No Fear Shakespeare-Merchant Of Venice

Act 3-Scene 2

BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, andNERISSA enter with all their attendants, including a SINGER.

PORTIA

(to BASSANIO) Please wait a day or two before making your choice. If you choose wrong, I'll lose your company. So wait a while. Something tells me-not love, but something-that I don't want to lose you, and you know that if I hated you I wouldn't think that. But let me put it more clearly in case you don't understand-though I know girls aren't supposed to express their thoughts-I'm just saying I'd like you to stay here for a month or two before you undergo the test for me. I could tell you how to choose correctly, but then I'd be disregarding the oath I took. So I'll never tell. But you might lose me by making the wrong choice. If you do choose wrong, you'll make me wish for something very bad. I'd wish I had ignored my oath and told you everything. God, your eyes have bewitched me. They've divided me in two. One half of me is yours, and the other half-my own half, I'd call it-belongs to you too. If it's mine, then it's yours, and so I'm all yours. But in this awful day and age people don't even have the right to their own property! So though I'm yours, I'm not yours. If there's no chance for me to be yours, then it's just bad luck. I know I'm talking too much, but I do that just to make the time last longer, and to postpone your test.

BASSANIO

Let me choose now. I feel tortured by all this talking.

PORTIA

Tortured, Bassanio? Then confess to your crime. Tell us about the treason you've mixed in with your love.

BASSANIO

The only treason I'm guilty of is worrying that I'm never going to get to enjoy you. Treason has nothing at all to do with my love. They're as opposite as hot and cold.

PORTIA

Hmmm, I'm not sure I believe what you're saying. Men under torture will confess anything.

BASSANIO

Promise me you'll let me live, and I'll confess the truth.

PORTIA

All right then, confess and live.

BASSANIO

"Confess and love" is more like it. Oh, torture's fun when my torturer tells me what I have to say to go free! But let me try my luck on the boxes.

PORTIA

Go ahead, then. I'm locked in one of them. If you really love me, you'll find me.-Nerissa and the rest of you, get away from him. Play some music while he chooses. Then if he loses, it'll be his swan song, music before the end. And since swans need water to swim in, I'll cry him a river when he loses. But on the other hand, he may win. What music should we play then? If he wins, the music should be like the majestic trumpets that blare when subjects bow to a newly crowned monarch. It's the sweet sounds at daybreak that the dreaming bridegroom hears on his wedding morning, calling him to the church.

Bassanio's walking to the boxes now. He looks as dignified as Hercules did when he saved the princess Hesione from the sea monster. But he loves me more than Hercules loved the princess. I'll play Hesione, and everyone else will be the bystanders watching with tear-streaked faces. We've all come out to see what will happen.-Go, Hercules! If you survive, I'll live. I'm more anxious watching you fight than you are in the fight itself.

(A song plays while BASSANIO mulls over the boxes.)

SINGER
(singing)

Tell me where do our desires start,
In the heart or in the head?
How are they created, how sustained?