THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. William Shakespeare

BASSANIO.

       Let me choose;

       For as I am, I live upon the rack.

       PORTIA.

       Upon the rack, Bassanio! Then confess

       What treason there is mingled with your love.

       BASSANIO.

       None but that ugly treason of mistrust,

       Which makes me fear th’ enjoying of my love:

       There may as well be amity and life

       ‘Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.

       PORTIA.

       Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,

       Where men enforced do speak anything.

       BASSANIO.

       Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.

       PORTIA.

       Well then, confess and live.

       BASSANIO.

       ‘Confess’ and ‘love’

       Had been the very sum of my confession:

       O happy torment, when my torturer

       Doth teach me answers for deliverance!

       But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

       PORTIA.

       Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them:

       If you do love me, you will find me out.

       Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof;

       Let music sound while he doth make his choice;

       Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,

       Fading in music: that the comparison

       May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream

       And watery deathbed for him. He may win;

       And what is music then? Then music is

       Even as the flourish when true subjects bow

       To a new-crowned monarch; such it is

       As are those dulcet sounds in break of day

       That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear

       And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,

       With no less presence, but with much more love,

       Than young Alcides when he did redeem

       The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy

       To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice;

       The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,

       With bleared visages come forth to view

       The issue of th’ exploit. Go, Hercules!

       Live thou, I live. With much much more dismay

       I view the fight than thou that mak’st the fray.

       [A Song, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself.]

       Tell me where is fancy bred,

       Or in the heart or in the head,

       How begot, how nourished?

       Reply, reply.

       It is engend’red in the eyes,

       With gazing fed; and fancy dies

       In the cradle where it lies.

       Let us all ring fancy’s knell:

       I’ll begin it.—Ding, dong, bell.

       [ALL.] Ding, dong, bell.

       BASSANIO.

       So may the outward shows be least themselves:

       The world is still deceiv’d with ornament.

       In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt

       But, being season’d with a gracious voice,

       Obscures the show of evil? In religion,

       What damned error but some sober brow

       Will bless it, and approve it with a text,

       Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

       There is no vice so simple but assumes

       Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

       How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false

       As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins

       The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;

       Who, inward search’d, have livers white as milk;

       And these assume but valour’s excrement

       To render them redoubted! Look on beauty

       And you shall see ‘tis purchas’d by the weight:

       Which therein works a miracle in nature,

       Making them lightest that wear most of it:

       So are those crisped snaky golden locks

       Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,

       Upon supposed fairness, often known

       To be the dowry of a second head,

       The skull that bred them, in the sepulchre.

       Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

       To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf

       Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

       The seeming truth which cunning times put on

       To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,

       Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;

       Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge

       ‘Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead,

       Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught,

       Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,

       And here choose I: joy be the consequence!

       PORTIA.

       [Aside] How all the other passions fleet to air,

       As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac’d despair,

       And shuddering fear, and green-ey’d jealousy!

       O love! be moderate; allay thy ecstasy;

       In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess;

       I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,

       For fear I surfeit!

       BASSANIO.

       What find I here? [Opening the leaden casket.]

       Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demigod

       Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?

       Or whether riding on the balls of mine,

       Seem they in motion? Here are sever’d lips,

       Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar

       Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs

       The painter plays the spider, and hath woven

       A golden mesh t’ entrap the hearts of men

       Faster than gnats in cobwebs: but her eyes!—

       How could he see to do them? Having made one,

       Methinks it should have power to steal both his,

       And leave itself unfurnish’d: yet look, how far

       The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow

       In underprizing it, so far this shadow

       Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll,

       The continent and summary of my fortune.

       ‘You that