ARKCODEX
Act I, Scene 2
1Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.
2Enter Portia and Nerissa.
3PortiaBy my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.
4NerissaYou 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.
5PortiaGood sentences and well pronounced.
6NerissaThey would be better, if well followed.
7PortiaIf 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?
8NerissaYour 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?
9PortiaI pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection.
10NerissaFirst, there is the Neapolitan prince.
11PortiaAy, 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.
12NerissaThen there is the County Palatine.
13PortiaHe 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!
14NerissaHow say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?
15PortiaGod 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.
16NerissaWhat say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of England?
17PortiaYou 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.
18NerissaWhat think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?
19PortiaThat 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.
20NerissaHow like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew?
21PortiaVery 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.
22NerissaIf 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.
23PortiaTherefore, 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.
24NerissaYou 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.
25PortiaIf 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.
26NerissaDo 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?
27PortiaYes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so called.
28NerissaTrue, madam: he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.
29PortiaI remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy praise.
30Enter a Serving-man.
31How now! what news?
32ServantThe 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.
33PortiaIf 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. Exeunt.