Page 496 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Ay, if a woman live to be a man. [160]

GRATIANO
Now by this hand, I gave it to a youth,
A kind of boy, a little scrubbèd boy
No higher than thyself, the judge’s clerk,
A prating boy that begged it as a fee;

I could not for my heart deny it him. [165]

PORTIA
You were to blame − I must be plain with you −
To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift,
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger

And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.
I gave my love a ring, and made him swear [170]
Never to part with it; and here he stands:
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it

Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth
That the world masters. Now in faith, Gratiano,
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief. [175]
An ’twere to me, I should be mad at it.

BASSANIO

(aside)
Why, I were best to cut my left hand off
And swear I lost the ring defending it.

GRATIANO
My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away
Unto the judge that begged it, and indeed [180]

Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk
That took some pains in writing, he begged mine,
And neither man nor master would take aught
But the two rings.

PORTIA

What ring gave you, my lord?