Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

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 confess 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 anything.

Bass. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.

Por. Well then, confess and live.

Bass. '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.

30

Por. Away, then! I am lock'd in one of them: 40
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 death-bed 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,

22. peize, prolong (as if by hanging weights to the end).

50

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 the exploit. Go, Hercules!
Live thou, I live with much much more dismay
I view the fight than thou that makest the fray.

Music, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself.

SONG.

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.

It is engender'd 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.

Bass. So may the outward shows be least them

selves :

The world is still deceived 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

54. more love; ' because Hercules rescued Hesione, not for love of the lady, but for the sake of the horses promised him by Laomedon' (Ov. Met. xi.

199 f.).

63. fancy, love.

60

70

66. Reply, reply. This appears as a marginal direction in all the old copies.

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 purchased 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 threatenest than dost promise aught,

79. approve, confirm.

87. excrement, outgrowth, beard.

97. guiled, guileful, treacher

ous.

99. Indian beauty. Beauty' is probably a blunder, due to the 'beauteous' of the line above. It has been suggested that he was recalling a passage

80

90

100

in Montaigne (Ess. ii. 12), 'The Indians describe it [beauty] black and swarthy, with blubbered thick lips, with a broad and flat nose. In this case, he must have read the original, Florio's translation having appeared only in 1603. But the use of the word 'beauty' remains awkward and un-Shakespearean.

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence;
And here choose I: joy be the consequence!
Por. [Aside] How all the other passions fleet
to air,

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,
And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy!
O love,

Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy;

In measure rein thy joy; scant this excess.
I feel too much thy blessing: make it less,
For fear I surfeit.

Bass.

What find I here?

[Opening the leaden casket.

Fair Portia's counterfeit! What demi-god

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 to 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

119

120

Doth limp behind the substance. Here's the scroll, 130

106. Thy paleness moves me. Since paleness is just above disparagingly ascribed to silver, Warburton proposed to read plainness here. The verbal inconsistency is, however, dramatic enough. Gold and silver are condemned as ornament,' and then, even in their ornamental

character, disparaged as 'gaudy and 'pale'; whereas the 'paleness' of lead becomes a virtue, because it is associated with no pretensions.

116. counterfeit, portrait.

127. unfurnish'd, unprovided (with a fellow).

The continent and summary of my fortune.
[Reads] You that choose not by the view,
Chance as fair and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content and seek no new.
If you be well pleased with this
And hold your fortune for your bliss,
Turn you where your lady is

And claim her with a loving kiss.

A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave;
I come by note, to give and to receive.
Like one of two contending in a prize,

That thinks he hath done well in people's eyes,
Hearing applause and universal shout,

Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt
Whether those peals of praise be his or no;
So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so;
As doubtful whether what I see be true,
Until confirm'd, sign'd, ratified by you.

140

Por. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, 150 Such as I am though for myself alone

I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better; yet, for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself;

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
More rich;

That only to stand high in your account,

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account; but the full sum of me
Is sum of something, which, to term in gross,

131. continent, inventory or abstract; explicit statement.

141. by note, in conformity with the scroll (as if this were a bill, specifying payments to be made or received).

158. livings, possessions.

160

The

160. sum of something. Quartos have sum of nothing. But Portia's humility is not abject.

[ocr errors]

160. to term in gross, to state it in general terms.

« AnteriorContinuar »