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. Gratiano. You look not well, Signior Antonio ; 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, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!" For saying nothing; who, I am very sure, If they should speak, would almost damn those ears Fare ye well awhile: I'll end my exhortation after dinner. 100 Lorenzo. Well, we will leave you then till dinner 105 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. 110 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 anything now? Bassanio. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as 115 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 That you to-day promised to tell me of? 120 To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, 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 : 125 From such a noble rate; but my chief care 130 Antonio. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; 135 My purse, my person, my extremest means, Bassanio. In my school days, when I had lost one 140 shaft, I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight The selfsame way with more advisèd watch, To find the other forth, and by adventuring both 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 Antonio. You know me well, and herein spend but time To wind about my love with circumstance; 145 150 And out of doubt you do me now more wrong 155 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 Bassanio. In Belmont is a lady richly left; 160 165 Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, Hang on her temples like a golden fleece; 170 Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand, O my Antonio, had I but the means I have a mind presages me such thrift, 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; [Exeunt. 175 180 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 sur- 5 feit 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. 10 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 15 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 rea- 20 soning 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 25 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 30 |