The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare (good books to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. Enter Portia and Nerissa. Portia

That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Nerissa When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. Portia

So doth the greater glory dim the less:
A substitute shines brightly as a king
Unto the king be by, and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters. Music! hark!

Nerissa It is your music, madam, of the house. Portia

Nothing is good, I see, without respect:
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

Nerissa Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. Portia

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended, and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season’d are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion
And would not be awaked. Music ceases.

Lorenzo

That is the voice,
Or I am much deceived, of Portia.

Portia

He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo,
By the bad voice.

Lorenzo Dear lady, welcome home. Portia

We have been praying for our husbands’ healths,
Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.
Are they return’d?

Lorenzo

Madam, they are not yet;
But there is come a messenger before,
To signify their coming.

Portia

Go in, Nerissa;
Give order to my servants that they take
No note at all of our being absent hence;
Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you. A tucket sounds.

Lorenzo

Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet:
We are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not.

Portia

This night methinks is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: ’tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid.

Enter Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano, and their followers. Bassanio

We should hold day with the Antipodes,
If you would walk in absence of the sun.

Portia

Let me give light, but let me not be light;
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,
And never be Bassanio so for me:
But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.

Bassanio

I thank you, madam. Give welcome to my friend.
This is the man, this is Antonio,
To whom I am so infinitely bound.

Portia

You should in all sense be much bound to him.
For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.

Antonio No more than I am well acquitted of. Portia

Sir, you are very welcome to our house:
It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.

Gratiano

To Nerissa. By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;
In faith, I gave it to the judge’s clerk:
Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,
Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.

Portia A quarrel, ho, already! what’s the matter? Gratiano

About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me, whose posy was
For all the world like cutler’s poetry
Upon a knife, “Love me, and leave me not.”

Nerissa

What talk you of the posy or the value?
You swore to me, when I did give it you,
That you would wear it till your hour of death
And that it should lie with you in your grave:
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,
You should have been respective and have kept it.
Gave it a judge’s clerk! no, God’s my judge,
The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it.

Gratiano He will, an if he live to be a man. Nerissa Ay, if a woman live to be a man. Gratiano

Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth,
A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy,
No higher than thyself; the judge’s clerk,
A prating boy, that begg’d it as a fee:
I could not for my heart deny it him.

Portia

You were to blame, I must be plain with you,
To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift:
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger
And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.
I gave my love a ring and made him swear
Never to part with it; and here he stands;
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth
That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief:
An ’twere to me, I should be mad at it.

Bassanio

Aside. Why, I were best to cut my left hand off
And swear I lost the ring defending it.

Gratiano

My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away
Unto the judge that begg’d it and indeed
Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk,
That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine;
And neither man nor master would take aught
But the two rings.

Portia

What ring gave you my lord?
Not that, I hope, which you received of me.

Bassanio

If I could add a lie unto a fault,
I would deny it; but you see my finger
Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone.

Portia

Even so void is your false heart of truth.
By heaven, I will ne’er come in your bed
Until I see the ring.

Nerissa

Nor I in yours
Till I again see mine.

Bassanio

Sweet Portia,
If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring
And would conceive for what I gave the ring
And how unwillingly I left the ring,
When nought would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

Portia

If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.
What man is there so much unreasonable,
If you had pleased to have defended it
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
To urge the thing held as a ceremony?
Nerissa teaches