Page 446 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Which makes me fear th’enjoying of my love.
There may as well be amity and life [30]
’Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.

PORTIA
Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforcèd do speak anything.

BASSANIO
Promise me life and I’ll confess the truth.

PORTIA
Well then, confess and live.

BASSANIO
Confess and love [35]
Had been the very sum of my confession.
O happy torment, when my torturer

Doth teach me answers for deliverance.
But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

PORTIA
Away then, I am locked in one of them; [40]
If you do love me, you will find me out.
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof.

Let music sound while he doth make his choice,
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music. That the comparison [45]

May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And watery deathbed for him. He may win,
And what is music then? Then music is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new-crownèd monarch. Such it is [50]

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,

With no less presence but with much more love