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'd1 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. Oh, 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,2

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.

1 Bewitched, in allusion to the superstitious notion of the influence of malignant and envious eyes.

2 "To peize the time," i.e., to weight the time, that it may pass slowly. "Peize" is from the French word signifying "to weigh or "to balance."

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.

If

Portia. Away, then! I am lock'd in one of them: 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-like1 end,

Fading in music: that the comparison

May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And watery deathbed 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,2 when he did redeem

1 It is an old belief that the swan, at other times songless, "chants a doleful hymn to his own death."

2 It fell to the lot of Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, King of Troy, to be exposed to the sea monster to whom the Trojans from time to time offered

The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
To the sea monster: I stand for sacrifice;
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,1
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 mak'st 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 deceiv'd with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being season'd 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 ?

a marriageable virgin to appease the wrath of Apollo and Neptune, whom Laomedon had offended; but Alcides (Hercules, see Note 3, p. 35), who, returning from his expedition against the Amazons, had stopped at Troy, promised to rescue the princess provided he received as a reward six beautiful horses. The king consented, and Alcides attacked and slew the monster just as he was going to devour the maiden.

1" Dardanian wives," i.e., Trojan matrons. It is fabled that Dardanus, son of Jupiter, founded the Kingdom of Troy: hence this appellation of "Dardanian" to its inhabitants.

There is no vice so simple but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his 1 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 valor's excrement 2
To render them redoubted! Look on beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchas'd 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 sepulcher.

3

Thus ornament is but the guiled 3 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 meager lead,

1 In Shakespeare's time "his" was used as the possessive of "it" as well as of "he."

2 "Valor's excrement," i.e., the outward sign of valor, referring here to the beard.

3 Treacherous.

4 Midas was a King of Phrygia. According to the mythologists, his hospitality to Silenus, the preceptor of Bacchus, was liberally rewarded by that god; and he was permitted to demand any recompense he desired. The King asked that whatever he touched might be turned into gold. His request was granted; but, when the very meats he attempted to eat became gold in his mouth, he begged Bacchus to revoke a gift that must prove fatal to the receiver.

Which rather threat'nest than dost promise aught,
Thy plainness 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-embrac'd despair,
And shudd'ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy!

O love,

Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy;

In measure rain 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 demigod

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 1 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.

1 "Continent " means here" that which contains."