The Merchant of Venice
This is the full script as taken from the Arden Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice Third Edition by John Drakakis
Act 1 Scene 2
Enter Portia with her waiting-woman Nerissa
Portia
By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this
great world.
Nerissa
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.
Portia
Good sentences, and well pronounced.
Nerissa
They would be better if well followed.
Portia
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 to be one of the twenty to follow mine own
teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood,
but a hot temper leaps o’er 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 who I would, nor refuse who I dislike, so
is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a
dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose
one, nor refuse none?
Nerissa
Your father was ever virtuous, and holy me at their
death have good inspirations. Therefore the lottery that
he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver, and
lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you,
will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one
who you shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in
your affection toward any of these princely suitors that are
already come?
Portia
I pray thee over-name them and, as thou namest them,
I will describe them, and according to my description level
at my affection.
Nerissa
First there is the Neapolitan prince.
Portia
Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of
his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation to his own
good parts that he can shoe him himself. I am much
afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith.
Nerissa
Then is there the County Palatine.
Portia
He doth nothing but frown, as who should say, and
you will not have me, choose. He hears merry tales and
smiles not; I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher
when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in
his youth. I had rather be married to a death’s head with
a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend
me from these two.
Nerissa
How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?
Portia
God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he! Why, he hath
a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of
frowning than the Count Palatine. He is every man in no
man: if a throstle sing, he falls straight a-capering. He
will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I
should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me I
would forgive him, for if he love me to madness I shall
never requite him.
Nerissa
What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of
England?
Portia
You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not
me, nor I him. He hath neither Latin, French nor Italian,
and you will come into the court and swear that I have a
poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man’s
picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb-show?
How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in
Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany
and his behaviour everywhere.
Nerissa
What think you have the Scottish lord, his neighbour?
Portia
That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he
borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and swore
he would pay him again when he was able. I think the
Frenchman became his surety and sealed under for
another.
Nerissa
How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s
nephew?
Portia
Very viley in the morning, when he is sober, and most
viley in the afternoon, when he is drunk. When he is best, he
is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst he is little
better than a beast. An the worst fall that ever fell, I hope
I shall make shift to go without him.
Nerissa
If he should offer to choose and choose the right
casket, you should refuse to perform your father’s will if
you should refuse to accept him.
Portia
Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep
glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the
devil be within, and that temptation without, I know
he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be
married to a sponge.
Nerissa
You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords.
They have acquainted me with their determinations,
which is indeed to return to their home and to trouble you
with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other
sort than your father’s imposition, depending on the
caskets.
Portia
If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as
Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s
will. I am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for
there is not one among them but I dote on his very
absence, and I pray God grant them a fair departure.
Nerissa
Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a
Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company
of the Marquis of Montferrat?
Portia
Yes, yes, it was Bassanio, as I think, so was he called.
Nerissa
True, madam. He, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes
looked upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.
Portia
I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of
thy praise.
[Enter a Servingman]
How now, what news?
Servingman
The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their leave;
and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of
Morocco, who brings word the prince his master will be here
tonight.
Portia
If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good heart
as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his
approach. If he have the condition of a saint and the
complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me
than wive me. Come, Nerissa. — Sirrah, go before.
[Exit Servingman]
Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another
knocks at the door.
[Exit Portia and Nerissa]