The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare Right Now!

no better a musician than the wren. How many things by season are seasoned to their right praise
and true perfection.”
The gentlewomen have reached the house. “Peace,” Portia tells the musicians, smiling as she
walks across the terrace. She spots Lorenzo, sitting with his arm around Jessica, their heads tilted
together, and points to the couple. “The moon sleeps with Endymion, and would not be awaked!”
Lorenzo hears her. “That is the voice, or I am much deceived, of Portia!” he says happily,
rising to greet her, and offering a hand to help Jessica to her feet.
Portia laughs. “He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice!”
“Dear lady, welcome home!” Lorenzo bows, and Jessica curtseys.
“We have been praying for our husbands’ healths,” says Portia, “which speed, we hope, the
better for our words! Are they returned?”
“Madam, they are not yet; but there is come a messenger before, to signify their coming.”
Portia acts quickly. “Go in, Nerissa! Give order to my servants that they take no note at all of
our being absent hence!—nor you, Lorenzo!—Jessica, nor you!” Nerissa hurries inside.
Soon a flourish of horns—real ones—is sounded at the front of the house.
“Your husband is at hand! I hear his trumpet,” says Lorenzo. “We are no tell-tales, madam;
fear you not!” Nerissa returns.
As the new lord of the manor nears Portia, arriving with Antonio and Gratiano and their
attendants, she glances up at the sky—and seems troubled. “This night methinks is but the
daylight sick; it looks a little paler. ’Tis a day such as the day is when the sun is hid.”
Bassanio rushes to kiss her. “We should hold day with the Antipodes”—share time with the
other side of the world, still light—“if you would walk, in the absence of the sun!”
“Let me give light, but let me not be light,” says Portia, “for a light wife”—an unfaithful
one—“doth make a heavy husband”—a sorrowful one. “And never be Bassanio so for me! But
God sort all. You are welcome home, my lord!”
“I thank you, madam! Give welcome to my friend!—this is the man, this is Antonio, to whom
I am so infinitely bound!”
“You should in all sense be much bound to him,” says Portia, “for, as I hear, he was much
bound for you!”
Antonio assures her., “No more than I am well acquitted of!”—repaid, with a play on
acquittal.
Portia takes his hand. “Sir, you are very welcome to our house! It must appear in other ways
than words; therefore I scant this breathing courtesy”—say so little now.
Gratiano has greeted Nerissa with a kiss; and she has already commented privately on his
missing ring.
“By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong!” he insists. “In faith, I gave it to the judge’s
clerk!” He adds, annoyed, “As for my part, I would he who had it were gelt,”—castrated—“since
you do take it, love, so much at heart!”
Portia hears him. “A quarrel, ho, already? What’s the matter?”
“About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring that she did give me,” protests Gratiano, “whose poem
was for all the world like cutler’s poetry upon a knife: ‘Love me, and leave me not.’”
Nerissa is indignant. “What talk you of the poesy, or the value?—you swore to me, when I
did give it you, that you would wear it till your hour of death, and that it should lie with you in
your grave!
“Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths you should have been respective, and have
kept it! Gave it a judge’s clerk?” she cries. “No, God’s my judge!—the ‘clerk’ will ne’er wear
hair on ‘his’ face who had it!”
“He will, an if he live to be a man!” says Gratiano.
Nerissa huffs: “Aye—if a woman live to be a man!”
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