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SCENE II.

Belmont. A Room in Portia's House.

Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and Attendants. The caskets are fet out.

Por. I pray you, tarry; pause a day or two,
Before you hazard; for, in choofing wrong,
I lose your company; therefore, forbear a while:
There's fomething tells me, (but it is not love,)
I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
Hate counsels not in such a quality:
But left 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 fin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o'er-look'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 fo all yours: O! these naughty times
Put bars between the owners and their rights;
And fo, though yours, not yours. -Prove it so,

8 And fo all yours:] The latter word is here used as a dissyllable. In the next line but one below, where the fame word occurs twice, our author, with his usual licence, employs one as a word of two fyllables, and the other as a monofyllable. MALONE.

9 And so, though yours, not yours.-Prove it fo,] It may be more grammatically read:

And so though yours I'm not yours. JOHNSON.

Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.2

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.

Bass.

Let me choose;

For, as I am, I live upon the rack.

POR. Upon the rack, Bassanio? then confefs What treason there is mingled with your love.

Bass. None, but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love: There may as well be amity and life 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.

POR. Ay, but, I fear, you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak any thing.

B.Ass. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. POR. Well then, confefs, and live.

BASS.

Confefs, and love,

Had been the very sum of my confession:
O happy torment, when my torturer

Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.] The meaning is, " If the worst I fear should happen, and it should prove in the event, that I, who am justly yours by the free donation I have made you of myself, should yet not be yours in consequence of an unlucky choice, let fortune go to hell for robbing you of your just due, not I for violating my oath." HEATH.

3

- to peize the time;) Thus the old copies. To peize is from pefer, Fr. So, in K. Richard III :

"Lest leaden slumber peize me down to-morrow." To peize the time, therefore, is to retard it by hanging weights upon it. The modern editors read, without authority, piece.

STEEVENS.

To peize, is to weigh, or balance; and figuratively, to keep in

fufpence, to delay.

So, in Sir P. Sydney's Apology for Poetry: -" not speaking words as they changeably fall from the mouth, but perzing each fillable."

HENLEY.

Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

POR. Away then: I am lock'd in one of them;
If you do love me, you will find me out.-
Neriffa, and the rest, stand all aloof.-
Let musick found, while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in musick: that the comparifon
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream,
And wat'ry death-bed for him: He may win;
And what is musick then? then musick is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new-crowned monarch: such it is,
As are those dulcet founds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And fummon him to marriage. Now he goes,
With no less prefence, but with much more love,
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
To the fea-monster: I stand for facrifice,
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,
With bleared visages, come forth to view
The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules!
Live thou, I live :- With much much more dismay
I view the fight, than thou that mak'st the fray.

+ With no less prefence,] With the fame dignity of mien,

6

JOHNSON.

5 To the sea-monster:) See Ovid. Metamorph. Lib. XI. ver, 199, et feqq. Shakspeare however, I believe, had read an account of this adventure in The Destruction of Troy: " Laomedon cast his eyes all bewept on him, [Hercules] and was all abashed to see his greatness and his beauty." See B. I. p. 221, edit. 1617.

MALONE.

6 Live thou, I live :-With much much more dismay I view the fight, than thou that mak'ft the fray.] One of the quartos [Roberts's] reads:

Live then, I live with much more dismay

To view the fight, than &c.

Bass. So may the outward shows be least them

felves;

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.
In law, what plea fo tainted and corrupt,
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
Obfcures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but fome fober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,

The folio, 1623, thus:

Live thou, I live with much more dismay
I view the fight, than &c,

Heyes's quarto gives the present reading. JOHNSON.
6-fancy-] i. e, Love, So, in A Midsummer-Night"

Dream:

"Than fighs and tears, poor fancy's followers," STEEVENS. Reply.] The words, reply, reply, were in all the late editions, except Sir T. Hanmer's, put as verse in the fong; but in all the old copies stand as a marginal direction. JOHNSON.

8 So may the outward shows ) He begins abruptly; the first part of the argument has passed in his mind. JOHNSON.

9 - gracious voice,] Pleasing; winning favour. JOHNSON,

approve it-] i. e. justify it. So, in Antony and Cleopatra : I am full forry

"That he approves the common liar, fame." STEEVENS.

-

Hiding the grofsness 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 fand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules, and frowning Mars;
Who, inward fearch'd, have livers white as milk?
And these assume but valour's excrement,4
To render them redoubted. Look on beauty,
And you shall fee 'tis purchas'd by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it : 6
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 scull that bred them, in the fepulchre.

8

3 There is no vice-) The old copies read-voice. The emendation was made by the editor of the second folio. MALONE.

4-valour's excrement,] i. e. what a little higher is called the beard of Hercules. So, "pedler's excrement," in The Winter's Tale. MALONE.

5

by the weight;] That is, artificial beauty is purchased so; as, false hair, &c. STEEVENS.

6 Making them lightest that wear most of it :) Lightest is here used in a wanton sense. So afterwards:

"Let me be light, but let me not seem light." MALONE. crisped] i. e, curled. So, in The Philosopher's Satires, by Robert Anton:

7

8

"Her face as beauteous as the crisped morn." STEEVENS. - in the fepulchre.] See a note on Timon of Athens, Act IV. fc. iii. Shakspeare has likewise satirized this yet prevailing fashion in Love's Labour's Loft. STEEVENS.

The prevalence of this fashion in Shakspeare's time is evinced by the following passage in an old pamphlet entitled The Honeftie of this Age, proving by good circumstance that the world was never honest till now, by Barnabe Rich,

quarto, 1615:-“

My lady holdeth on her way, perhaps to the tire-maker's shop, where she shaketh her crownes to bestow upon some new fashioned attire, upon such artificial deformed periwigs, that they were fitter to furnish a theatre,

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