Belmont. A room in PORTIA’S house.
[Enter PORTIA and 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 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 pronounced.
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
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?
NERISSA 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?
PORTIA I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou
namest 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
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 there is the County Palatine.
PORTIA 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!
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, 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 capering: he will fence with his own shadow:
if I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands.
If he would despise me I would forgive him, for if he
love me to madness, I shall never requite him.
NERISSA What say you, then, to Falconbridge,
the young baron of England?
PORTIA 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 dumb-show? How oddly he is suited!
I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round
hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his
behavior every where.
NERISSA
What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?
PORTIA 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.
NERISSA How like you the young German,
the Duke of Saxony’s nephew?
PORTIA 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:
and the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall
make shift to go without him.
NERISSA 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.
PORTIA 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.
NERISSA 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.
PORTIA 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.
NERISSA 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?
PORTIA Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so called.
NERISSA True, madam: he, of all the men that ever my
foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.
PORTIA I remember him well, and I remember him
worthy of thy praise.
[Enter a Serving-man]
How now! what news?
Servant 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.
PORTIA 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.
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