Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and all their trainsPORTIA.I pray you tarry; pause a day or two Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company; therefore forbear a while.There's something tells me- but it is not love- I would not lose you; and you know yourself Hate counsels not in such a quality.But lest you should not understand me well- And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought- I would detain you here some month or two Before you venture for me.I could teach you How to choose right, but then I am forsworn; So will I never be; so may you miss me; But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn.Beshrew your eyes! They have o'erlook'd me and divided me; One half of me is yours, the other half yours- Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.O! these naughty times Puts bars between the owners and their rights; And so, though yours, not yours.Prove it so, Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.I speak too long, but 'tis to peize the time, To eke it, and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election.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 wat'ry death-bed for him.He may win; And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish whentrue 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
the whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himselfTell 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.