The Merchant of Venice | Page 5

nor commodity?To raise a present sum; therefore go forth,?Try what my credit can in Venice do;?That shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost,?To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.?Go presently inquire, and so will I,?Where money is; and I no question make?To have it of my trust or for my sake.
[Exeunt]
SCENE 2. 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 come 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 to 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 who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curb'd 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 lott'ry 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 you 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 play'd false with a smith.
NERISSA.?Then is there the County Palatine.
PORTIA.?He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'An 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 behaviour everywhere.
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. An the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall