never see my gold again: Fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore ducats!

Tub. There came divers of Antonio's creditors in my company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but break.

Shy. I am very glad of it; I'll plague him; I'll torture him; I am glad of it.

Tub. One of them showed me a ring, that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

Shy. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal : it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Tub. But Antonio is certainly undone.

Shy. Nay, that's true, that's very true: Go, Tubal, fee me an officer, bespeak him a fortnight before: I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandize I will: Go, go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal. [Exeunt.

2 The Turquoise is a well known precious stone found in the veins of the mountains on the confines of Persia to the east. In old times its value was much enhanced by the magic properties attributed to it in common with other precious stones, one of which was that it faded or brightened its hue as the health of the wearer increased or grew less. This is alluded to by Ben Jonson in his Sejanus

‘And true as Turkise in my dear lord's ring,

Look well or ill with him.

Other virtues were also imputed to it, all of which were either monitory or preservative to the wearer. Thomas Nicols, in his translation of Anselm de Boot's' Lapidary,' says, this stone is likewise said to take away all enmity, and to reconcile man and wife.' This quality may have moved Leah to present it to Shylock. It is evident that he valued it more for its imaginary virtues, or as a memorial of his wife, than for its pecuniary worth.

SCENE II. Belmont.

A Room in Portia's House.

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

Por. 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 :

you

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 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'd1 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
Put 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.

2

I speak too long; but 'tis to peize the time;

1 To be o'erlook'd, forelooked, or eye-bitten, was a term for being bewitched by an evil eye. It is used again in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act v. Sc. 5, p. 284. See Note there :'Vile worm, thou wast o'erlooked even in thy birth.'

See also Cotgrave's Dictionary, in v. Ensorceler.

2 To peize is from peser, Fr. To weigh or balance. So in K. Richard III.

'Lest leaden slumber peize me down to-morrow.' In the text it is used figuratively for to suspend, to retard, or delay 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 any thing.

Bass. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. Por. Well then, confess, and live.

Bass.

Had been the

Confess, and love, confession: O happy torment, when my torturer

very sum of my

Doth teach me answers for deliverance!

But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

If

Por. Away then: I am lock'd in one of them; 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 swanlike end3,
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,

3 Alluding to the opinion which long prevailed that the swan uttered a plaintive musical sound at the approach of death; there is something so touching in this ancient superstition that one feels loath to be undeceived.

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 5; 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.
Musick, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets
to himself.

SONG.

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

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.

Bass.-So may the outward shows be least them

selves;

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament7.

8

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 it9 with a text,

4 i. e. dignity of mien.

5 See Ovid. Metamorph. lib. xi. ver. 199. Malone says, Shakspeare had read the account of this adventure in the Old Legend of the Destruction of Troy. 6 Love.

7 Bassanio begins abruptly, the first part of the argument has passed in his mind.

Pleasing; winning favour.

9 i. e. justify it.

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 10
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:
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 11.
Thus ornament is but the guiled 12 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 13

10 That is, what a little higher is called the beard of Hercules. Excrement, from excresco, is used for every thing which appears to grow or vegetate upon the human body, as the hair, the beard, the nails. So in The Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3:

'Let me pocket up my pedler's excrement.'

11 Shakspeare has also satirized this fashion of false hair in Love's Labour's Lost. Its prevalence in his time is evinced by the Satire of Barnabe Rich, in The Honestie of this Age, or the World never honest till now;' and by passages in other cotemporary writers.

12 Guiled for guiling, or treacherous.

13 I could wish to read

thou stale and common drudge;'

for so I think the poet wrote. Steevens cites a passage in George