Merchant of Venice

Act 1, Scene I

Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO

ANTONIO

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,

I am to learn;

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself.

SALARINO

Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

There, where your argosies with portly sail,

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

As they fly by them with their woven wings.

SALANIO

Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,

The better part of my affections would

Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,

Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;

And every object that might make me fear

Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt

Would make me sad.

SALARINO

My wind cooling my broth

Would blow me to an ague, when I thought

What harm a wind too great at sea might do.

I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,

But I should think of shallows and of flats,

And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,

Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs

To kiss her burial. Should I go to church

And see the holy edifice of stone,

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

Which touching but my gentle vessel's side,

Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

And, in a word, but even now worth this,

And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?

But tell not me; I know, Antonio

Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

ANTONIO

Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

Upon the fortune of this present year:

Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

SALARINO

Why, then you are in love.

ANTONIO

Fie, fie!

SALARINO

Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,

Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy

For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,

Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes

And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,

And other of such vinegar aspect

That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO

SALANIO

Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well:

We leave you now with better company.

SALARINO

I would have stay'd till I had made you merry,

If worthier friends had not prevented me.

ANTONIO

Your worth is very dear in my regard.

I take it, your own business calls on you

And you embrace the occasion to depart.

SALARINO

Good morrow, my good lords.

BASSANIO

Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when?

You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

SALARINO

We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

Exeunt Salarino and Salanio

LORENZO

My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

We two will leave you: but at dinner-time,

I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.

BASSANIO

I will not fail you.

GRATIANO

You look not well, Signior Antonio;

You have too much respect upon the world:

They lose it that do buy it with much care:

Believe me, you are marvellously changed.

ANTONIO

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

A stage where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

GRATIANO

Let me play the fool:

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,

And let my liver rather heat with wine

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice

By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio--

I love thee, and it is my love that speaks--

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

As who should say 'I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!'

O my Antonio, I do know of these

That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.

I'll tell thee more of this another time:

But fish not, with this melancholy bait,

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.

Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile:

I'll end my exhortation after dinner.

LORENZO

Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time:

I must be one of these same dumb wise men,

For Gratiano never lets me speak.

GRATIANO

Well, keep me company but two years moe,

Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

ANTONIO

Farewell: I'll grow a talker for this gear.

GRATIANO

Thanks, i' faith, for silence is only commendable

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

Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO

ANTONIO

Is that any thing now?

BASSANIO

Gratiano 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 to-day 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 unlock'd to your occasions.

BASSANIO

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the self-same flight

The self-same 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 prest 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 Colchos' 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 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 II: 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 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 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 whom I would nor refuse whom 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 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 played false with a smith.

NERISSA

Then there is the County Palatine.

PORTIA

He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'If 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

behavior every where.

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:

and the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall

make shift to go without him.

NERISSA

If he should offer to choose, and choose the right

casket, you should refuse to perform your father's

will, if you should refuse to accept him.

PORTIA

Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, set a

deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket,

for if the devil be within and that temptation

without, I know he will choose it. I will do any

thing, Nerissa, ere I'll be married to a sponge.

NERISSA

You need not fear, lady, the having any of these

lords: they have acquainted me with their

determinations; which is, indeed, to return to their

home and to trouble you with no more suit, unless

you may be won by some other sort than your father's

imposition depending on the caskets.

PORTIA

If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as

chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner

of my father's will. I am glad this parcel of wooers

are so reasonable, for there is not one among them

but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God grant

them a fair departure.

NERISSA

Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a

Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither

in company of the Marquis of Montferrat?

PORTIA

Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was so called.

NERISSA

True, madam: he, of all the men that ever my foolish

eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.

PORTIA

I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of

thy praise.

Enter a Serving-man

How now! what news?

Servant

The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take

their leave: and there is a forerunner come from a

fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the

prince his master will be here to-night.

PORTIA

If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good a

heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should

be glad of his approach: if he have the condition

of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had

rather he should shrive me than wive me. Come,

Nerissa. Sirrah, go before.

Whiles we shut the gates

upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.

Exeunt