Act 3, Scene 2

Belmont. A room in PORTIA's house.

[Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and Attendants.]
Portia
1247 I pray you tarry; pause a day or two
1248 Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,
1249 I lose your company; therefore forbear a while.
1250 There's something tells me, but it is not love,
1251 I would not lose you; and you know yourself
1252 Hate counsels not in such a quality.
1253 But lest you should not understand me well,—
1254 And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,—
1255 I would detain you here some month or two
1256 Before you venture for me. I could teach you
1257 How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;
1258 So will I never be; so may you miss me;
1259 But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin,
1260 That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
1261 They have o'erlook'd me and divided me:
1262 One half of me is yours, the other half yours,
1263 Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
1264 And so all yours. O! these naughty times
1265 Puts bars between the owners and their rights;
1266 And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,
1267 Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
1268 I speak too long, but 'tis to peise the time,
1269 To eke it, and to draw it out in length,
1270 To stay you from election.
Bassanio
1271 Let me choose;
1272 For as I am, I live upon the rack.
Portia
1273 Upon the rack, Bassanio! Then confess
1274 What treason there is mingled with your love.
Bassanio
1275 None but that ugly treason of mistrust,
1276 Which makes me fear th' enjoying of my love:
1277 There may as well be amity and life
1278 'Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.
Portia
1279 Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
1280 Where men enforced do speak anything.
Bassanio
1281 Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.
Portia
1282 Well then, confess and live.
Bassanio
1283 'Confess' and 'love'
1284 Had been the very sum of my confession:
1285 O happy torment, when my torturer
1286 Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
1287 But let me to my fortune and the caskets.
Portia
1288 Away, then! I am lock'd in one of them:
1289 If you do love me, you will find me out.
1290 Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof;
1291 Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
1292 Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
1293 Fading in music: that the comparison
1294 May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
1295 And watery death-bed for him. He may win;
1296 And what is music then? Then music is
1297 Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
1298 To a new-crowned monarch; such it is
1299 As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
1300 That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear
1301 And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,
1302 With no less presence, but with much more love,
1303 Than young Alcides when he did redeem
1304 The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
1305 To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice;
1306 The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,
1307 With bleared visages come forth to view
1308 The issue of th' exploit. Go, Hercules!
1309 Live thou, I live. With much much more dismay
1310 I view the fight than thou that mak'st the fray.
[A Song, whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself.]
Musicians
1311 Tell me where is fancy bred,
1312 Or in the heart or in the head,
1313 How begot, how nourished?
1314 Reply, reply.
Musicians
1315 It is engend'red in the eyes,
1316 With gazing fed; and fancy dies
1317 In the cradle where it lies.
1318 Let us all ring fancy's knell:
1319 I'll begin it.—Ding, dong, bell.
[ALL.]
Musicians
1320 Ding, dong, bell.
Bassanio
1321 So may the outward shows be least themselves:
1322 The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.
1323 In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
1324 But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
1325 Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
1326 What damned error but some sober brow
1327 Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
1328 Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
1329 There is no vice so simple but assumes
1330 Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
1331 How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
1332 As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
1333 The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;
1334 Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk;
1335 And these assume but valour's excrement
1336 To render them redoubted! Look on beauty
1337 And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight:
1338 Which therein works a miracle in nature,
1339 Making them lightest that wear most of it:
1340 So are those crisped snaky golden locks
1341 Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
1342 Upon supposed fairness, often known
1343 To be the dowry of a second head,
1344 The skull that bred them, in the sepulchre.
1345 Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
1346 To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
1347 Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,
1348 The seeming truth which cunning times put on
1349 To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,
1350 Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;
1351 Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge
1352 'Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead,
1353 Which rather threaten'st than dost promise aught,
1354 Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,
1355 And here choose I: joy be the consequence!
[Aside]
Portia
1356 How all the other passions fleet to air,
1357 As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair,
1358 And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy!
1359 O love! be moderate; allay thy ecstasy;
1360 In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess;
1361 I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,
1362 For fear I surfeit!
Bassanio
1363 What find I here?
[Opening the leaden casket.]
