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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 confes What treason there is mingled with your love.s

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.

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. POR. 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 musick sound, while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,

Fading in musick: 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 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 sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,

words as they changeably fall from the mouth, but peyzing each sillable." HENLEY.

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-monster1: 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 mak'st the fray 2.

Musick, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself.

SONG.

3

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

9 With no less presence,] With the same dignity of mien. JOHNSON.

To the sea-monster:] See Ovid. Metamorph. lib. xi. ver. 199, et seqq. 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, 4th edit. 1617. MALONE.

2 Live thou, I live:-With much much more dismay

I view the fight, than thou that mak'st the fray.] One of the quartos [Roberts's] reads:

"Live then, I live with much more dismay

"To view the fight, than," &c.

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.

3-fancy-] i. e. Love. So, in a Midsummer-Night's

Dream:

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"Than sighs and tears, poor fancy's followers."

STEEVENS,

Reply] The words, reply, reply, were in all the late

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2. 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.

5

BASS.-So may the outward shows be least them

selves;

The world is still deceiv'd 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
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?

8

editions, except Sir T. Hanmer's, put as a verse in the song; but in all the old copies stand as a marginal direction. JOHNSON.

I think Johnson mistaken here. "Replie, Replie," is in the old copies placed at the side of the other lines; but there is nothing else to point it out as a marginal direction, and I cannot discover its use, if so understood. Mr. Capell supposes the song to be sung by two voices, the first of which calls upon the other to reply to the questions put. BOSWELL.

5 So may the outward shows] He begins abruptly; the first part of the argument has passed in his mind. JOHNSON. 6- gracious voice,] Pleasing; winning favour. JOHNSON. APPROVE it] i. e. justify it. So, in Antony and Cleo

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I am full sorry

"That he approves the common liar, fame." STEEVENS. There is no VICE-] The old copies read-voice. The emendation was made by the editor of the second folio.

MALONE.

And these assume but valour's excrement",

To render them redoubted.

Look on beauty,

And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight ';
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it 2:
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 sepulchre *.

9 — valour's EXCREMENT,] i. e. what a little higher is called the beard of Hercules. So, pedler's excrement," in the Win

ter's Tale. MALONE.

1

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

2

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. 3 - crisped] i. e. curled. So, in The Philosopher's Satires, by Robert Anton :

"Her face as beauteous as the crisped morn."

STEEVENS.

4 in the sepulchre.] See a note on Timon of Athens, Act IV. Sc. III. Shakspeare has likewise satirized this yet prevailing fashion in Love's Labour's Lost. STEEVENS.

The prevalence of this fashion in Shakspeare's time is evinced by the following passage in an old pamphlet entitled, The Honestie 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, or for her that in a stage-play should represent some hag of hell, than to be used by a christian woman." Again, ibid.: “These attire-makers within these fortie yeares were not known by that name; and but now very lately they kept their lowzie commodity of periwigs, and their monstrous attires closed in boxes;-and those women that used to weare them would not buy them but in secret. But now they are not ashamed to set them forth upon their stalls,-such monstrous mop-powles of haire, so proportioned and deformed, that but within these twenty or thirty yeares would have drawne the passers-by to stand and gaze, and to wonder at them." MALONE.

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 meager

lead,

Which rather threat'nest, than dost promise aught,
Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence ®,
And here choose I; Joy be the consequence!

*So quarto R.; first folio, and quarto, H. therefore then.
the GUILED Shore] i. e. the treacherous shore.

The Pilgrim, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

"Or only a fair show, to guile his mischiefs."

So, in

I should not have thought the word wanted explanation, but that some of our modern editors have rejected it, and read gilded. Guiled is the reading of all the ancient copies. Shakspeare in this instance, as in many others, confounds the participles. Guiled stands for guiling. STEEVENS.

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• Indian beauty;] Sir T. Hanmer reads:

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'Tween man and man :] So, in Chapman's Hymnus in Noctern, 4to. 1594:

"To whom pale day (with whoredom soked quite)
"Is but a drudge.' STEEVENS.

Thy PLAINNESS moves me more than eloquence,] The old copies read-paleness. STEEVENS.

Bassanio is displeased at the golden casket for its gaudiness, and the silver one for its paleness; but what! is he charmed with the leaden one for having the very same quality that displeased him in the silver? The poet certainly wrote:

"Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence : "

This characterizes the lead from the silver, which paleness does not, they being both pale. Besides, there is a beauty in the antithesis between plainness and eloquence; between paleness and eloquence none. So it is said before of the leaden casket: This third, dull lead, with warning all is blunt."

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WARBURTON.

It may be that Dr. Warburton has altered the wrong word, if

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