Puts 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.
I speak too long, but ’tis to peize the time,
To eche 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 th’ 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 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 wat’ry 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,
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 th’ exploit. Go, Hercules,
Live thou, I live; with much, much more dismay
I view the fight than thou that mak’st the fray.
[Here music.]
A song, the whilst Bassanio comments on the caskets to himself.
Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
[All.]
Reply, reply.
It is engend’red 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 themselves—
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,
And these assume but valor’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.
So are those crisped snaky golden locks,
