Upon the fortune of this present year: Therefore, my merchandize makes me not sad. Ant. Fye, fye! Salan. Not in love neither? Then let's say, you are sad, Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy For you to laugh, and leap, and say, you are merry, eyes, That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO. Salan. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kins man, Gratiano, and Lorenzo: Fare you well; We leave you now with better company. Salar. I would have staid till I had made you merry, If worthier friends had not prevented me. Ant. Your worth is very dear in my regard. I take it, your own business calls on you, And Y you embrace the occasion to depart. Salar. Good-morrow, my good lords. Bass. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say when? ou grow exceeding strange: Must it be so? Salar. We'll make our leisures to attend on yours. [Exeunt SALARINO and SALANIO. Lor. My lord Bassanio, since you have found An tonio, We two will leave you: but, at dinner time, I pray you, have in mind where we must meet. Bass. I will not fail you. Gra. You look not well, signior Antonio; You have too much respect upon the world: Ant. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one. Gra. Let me play the Fool: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; And let my liver rather heat with wine, Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice If they should speak, would almost damn those ears, But fish not, with this melancholy bait, Come, good Lorenzo:- Fare ye well, a while; Lor. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time: I must be one of these same dumb wise men, For Gratiano never lets me speak. Gra. Well, keep me company but two years more, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. Ant. Farewell: I'll grow a talker for this gear. Gra. Thanks, i'faith; for silence is only commend able In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible. [Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO. Ant. Is that any thing now? Bass. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and, when you have them, they are not worth the search. 5 Ant. Well; tell me now, what lady is this same † Ant. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; Within the eye of honour, be assured, My purse, my person, my extremest means, Lie all unlock'd to your occasions. Bass. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way, with more advised watch, +"The same." MALONE. 5 — a more swelling port, &c.] Port, in the present instance, comprehends the idea of expensive equipage, and external pomp of appearance. To find the other forth; and by adventʼring both, Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, Or bring your latter hazard back again, And thankfully rest debtor for the first. Ant. You know me well; and herein spend but time, To wind about my love with circumstance; And, out of doubt, you do me now more wrong, In making question of my uttermost, Than if you had made waste of all I have: Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth; I have a mind presages me such thrift, Ant. Thou know'st, that all my fortunes are at sea; Nor have I money, nor commodity 6 prest unto it :] Prest may not here signify impress'd, as into military service, but ready. Prêt, Fr. forth, To raise a present sum: therefore go SCENE II. Belmont. A Room in Portia's House. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA. [Exeunt. Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. Ner. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing: It is no mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. Por. Good sentences, and well pronounced. Ner. They would be better, if well followed. Por. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages, princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband: O me, the word choose! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curb'd by the will of a dead father:- Is it |