And I his clerk, therefore be well advised

How you do leave me to mine own protection.

GRAZIANO

Well, do you so. Let not me take him then,

For if I do, I’ll mar the young clerk’s pen.

ANTONIO

I am th’unhappy subject of these quarrels.

PORTIA

Sir, grieve not you. You are welcome notwithstanding.

BASSANIO

Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong,

And in the hearing of these many friends

I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes,

Wherein I see myself—

PORTIA Mark you but that?

In both my eyes he doubly sees himself,

In each eye one. Swear by your double self,

And there’s an oath of credit.

BASSANIO Nay, but hear me.

Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear

I never more will break an oath with thee.

ANTONIO (to Portia)

I once did lend my body for his wealth

Which, but for him that had your husband’s ring,

Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound again,

My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord

Will never more break faith advisedly.

PORTIA

Then you shall be his surety. Give him this,

And bid him keep it better than the other.

ANTONIO

Here, Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.

BASSANIO

By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor!

PORTIA

I had it of him. Pardon me, Bassanio,

For by this ring, the doctor lay with me.

NERISSA

And pardon me, my gentle Graziano,

For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor’s clerk,

In lieu of this last night did lie with me.

GRAZIANO

Why, this is like the mending of highways

In summer where the ways are fair enough I

What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserved it?

PORTIA

Speak not so grossly. You are all amazed.

Here is a letter. Read it at your leisure.

It comes from Padua, from Bellario.

There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,

Nerissa there her clerk. Lorenzo here

Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,

And even but now returned. I have not yet

Entered my house. Antonio, you are welcome,

And I have better news in store for you

Than you expect. Unseal this letter soon.

There you shall find three of your argosies

Are richly come to harbour suddenly.

You shall not know by what strange accident

I chanced on this letter.

ANTONIO I am dumb!

BASSANIO (to Portia)

Were you the doctor and I knew you not?

GRAZIANO (to Nerissa)

Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?

NERISSA

Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it

Unless he live until he be a man.

BASSANIO (to Portia)

Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow.

When I am absent, then lie with my wife.

ANTONIO (to Portia)

Sweet lady, you have given me life and living,

For here I read for certain that my ships

Are safely come to road.

PORTIA How now, Lorenzo?

My clerk hath some good comforts, too, for you.

NERISSA

Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee.

There do I give to you and Jessica

From the rich Jew a special deed of gift,

After his death, of all he dies possessed of.

LORENZO

Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way

Of starved people.

PORTIA It is almost morning,

And yet I am sure you are not satisfied

Of these events at full. Let us go in,

And charge us there upon inter’gatories,

And we will answer all things faithfully.

GRAZIANO

Let it be so. The first inter’gatory

That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is

Whether till the next night she had rather stay,

Or go to bed now, being two hours to day.

But were the day come, I should wish it dark

Till I were couching with the doctor’s clerk.

Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing

So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. Exeunt

1 HENRY IV

THE play described in the 1623 Folio as The First Part of Henry the Fourth had been entered on the Stationers’ Register on 25 February 1598 as The History of Henry the Fourth, and that is the title of the first surviving edition, of the same year. An earlier edition, doubtless also printed in 1598, is known only from a single, eight-page fragment. Five more editions appeared before the Folio.

The printing of at least two editions within a few months, and the fact that one of them was read almost out of existence, reflect a matter of exceptional topical interest. The earliest title-page advertises the play’s portrayal of ‘the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff’; but when it was first acted, probably in 1596 or 1597, this character bore the name of his historical counterpart, the Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle. Shakespeare changed his surname as the result of protests from Oldcastle’s descendants, the influential Cobham family, one of whom—William Brooke, 7th Lord Cobham—was Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain from August 1596 till he died on 5 March 1597. Our edition restores Sir John’s original surname for the first time in printed texts (though there is reason to believe that even after the earliest performances the name ’Oldcastle’ was sometimes used on the stage), and also restores Russell and Harvey, names Shakespeare was probably obliged to alter to Bardolph and Peto.

Shakespeare had already shown Henry IV’s rise to power, and his troubled state of mind on achieving it, in Richard II; that play also shows Henry’s dissatisfaction with his wayward son, Prince Harry, later Henry V. 1 Henry IV continues the story, but in a very different dramatic style. A play called The Famous Victories of Henry V, entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1594, was published anonymously, in a debased and shortened text, in 1598. This text—which also features Oldcastle as a reprobate—gives a sketchy version of the events portrayed in 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V. Shakespeare must have known the original play, but in the absence of a full text we cannot tell how much he depended on it. The surviving version contains nothing about the rebellions against Henry IV, for which Shakespeare seems to have gone to IIolinshed’s, and perhaps other, Chronicles; he draws also on Samuel Daniel’s poem The First Four Books of the Civil Wars (1595).