Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio
But stay the very riping of the time;
And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me,
Let it not enter in your mind of love:
Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts
To courtship and such fair ostents of love
As shall conveniently become you there:’
And even there, his eye being big with tears,
Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,
And with affection wondrous sensible
He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted.
Salanio
I think he only loves the world for him.
I pray thee, let us go and find him out
And quicken his embraced heaviness
With some delight or other.
Salarino
Do we so.
Exeunt
SCENE IX. BELMONT. A ROOM IN PORTIA’S HOUSE.
Enter Nerissa with a Servitor
Nerissa
Quick, quick, I pray thee; draw the curtain straight:
The Prince of Arragon hath ta’en his oath,
And comes to his election presently.
Flourish of cornets. Enter the Prince Of Arragon, Portia, and their trains
Portia
Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince:
If you choose that wherein I am contain’d,
Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized:
But if you fail, without more speech, my lord,
You must be gone from hence immediately.
Arragon
I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things:
First, never to unfold to any one
Which casket ’twas I chose; next, if I fail
Of the right casket, never in my life
To woo a maid in way of marriage: Lastly,
If I do fail in fortune of my choice,
Immediately to leave you and be gone.
Portia
To these injunctions every one doth swear
That comes to hazard for my worthless self.
Arragon
And so have I address’d me. Fortune now
To my heart’s hope! Gold; silver; and base lead.
‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’
You shall look fairer, ere I give or hazard.
What says the golden chest? ha! let me see:
‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.’
What many men desire! that ‘many’ may be meant
By the fool multitude, that choose by show,
Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach;
Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet,
Builds in the weather on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casualty.
I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.
Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house;
Tell me once more what title thou dost bear:
‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves:’
And well said too; for who shall go about
To cozen fortune and be honourable
Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.
O, that estates, degrees and offices
Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover that stand bare!
How many be commanded that command!
How much low peasantry would then be glean’d
From the true seed of honour! and how much honour
Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times
To be new-varnish’d! Well, but to my choice:
‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.’
I will assume desert. Give me a key for this,
And instantly unlock my fortunes here.
He opens the silver casket
Portia
Too long a pause for that which you find there.
Arragon
What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot,
Presenting me a schedule! I will read it.
How much unlike art thou to Portia!
How much unlike my hopes and my deservings!
‘Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.’
Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head?
Is that my prize? are my deserts no better?
Portia
To offend, and judge, are distinct offices
And of opposed natures.
Arragon
What is here?
[Reads] The fire seven times tried this:
Seven times tried that judgment is,
That did never choose amiss.
Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow’s bliss:
There be fools alive, I wis,
Silver’d o’er; and so was this.
Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head:
So be gone: you are sped.
Still more fool I shall appear
By the time I linger here
With one fool’s head I came to woo,
But I go away with two.
Sweet, adieu. I’ll keep my oath,
Patiently to bear my wroth.
Exeunt Arragon and train
Portia
Thus hath the candle singed the moth.
O, these deliberate fools! when they do choose,
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.
Nerissa
The ancient saying is no heresy,
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
Portia
Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa.
Enter a Servant
Servant
Where is my lady?
Portia
Here: what would my lord?
Servant
Madam, there is alighted at your gate
A young Venetian, one that comes before
To signify the approaching of his lord;
From whom he bringeth sensible regreets,
To wit, besides commends and courteous breath,
Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen
So likely an ambassador of love:
A day in April never came so sweet,
To show how costly summer was at hand,
As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord.
Portia
No more, I pray thee: I am half afeard
Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee,
Thou spend’st such high-day wit in praising him.
Come, come, Nerissa; for I long to see
Quick Cupid’s post that comes so mannerly.
Nerissa
Bassanio, lord Love, if thy will it be!
Exeunt
ACT III
SCENE I. VENICE. A STREET.
Enter Salanio and Salarino
Salanio
Now, what news on the Rialto?
Salarino
Why, yet it lives there uncheck’d that Antonio hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the Goodwins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.
Salanio
I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband. But it is true, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the honest Antonio,— O that I had a title good enough to keep his name company!—
Salarino
Come, the full stop.
Salanio
Ha! what sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath
lost a ship.
Salarino
I would it might prove the end of his losses.
Salanio
Let me say ‘amen’ betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.
Enter Shylock
How now, Shylock! what news among the merchants?
Shylock
You know, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter’s flight.
Salarino
That’s certain: I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal.
Salanio
And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam.
Shylock
She is damned for it.
Salanio
That’s certain, if the devil may be her judge.
Shylock
My own flesh and blood to rebel!
Salanio
Out upon it, old carrion! rebels it at these years?
Shylock
I say, my daughter is my flesh and blood.
Salarino
There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is between red wine and rhenish. But tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no?
Shylock
There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.
Salarino
Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what’s that good for?
Shylock
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
Enter a Servant
Servant
Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and desires to speak with you both.
Salarino
We have been up and down to seek him.
Enter Tubal
Salanio
Here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew.
Exeunt Salanio, Salarino, and Servant
Shylock
How now, Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast thou found my daughter?
Tubal
I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her.
Shylock
Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them? Why, so: and I know not what’s spent in the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no in luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding.
Tubal
Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in Genoa,—
Shylock
What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?
Tubal
Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis.
Shylock
I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true?
Tubal
I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck.
Shylock
I thank thee, good Tubal: good news, good news! ha, ha! where? in Genoa?
Tubal
Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, in one night fourscore ducats.
Shylock
Thou stickest a dagger in me: I shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats!
Tubal
There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break.
Shylock
I am very glad of it: I’ll plague him; I’ll torture him: I am glad of it.
Tubal
One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.
Shylock
Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
Tubal
But Antonio is certainly undone.
Shylock
Nay, that’s true, that’s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandise I will. Go, go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal.
Exeunt
SCENE II. 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 confes
sion:
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
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,
Complete Plays, The Page 303