ANTONIO

Fare you well. I’ll grow a talker for this gear.

GRAZIANO

Thanks, i’faith, for silence is only commendable

In a neat’s tongue dried and a maid not vendible.

Exeunt Graziano and Lorenzo

ANTONIO Yet is that anything now?

BASSANIO Graziano speaks an infinite deal of nothing,

more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as

two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you

shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you

have them they are not worth the search.

ANTONIO

Well, tell me now what lady is the same

To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,

That you today promised to tell me of.

BASSANIO

’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,

How much I have disabled mine estate

By something showing a more swelling port

Than my faint means would grant continuance,

Nor do I now make moan to be abridged

From such a noble rate; but my chief care

Is to come fairly off from the great debts

Wherein my time, something too prodigal,

Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio,

I owe the most in money and in love,

And from your love I have a warranty

To unburden all my plots and purposes

How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

ANTONIO

I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it,

And if it stand as you yourself still do,

Within the eye of honour, be assured

My purse, my person, my extremest means

Lie all unlocked to your occasions.

BASSANIO

In my schooldays, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight

The selfsame way, with more advised watch,

To find the other forth; and by adventuring both,

I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof

Because what follows is pure innocence.

I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth,

That which I owe is lost; but if you please

To shoot another arrow that self way

Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,

As I will watch the aim, or to find both

Or bring your latter hazard back again,

And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

ANTONIO

You know me well, and herein spend but time

To wind about my love with circumstance;

And out of doubt you do me now more wrong

In making question of my uttermost

Than if you had made waste of all I have.

Then do but say to me what I should do

That in your knowledge may by me be done,

And I am pressed unto it. Therefore speak.

BASSANIO

In Belmont is a lady richly left,

And she is fair, and, fairer than that word,

Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes

I did receive fair speechless messages.

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued

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 Colchis’ strand,

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 racked even to the uttermost

To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia.

Go presently enquire, and so will I,

Where money is; and I no question make

To have it of my trust or for my sake.

Exeunt [severally]

1.2 Enter Portia with Nerissa, her waiting-woman

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 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 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 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 overname them, and as thou namest them I will describe them; and according to my description, level at my affection.