The Merchant of Venice | Page 5

did receive fair speechless messages:
Her name is Portia--nothing
undervalu'd
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia:
Nor is the wide
world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every
coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples
like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos'
strond,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
O my Antonio! had
I but the means
To hold a rival place with one of them,
I have a
mind presages me such thrift
That I should questionless be fortunate.
ANTONIO.
Thou know'st that all my fortunes are at sea;
Neither
have I money 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.