Bassanio
1364 Fair Portia's counterfeit! What demi-god
1365 Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?
1366 Or whether riding on the balls of mine,
1367 Seem they in motion? Here are sever'd lips,
1368 Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar
1369 Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs
1370 The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
1371 A golden mesh t' entrap the hearts of men
1372 Faster than gnats in cobwebs: but her eyes!—
1373 How could he see to do them? Having made one,
1374 Methinks it should have power to steal both his,
1375 And leave itself unfurnish'd: yet look, how far
1376 The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow
1377 In underprizing it, so far this shadow
1378 Doth limp behind the substance. Here's the scroll,
1379 The continent and summary of my fortune.
Bassanio
1380 'You that choose not by the view,
1381 Chance as fair and choose as true!
1382 Since this fortune falls to you,
1383 Be content and seek no new.
1384 If you be well pleas'd with this,
1385 And hold your fortune for your bliss,
1386 Turn to where your lady is
1387 And claim her with a loving kiss.'
Bassanio
1388 A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave; {Kissing her.]
1389 I come by note, to give and to receive.
1390 Like one of two contending in a prize,
1391 That thinks he hath done well in people's eyes,
1392 Hearing applause and universal shout,
1393 Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt
1394 Whether those peals of praise be his or no;
1395 So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so,
1396 As doubtful whether what I see be true,
1397 Until confirm'd, sign'd, ratified by you.
Portia
1398 You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
1399 Such as I am: though for myself alone
1400 I would not be ambitious in my wish
1401 To wish myself much better, yet for you
1402 I would be trebled twenty times myself,
1403 A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
1404 More rich;
1405 That only to stand high in your account,
1406 I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
1407 Exceed account. But the full sum of me
1408 Is sum of something which, to term in gross,
1409 Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd;
1410 Happy in this, she is not yet so old
1411 But she may learn; happier than this,
1412 She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
1413 Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
1414 Commits itself to yours to be directed,
1415 As from her lord, her governor, her king.
1416 Myself and what is mine to you and yours
1417 Is now converted. But now I was the lord
1418 Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
1419 Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
1420 This house, these servants, and this same myself,
1421 Are yours- my lord's. I give them with this ring,
1422 Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
1423 Let it presage the ruin of your love,
1424 And be my vantage to exclaim on you.
Bassanio
1425 Madam, you have bereft me of all words,
1426 Only my blood speaks to you in my veins;
1427 And there is such confusion in my powers
1428 As, after some oration fairly spoke
1429 By a beloved prince, there doth appear
1430 Among the buzzing pleased multitude;
1431 Where every something, being blent together,
1432 Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy,
1433 Express'd and not express'd. But when this ring
1434 Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence:
1435 O! then be bold to say Bassanio's dead.
Nerissa
1436 My lord and lady, it is now our time,
1437 That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper,
1438 To cry, good joy. Good joy, my lord and lady!
Gratiano
1439 My Lord Bassanio, and my gentle lady,
1440 I wish you all the joy that you can wish;
1441 For I am sure you can wish none from me;
1442 And when your honours mean to solemnize
1443 The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you
1444 Even at that time I may be married too.
Bassanio
1445 With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.
Gratiano
1446 I thank your lordship, you have got me one.
1447 My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours:
1448 You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid;
1449 You lov'd, I lov'd; for intermission
1450 No more pertains to me, my lord, than you.
1451 Your fortune stood upon the caskets there,
1452 And so did mine too, as the matter falls;
1453 For wooing here until I sweat again,
1454 And swearing till my very roof was dry
1455 With oaths of love, at last, if promise last,
1456 I got a promise of this fair one here
1457 To have her love, provided that your fortune
1458 Achiev'd her mistress.
Portia
1459 Is this true, Nerissa?
Nerissa
1460 Madam, it is, so you stand pleas'd withal.
Bassanio
1461 And do you, Gratiano, mean good faith?
Gratiano
1462 Yes, faith, my lord.
Bassanio
1463 Our feast shall be much honour'd in your marriage.
Gratiano
1464 We'll play with them the first boy for a thousand
1465 ducats.
Nerissa
1466 What! and stake down?
Gratiano
1467 No; we shall ne'er win at that sport, and stake down.
1468 But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel?
1469 What, and my old Venetian friend, Salanio!
[Enter LORENZO, JESSICA, and SALANIO.]
Bassanio
1470 Lorenzo and Salanio, welcome hither,
1471 If that the youth of my new interest here
1472 Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave,
1473 I bid my very friends and countrymen,
1474 Sweet Portia, welcome.
Portia
1475 So do I, my lord;
1476 They are entirely welcome.
Lorenzo
1477 I thank your honour. For my part, my lord,
1478 My purpose was not to have seen you here;
1479 But meeting with Salanio by the way,
1480 He did entreat me, past all saying nay,
1481 To come with him along.
Salanio
1482 I did, my lord,
1483 And I have reason for it. Signior Antonio
1484 Commends him to you.
[Gives BASSANIO a letter]
Bassanio
1485 Ere I ope his letter,
1486 I pray you tell me how my good friend doth.
Salanio
1487 Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind;
1488 Nor well, unless in mind; his letter there
1489 Will show you his estate.
Gratiano
1490 Nerissa, cheer yon stranger; bid her welcome.
1491 Your hand, Salanio. What's the news from Venice?
1492 How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio?
1493 I know he will be glad of our success:
1494 We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.
Salanio
1495 I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost.
Portia
1496 There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper.
1497 That steal the colour from Bassanio's cheek:
1498 Some dear friend dead, else nothing in the world
1499 Could turn so much the constitution
1500 Of any constant man. What, worse and worse!
1501 With leave, Bassanio: I am half yourself,
1502 And I must freely have the half of anything
1503 That this same paper brings you.
Bassanio
1504 O sweet Portia!
1505 Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words
1506 That ever blotted paper. Gentle lady,
1507 When I did first impart my love to you,
1508 I freely told you all the wealth I had
1509 Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman;
1510 And then I told you true. And yet, dear lady,
1511 Rating myself at nothing, you shall see
1512 How much I was a braggart. When I told you
1513 My state was nothing, I should then have told you
1514 That I was worse than nothing; for indeed
1515 I have engag'd myself to a dear friend,
1516 Engag'd my friend to his mere enemy,
1517 To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady,
1518 The paper as the body of my friend,
1519 And every word in it a gaping wound
1520 Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salanio?
1521 Hath all his ventures fail'd? What, not one hit?
1522 From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England,
1523 From Lisbon, Barbary, and India?
1524 And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch
1525 Of merchant-marring rocks?
Salanio
1526 Not one, my lord.
1527 Besides, it should appear that, if he had
1528 The present money to discharge the Jew,
1529 He would not take it. Never did I know
1530 A creature that did bear the shape of man,
1531 So keen and greedy to confound a man.
1532 He plies the duke at morning and at night,
1533 And doth impeach the freedom of the state,
1534 If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants,
1535 The duke himself, and the magnificoes
1536 Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him;
1537 But none can drive him from the envious plea
1538 Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond.
Jessica
1539 When I was with him, I have heard him swear
1540 To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,
1541 That he would rather have Antonio's flesh
1542 Than twenty times the value of the sum
1543 That he did owe him; and I know, my lord,
1544 If law, authority, and power, deny not,
1545 It will go hard with poor Antonio.
Portia
1546 Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?
Bassanio
1547 The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
1548 The best condition'd and unwearied spirit
1549 In doing courtesies; and one in whom
1550 The ancient Roman honour more appears
1551 Than any that draws breath in Italy.
Portia
1552 What sum owes he the Jew?
Bassanio
1553 For me, three thousand ducats.
Portia
1554 What! no more?
1555 Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond;
1556 Double six thousand, and then treble that,
1557 Before a friend of this description
1558 Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault.
1559 First go with me to church and call me wife,
1560 And then away to Venice to your friend;
1561 For never shall you lie by Portia's side
1562 With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold
1563 To pay the petty debt twenty times over:
1564 When it is paid, bring your true friend along.
1565 My maid Nerissa and myself meantime,
1566 Will live as maids and widows. Come, away!
1567 For you shall hence upon your wedding day.
1568 Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer;
1569 Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.
1570 But let me hear the letter of your friend.
Bassanio
1571 'Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried,
1572 my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the
1573 Jew is forfeit; and since, in paying it, it is impossible I
1574 should live, all debts are clear'd between you and I, if I might
1575 but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure; if
1576 your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.'
Portia
1577 O love, dispatch all business and be gone!
Bassanio
1578 Since I have your good leave to go away,
1579 I will make haste; but, till I come again,
1580 No bed shall e'er be guilty of my stay,
1581 Nor rest be interposer 'twixt us twain.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1247syntax grammar
“I pray you tarry; pause a day or two”
Portia asks Bassanio to delay the casket choice. 'Tarry' means to wait or stay. She is bound by her father's will not to hint at the right casket, yet she wants to keep him near — her opening speeches balance the constraint against her feeling for him.
TLN 1254cultural context
“a maiden hath no tongue but thought”
Portia invokes the Elizabethan ideal that a well-bred unmarried woman expresses herself only in private thought, not in open speech. The phrase half-excuses her oblique way of talking: convention forbids her from speaking directly what she feels.
TLN 1257archaic vocab
“I am forsworn; So will I never be”
To be 'forsworn' is to have broken a solemn oath. Portia says she could teach Bassanio how to choose right — but that would mean breaking the oath she swore to honour her father's will, and she refuses to do that.
TLN 1260archaic vocab
“Beshrew your eyes, They have o'erlook'd me”
'Beshrew' is a mild curse, roughly 'a plague on' or 'shame on.' 'O'erlook'd' means bewitched — the belief that certain gazes, especially from someone in love, could cast a spell on the person looked at. Portia says Bassanio's eyes have enchanted her so she is divided against herself.
TLN 1268archaic vocab
“'tis to peise the time, To eke it”
'Peise' (or poise) means to weigh down or retard; 'eke' means to stretch out or extend. Portia admits she has been talking only to slow time and keep Bassanio from the caskets a little longer.
TLN 1272cultural context
“I live upon the rack”
The rack was a torture device that stretched a prisoner's body to force a confession. Bassanio says the waiting is torture; Portia picks up the image by asking what 'treason' is mixed in with his love — on the rack, prisoners were forced to confess to crimes. The exchange turns courtship briefly into an interrogation scene.
TLN 1303classical allusion
“young Alcides when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy”
'Alcides' is Hercules, named for his grandfather Alcaeus. Portia compares Bassanio choosing her casket to Hercules rescuing Hesione: the city of Troy was forced to offer a young woman as tribute to a sea-monster, and Hercules killed the monster and freed her. Portia is the 'sacrifice,' Bassanio is the hero, and Nerissa and the attendants are the 'Dardanian wives' watching from the shore.
classical Hercules and his labours
TLN 1322rhetorical device
“The world is still deceiv'd with ornament”
Bassanio delivers a formal speech on the gap between appearance and reality — one of the play's central themes. He works through examples: corrupt legal arguments dressed in a fine voice, wrong religious doctrine blessed by a pious face, cowardice hidden beneath a soldier's beard. Each case shows the same pattern: bad content disguised by attractive form. The speech is an extended version of the proverb 'All that glisters is not gold' (what Morocco found on the gold casket).
historical The three caskets
TLN 1333cultural context
“The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars; Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk”
Hercules and Mars (Ares in Greek) were the classical emblems of strength and war. Bassanio says that cowards grow full beards to look like these heroes, but when examined inside ('inward search'd'), their livers are 'white as milk.' The liver was thought to be the seat of courage; a pale, bloodless liver meant cowardice.
classical Hercules and his labours
TLN 1335archaic vocab
“these assume but valour's excrement”
'Excrement' here means outgrowth — what grows outward from the body, such as hair, nails, or a beard. Cowards 'assume' (put on) the outward growth of bravery — i.e., a warrior's beard — to seem formidable. The modern meaning of the word did not dominate in Shakespeare's day.
