| ACT I SCENE II | 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 | 5 |
| | 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. | 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 | 15 |
| | 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 | 20 |
| | 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, | 25 |
| | 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 | 30 |
| | 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 | 35 |
| | 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 | 40 |
| | 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 | 45 |
| | 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, | 55 |
| | 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 | 60 |
| | 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? | 65 |
| 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 | 70 |
| | 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? | 75 |
| 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. | 80 |
| 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: | 85 |
| | 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. | 90 |
| 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. | 95 |
| 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 | 100 |
| | 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 | 105 |
| | 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? | 110 |
| 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. | 115 |
| | 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. | 120 |
| 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, | 125 |
| | Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. | |
| | Whiles we shut the gates | |
| | upon one wooer, another knocks at the door. | |
| | Exeunt | |