Page 445 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Enter Bassanio, Portia, Gratiano, Nerissa, and all their trains.

PORTIA
I pray you tarry, pause a day or two
Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong
I lose your company. Therefore forbear awhile.
There’s something tells me, but it is not love,

I would not lose you; and you know yourself [5]
Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand me well −

And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought −
I would detain you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you [10]
How to choose right, but then I am forsworn.
So will I never be. So may you miss me.

But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o’erlooked me and divided me; [15]

One half of me is yours, the other half yours,
Mine own I would say; but if mine then yours,
And so all yours. O these naughty times
Puts bars between the owners and their rights.
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, [20]

Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long, but ’tis to peise the time,
To eke it and to draw it out in length,

To stay you from election.

BASSANIO

Let me choose,
For as I am, I live upon the rack. [25]

PORTIA
Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.

BASSANIO
None but that ugly treason of mistrust