The Merchant of Venice Act 1 Scene 2

Honestly, Nerissa, this little body of mine is tired of this great big world.

You would be, sweet madam, if your troubles came in the same quantities as your good luck does. And yet as far as I can see, people who gorge on too much are just as ill as the ones who starve with nothing. So it's no small happiness to be placed somewhere in the middle. Too much gets you grey hair sooner; just enough lives longer.

Fine sayings, and well delivered.

They'd be better still if they were followed.

If doing were as easy as knowing what ought to be done, chapels would be cathedrals and poor men's cottages would be palaces. It's a good preacher who follows his own instructions. I can teach twenty people what ought to be done more easily than I can be one of the twenty who follow my own teaching. The brain can make laws for the blood, but a hot temper jumps straight over a cold ruling. Madness is a hare that young people ride, leaping clean over the nets set by good advice, which limps along behind. But none of this clever talk is any use for choosing me a husband. Oh — that word, 'choose'! I can neither choose the man I want nor refuse the man I dislike. That's how a living daughter's will gets reined in by the will of a dead father. Isn't it hard, Nerissa, that ('Will' means both what she wants and the legal document her father left. The pun is the whole situation: her desire has been overruled by a piece of paper with the same name.)

I can't choose one or turn any of them down?

Your father was always a good man, and holy men get good inspirations as they die. So the lottery he invented with these three chests of gold, silver and lead — where whoever guesses his meaning wins you — will surely never be guessed right by anyone except a man you'll rightly love. But is there any warmth at all in your feelings towards any of these princely suitors who've already turned up?

Go through them by name, would you, and as you name them I'll describe them — and from my descriptions you can take a guess at my feelings.

First, there's the prince from Naples.

Yes — a proper young colt, that one, because he does nothing but talk about his horse, and he counts it a great addition to his own merits that he can shoe the animal himself. I'm very much afraid his lady mother had an affair with a blacksmith.

Then there's the Count Palatine.

He does nothing but scowl, as much as to say,

'If you won't have me, suit yourself.' He listens to funny stories and doesn't smile. I'm afraid he'll turn into the weeping philosopher in his old age, being so stuffed with rude gloom while he's young. I'd sooner be married to a skull with a bone in its mouth than to either of them. God protect me from those two.

What do you say to the French lord, Monsieur Le

Bon?

God made him, so we'll let him count as a man. Honestly, I know mocking people is a sin, but him! Why — he has a better horse than the

Neapolitan's, and a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine. He's every man and no man at all. If a thrush sings, he's off dancing immediately. He'll fence with his own shadow. If I married him I'd be marrying twenty husbands. If he wanted to despise me I'd forgive him for it — because if he loved me to distraction, I could never return it.

What do you say to Falconbridge, then — the young English baron?

You know I say nothing to him, because he doesn't understand me and I don't understand him. He has no Latin,

no French, no Italian — and you'd swear in a court of law that my English is worth about a penny. He's the picture of a fine-looking man, but who on earth can hold a conversation with a mime? And how strangely he dresses! I think he bought his jacket in Italy, his breeches in France, his hat in Germany — and his manners everywhere at once. (Another joke fired at the audience: an English theatre laughing at an Englishman abroad, described by a Venetian, in a London playhouse.)

What do you make of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?

That he has a neighbourly kindness about him, because he borrowed a smack round the head from the Englishman and swore he'd pay it back when he was able to. I think the Frenchman stood guarantor for him and signed up for a second one. (A 'box of the ear' is a blow to the head. He was hit, and the joke turns the blow into a loan he means to repay with interest — the play's first bond, in miniature and as a gag.)

How do you like the young German — the Duke of

Saxony's nephew?

Very poorly in the morning, when he's sober, and most poorly of all in the afternoon, when he's drunk.

At his best he's a little worse than a man; at his worst he's not much better than an animal. If the very worst happened, I hope I'd manage to get by without him.

If he offered to take the test and chose the right chest, you'd be refusing to carry out your father's will if you refused to accept him.

So, in case of the worst, please put a deep glass of Rhine wine on the wrong chest — because if the devil's inside it and that temptation's on the outside, I know he'll pick it. I'll do anything, Nerissa, rather than marry a sponge. (Her father's dying test is sacred until it might produce an answer she dislikes, at which point she starts planning how to rig it. She is joking. She will also do it again later, and not be joking.)

You've no need to fear getting any of these lords, my lady. They've let me know their decision, which is to go back to their own countries and trouble you with no more courting, unless you can be won some other way than by your father's condition about the chests.

If I live as long as the Sibyl, I'll die as chaste as Diana unless I'm won in the way my father's will lays down. I'm glad this batch of suitors is so reasonable, because there isn't one of them whose absence I don't adore. And I pray God gives them a smooth journey home.

Don't you remember, my lady, back in your father's day, a Venetian — a scholar and a soldier — who came here with the Marquess of Montferrat?

Yes. Yes, it was Bassanio — that was his name, I think.

That's right, madam. Of all the men my foolish eyes ever looked at, he was the one who most deserved a beautiful lady.

I remember him well, and I remember him as worth every word of your praise. (The only suitor she says nothing witty about. Nerissa raises his name, not Portia — but Portia knows it straight away.)

Well then — what's the news?

The four foreign gentlemen are looking for you, madam, to say goodbye. And a messenger has arrived ahead of a fifth — the Prince of Morocco — bringing word that his master the Prince will be here tonight.

If I could welcome the fifth as warmly as I can wave the other four off, I'd be glad he's coming. If he has the character of a saint and the colouring of a devil, I'd rather he heard my confession than married me. (This is the play's heroine, and she has not met him. She knows only where he comes from. Four acts later she will make a famous speech about mercy; Shakespeare gives her this line first and lets it stand unanswered.)

Come on, Nerissa. (to the servant) You there, go ahead of us. —

The moment we shut the gate on one suitor, another knocks at the door.