TLN 1340cultural context
“those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness”
Bassanio argues that elaborately curled golden hair is often borrowed — cut from a dead woman's head and fashioned into a wig or hair-piece. 'Supposed fairness' means assumed or false beauty. The practice of selling dead women's hair to wigmakers was documented in Elizabethan London. Bassanio presents it as another form of the 'ornament' theme: the skull that grew those locks is now in the grave.
TLN 1345archaic vocab
“ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea”
'Guiled' means treacherous — a shoreline that looks safe but hides rocks or shoals underneath. In a city of merchants and sailors, the metaphor of a deceptive harbor was resonant. Bassanio stacks this on top of 'an Indian beauty' — a dark complexion veiled by a 'beauteous scarf' of cosmetics, continuing his theme that fine appearance hides danger.
TLN 1350classical allusion
“Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee”
King Midas of Phrygia was granted the wish that everything he touched would turn to gold — then found he could not eat because his food turned to gold the moment it reached his mouth. Bassanio rejects the gold casket with this allusion: gold is 'hard food,' because it cannot nourish. Ovid tells the story in Metamorphoses.
TLN 1351cultural context
“thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man”
Bassanio rejects the silver casket by calling silver the 'pale drudge' that passes between people as coin — the everyday medium of trade and debt. Silver is 'common' because it belongs to everyone, buying and selling all day, unlike gold which is rarer, or lead which is humbler. The image links the silver casket directly to the money-economy — Shylock's world of lending and bonds.
TLN 1358cultural context
“green-ey'd jealousy”
This is one of Shakespeare's own coinage for jealousy as green-eyed — the color was associated with sickness, envy, and treachery. The later 'green-eyed monster' (Othello 3.3) develops the same image. Here Portia prays that her joy not curdle into jealousy, listing the emotions she wants to shed now that the choice is made.
TLN 1364archaic vocab
“Fair Portia's counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation”
'Counterfeit' here means painted likeness or portrait — not a fake, but a copy made by art. Bassanio praises the portrait as so lifelike that the painter must be a 'demi-god': only something close to divine could create eyes that seem to move. The word carried no dishonest sense in this context; it was a standard term for a painted likeness.
TLN 1370rhetorical device
“the painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh t' entrap the hearts of men”
Bassanio compares the painter to a spider whose painted web of Portia's golden hair traps men's hearts faster than real spiders trap gnats. The conceit is that the portrait's beauty is itself a kind of snare — a picture that holds the viewer captive. It glances ironically back at the casket speech's attack on gilded ornament, since even Bassanio is caught by a beautiful image.
TLN 1379archaic vocab
“The continent and summary of my fortune”
'Continent' here means that which contains or holds something — a vessel or container. Bassanio calls the scroll the container and summing-up of his fate. The word's common geographical meaning (a large landmass) is a secondary sense derived from the same Latin root.
TLN 1409cultural context
“an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd”
Portia formally surrenders herself and all her property to Bassanio, describing herself as an 'unlesson'd,' unschooled girl who submits to him as 'lord, governor, king.' This is the legal language of Elizabethan marriage, in which a woman's property and legal person passed to her husband at the wedding. Portia's self-description as ignorant is deeply ironic — she is the play's most brilliant legal mind.
