Act 2, Scene 7

Belmont. A room in PORTIA's house.

[Flourish of cornets. Enter PORTIA, with the PRINCE OF MOROCCO, and their trains.]
Portia
904 Go draw aside the curtains and discover
905 The several caskets to this noble prince.
906 Now make your choice.
Prince of Morocco
907 The first, of gold, who this inscription bears:
908 'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.'
909 The second, silver, which this promise carries:
910 'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.'
911 This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt:
912 'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.'
913 How shall I know if I do choose the right?
Portia
914 The one of them contains my picture, prince;
915 If you choose that, then I am yours withal.
Prince of Morocco
916 Some god direct my judgment! Let me see;
917 I will survey the inscriptions back again.
918 What says this leaden casket?
919 'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.'
920 Must give: for what? For lead? Hazard for lead!
921 This casket threatens; men that hazard all
922 Do it in hope of fair advantages:
923 A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross;
924 I'll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead.
925 What says the silver with her virgin hue?
926 'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.'
927 As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco,
928 And weigh thy value with an even hand.
929 If thou be'st rated by thy estimation,
930 Thou dost deserve enough, and yet enough
931 May not extend so far as to the lady;
932 And yet to be afeard of my deserving
933 Were but a weak disabling of myself.
934 As much as I deserve! Why, that's the lady:
935 I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,
936 In graces, and in qualities of breeding;
937 But more than these, in love I do deserve.
938 What if I stray'd no farther, but chose here?
939 Let's see once more this saying grav'd in gold:
940 'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.'
941 Why, that's the lady: all the world desires her;
942 From the four corners of the earth they come,
943 To kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint:
944 The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds
945 Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now
946 For princes to come view fair Portia:
947 The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head
948 Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar
949 To stop the foreign spirits, but they come
950 As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.
951 One of these three contains her heavenly picture.
952 Is't like that lead contains her? 'Twere damnation
953 To think so base a thought; it were too gross
954 To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.
955 Or shall I think in silver she's immur'd,
956 Being ten times undervalu'd to tried gold?
957 O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem
958 Was set in worse than gold. They have in England
959 A coin that bears the figure of an angel
960 Stamped in gold; but that's insculp'd upon;
961 But here an angel in a golden bed
962 Lies all within. Deliver me the key;
963 Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may!
Portia
964 There, take it, prince, and if my form lie there,
965 Then I am yours.
[He unlocks the golden casket.]
Prince of Morocco
966 O hell! what have we here?
967 A carrion Death, within whose empty eye
968 There is a written scroll! I'll read the writing.
Prince of Morocco
969 'All that glisters is not gold,
970 Often have you heard that told;
971 Many a man his life hath sold
972 But my outside to behold:
973 Gilded tombs do worms infold.
974 Had you been as wise as bold,
975 Young in limbs, in judgment old,
976 Your answer had not been inscroll'd:
977 Fare you well, your suit is cold.'
Prince of Morocco
978 Cold indeed; and labour lost:
979 Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost!
980 Portia, adieu! I have too griev'd a heart
981 To take a tedious leave; thus losers part.
[Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets.]
Portia
982 A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains: go.
983 Let all of his complexion choose me so.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 908cultural context
“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire”
Each casket carries a set motto that functions as a riddle: gold promises what 'many men desire' (Portia herself, or worldly wealth), silver promises 'as much as he deserves' (pride in one's own merit), and lead demands a suitor 'give and hazard all he hath' (selfless risk). The correct choice is lead. The test originates in the Gesta Romanorum, a medieval collection of moralised tales, where the caskets carry inverted mottoes to expose greed and vanity.
historical The three caskets
TLN 944historical topical
“The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds”
Hyrcania was the ancient name for the wild, forested region south and east of the Caspian Sea (roughly modern Iran and Turkmenistan). Classical writers used it as a byword for the edge of the known world and extreme savagery; tigers from there ('Hyrcanian tiger') recur in Shakespeare as emblems of ferocity. Morocco uses the name to picture suitors crossing the whole known world — from the farthest east to 'wide Arabia' — just to see Portia.
TLN 947rhetorical device
“The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head / Spits in the face of heaven”
Morocco personifies the sea as a proud kingdom whose waves ('ambitious head') reach up and 'spit in the face of heaven' — yet even the ocean is no barrier to princes racing to Belmont. 'Ambitious' here means literally 'striving upward' (from Latin ambitio, a going around, but often connoting overreach). The image of waves thrusting toward the sky was a Renaissance commonplace for the sea's dangerous pride, and Morocco turns it into a measure of the world's desire for Portia.
TLN 954archaic vocab
“To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave”
A 'cerecloth' (also 'cerement') is a winding-sheet saturated in wax used to wrap a corpse for burial. To 'rib' it means to encase or enclose within it, as ribs enclose the chest. Morocco is saying it would be a sin to imagine Portia's picture shut inside a wax-wrapped corpse's shroud in a dark grave — the lead casket's dull heaviness reads to him as burial.
TLN 955archaic vocab
“in silver she's immur'd, / Being ten times undervalu'd to tried gold”
'Immured' means walled in or imprisoned (from Latin murus, wall). Morocco dismisses the silver casket because silver is 'ten times undervalu'd to tried gold' — silver was worth roughly one-tenth the price of gold by weight in standard Elizabethan exchange rates. 'Tried' means tested or refined (gold that has been proved pure by assay). His logic is sound but leads him to the wrong answer: the test is about humility, not market value.
TLN 959historical topical
“A coin that bears the figure of an angel / Stamped in gold; but that's insculp'd upon; / But here an angel in a golden bed”
The 'angel' was a real English gold coin stamped with the image of the Archangel Michael slaying a dragon; it was in circulation from the 1460s until the 1640s and worth ten shillings. Morocco puns on it: the English coin has a mere image of an angel pressed ('insculp'd') onto its surface, but the gold casket contains — he reasons — an actual angelic being (Portia) resting inside 'a golden bed.' The pun flatters Portia as worth infinitely more than a coin.
TLN 969cultural context
“All that glisters is not gold, / Often have you heard that told”
'Glisters' is an older form of 'glistens' or 'glitters' (Elizabethan English used both forms interchangeably). The scroll mocks Morocco for doing exactly what the proverb warns against: choosing by surface shine rather than inner worth. The casket is the test made visible -- its glittering gold exterior hides a death's-head and a poem ending 'your suit is cold.' The saying was already proverbial before Shakespeare, who gives it its most memorable form here.
historical The three caskets
TLN 982historical topical
“A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains: go. / Let all of his complexion choose me so.”
'Complexion' means skin colour (also bodily constitution and humour, but the primary meaning here is racial). Portia's relief — 'a gentle riddance' means a good getting-rid-of — ends with a line expressing prejudice against Morocco's Moorish race: she hopes every man of his colouring makes the same wrong choice. Morocco himself had asked her not to judge him 'for my complexion' (2.1). The line frames the casket plot within the play's broader, troubled treatment of race.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage