar aspect,
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile
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Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO and GRATIANO.
Here comes Bassanio your most noble kinsman,
Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well,
We leave you now with better company.
SALERIO I would have stay’d till I had made you merry,
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If worthier friends had not prevented me.
ANTONIO Your worth is very dear in my regard.
I take it your own business calls on you,
And you embrace th’occasion to depart.
SALERIO Good morrow my good lords.
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BASSANIO
Good signiors both when shall we laugh? say, when?
You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?
SALERIO We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours.
Exeunt Salerio and Solanio.
LORENZO
My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio
We two will leave you, but at dinner-time
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I pray you have in mind where we must meet.
BASSANIO I will not fail you.
GRATIANO You look not well Signior Antonio,
You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care, –
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Believe me you are marvellously chang’d.
ANTONIO I hold the world but as the world Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
GRATIANO Let me play the fool,
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
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And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire, cut in alablaster?
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
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By being peevish? I tell thee what Antonio,
(I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks):
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
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With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.’
O my Antonio, I do know of these
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That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing; when I am very sure
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
Which (hearing them) would call their brothers fools, –
I’ll tell thee more of this another time.
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But fish not with this melancholy bait
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion: –
Come good Lorenzo, – fare ye well a while,
I’ll end my exhortation after dinner.
LORENZO Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time.
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I must be one of these same dumb wise men,
For Gratiano never lets me speak.
GRATIANO Well keep me company but two years moe
Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.
ANTONIO Fare you well, I’ll grow a talker for this gear.
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GRATIANO
Thanks i’faith, for silence is only commendable
In a neat’s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.
Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo.
ANTONIO It is that anything now.
BASSANIO Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing
(more than any man in all Venice), his reasons are as
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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.
ANTONIO Well, tell me now what lady is the same
To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage –
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That you to-day promis’d to tell me of?
BASSANIO ’Tis not unknown to you Antonio
How much I have disabled mine estate,
By something showing a more swelling port
Than my faint means would grant continuance:
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Nor do I now make moan to be abridg’d
From such a noble rate, but my chief care
Is to come fairly off from the great debts
Wherein my time (something too prodigal)
Hath left me gag’d: to you Antonio
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I owe the most in money and in love,
And from your love I have a warranty
To unburthen all my plots and purposes
How to get clear of all the debts I owe.
ANTONIO I pray you good Bassanio let me know it,
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And if it stand as you yourself still do,
Within the eye of honour, be assur’d
My purse, my person, my extremest means
Lie all unlock’d to your occasions.
BASSANIO
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,
I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof
Because what follows is pure innocence.
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I owe you much, and (like a wilful youth)
That which I owe is lost, but if you please
To shoot another arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,
(As I will watch the aim) or to find both,
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Or bring your latter hazard back again,
And thankfully rest debtor for the first.
ANTONIO
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
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In making question of my uttermost
Than if you had made waste of all I have:
Then do but say to me what I should do
That in your knowledge may by me be done,
And I am prest unto it: therefore speak.
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BASSANIO In Belmont i
s a lady richly left,
And she is fair, and (fairer than that word),
Of wondrous virtues, – sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages:
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalu’d
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To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia,
Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,
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Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strond,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
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
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That I should questionless be fortunate.
ANTONIO Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea,
Neither have I money, nor commodity
To raise a present sum, therefore go forth
Try what my credit can in Venice do, –
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That shall be rack’d even to the uttermost
To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.
Go presently inquire (and so will I)
Where money is, and I no question make
To have it of my trust, or for my sake. Exeunt.
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1.2 Enter PORTIA with her waiting-woman NERISSA.
PORTIA By my troth Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.
NERISSA 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
5
too much, as they that starve with nothing; it is no
mean happiness therefore to be seated in the mean, –
superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but
competency lives longer.
PORTIA Good sentences, and well pronounc’d.
10
NERISSA They would be better if well followed.
PORTIA 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
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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
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this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a
husband, – O me the word ‘choose’! I may neither
choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike, so is the
will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead
father: is it not hard Nerissa, that I cannot choose one,
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nor refuse none?
NERISSA Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at
their death have good inspirations, – therefore the
lott’ry that he hath devised in these three chests of
gold, silver, and lead, whereof who chooses his
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meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen
by any rightly, but one who you shall rightly love. But
what warmth is there in your affection towards any of
these princely suitors that are already come?
PORTIA I pray thee over-name them, and as thou namest
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them, I will describe them, and according to my
description level at my affection.
NERISSA First there is the Neapolitan prince.
PORTIA Ay that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but
talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation
40
to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself: I
am much afeard my lady his mother played false with
a smith.
NERISSA Then is there the County Palatine.
PORTIA He doth nothing but frown (as who should say,
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‘and 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,
50
than to either of these: God defend me from these two.
NERISSA How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le
Bon?
PORTIA God made him, and therefore let him pass for a
man, – in truth I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but
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he! why he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 363