TLN 1421cultural context
“I give them with this ring, Which when you part from, lose, or give away, Let it presage the ruin of your love”
Portia gives Bassanio a ring as a pledge of the marriage, warning that parting with it will mean the ruin of their love. A ring given as a marriage token was a legally and emotionally charged object in Elizabethan practice; losing it was a serious breach. This ring becomes the hinge of the play's Act 5 comic crisis, when Bassanio gives it away to the disguised Portia in the trial scene.
TLN 1442archaic vocab
“when your honours mean to solemnize The bargain of your faith”
'Solemnize' means to make formal and official with a ceremony — here, to get married. 'The bargain of your faith' means the contract of your troth-plighting or betrothal. The word 'bargain' reflects the period's habit of framing marriage as a legally binding agreement; 'faith' here means troth, the pledged word.
TLN 1468historical topical
“Lorenzo and his infidel”
Gratiano calls Jessica an 'infidel' — a non-Christian, one who does not hold the Christian faith. As Shylock's daughter and a Jew, Jessica is technically an infidel from a Christian standpoint, though she has eloped with Lorenzo and will convert. The word was used matter-of-factly by Elizabethans for any non-Christian; it carries the play's underlying framing of Venice as a Christian city with Jewish residents who exist outside its social norms.
historical The 'Jew' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 1494classical allusion
“We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece”
Jason was the Greek hero who led the Argonauts on a voyage to Colchis at the edge of the world to steal the Golden Fleece — a magical ram's fleece hanging in a sacred grove guarded by a sleepless dragon. Gratiano compares the Venetians to Jason, and the Golden Fleece to Portia — and, punningly, to Portia's golden hair. Salanio's grim reply ('I would you had won the fleece that he [Antonio] hath lost') means: Antonio's cargo-ships are the real 'fleece' now lost.
TLN 1527historical topical
“if he had The present money to discharge the Jew, He would not take it”
Salanio reports that Shylock refuses repayment of the loan — he wants only the pound of flesh. 'Discharge' means to settle or pay off a debt in full. The report establishes that this is no longer a commercial dispute but a personal vendetta. Salanio frames this as monstrous ('Never did I know / A creature that did bear the shape of man, / So keen and greedy to confound a man'), a portrayal shaped by the antisemitic conventions of the Elizabethan stage.
historical The 'Jew' on the Elizabethan stagehistorical Usury and the bond
TLN 1533historical topical
“doth impeach the freedom of the state, If they deny him justice”
Salanio says Shylock threatens to accuse Venice of violating its own laws if the Duke refuses to enforce the bond. 'Impeach' means to challenge or call into question. Venice's reputation as a free commercial city-state depended on foreigners knowing that contracts would be honored; denying any creditor his legal due would damage the entire trading order. This is the legal trap that prevents the Duke from simply dismissing the case.
TLN 1550historical topical
“The ancient Roman honour more appears Than any that draws breath in Italy”
Bassanio praises Antonio by comparing him to the ancient Romans — specifically to the Stoic ideal of the Roman who valued loyalty, generosity, and honour over self-preservation. 'Roman honour' meant the willingness to face death calmly for a friend or cause, the quality Brutus and Cato exemplified. Coming just before Antonio's letter reveals he faces a death-sentence, the praise is grimly apt.
historical Renaissance friendship and the friend-versus-love ideal
TLN 1571historical topical
“Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried”
Antonio's letter reveals that all his merchant ships have failed to arrive — lost to storms, rocks, or pirates. 'Miscarried' means gone astray or come to a bad end. The named ports (Tripolis, Mexico, England, Lisbon, Barbary, India) are a roll-call of Elizabethan long-distance trade routes: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Africa, and Asia. The loss of all ventures simultaneously was financially catastrophic.
TLN 1572historical topical
“my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since, in paying it, it is impossible I should live”
Antonio confirms that the bond has fallen due and that he cannot pay: the penalty — a pound of his flesh — will kill him. 'Forfeit' means the penalty clause of the contract has been triggered because the debt was not repaid on time. The letter's calm acceptance of death ('all debts are clear'd between you and I, if I might but see you at my death') mirrors the Stoic Roman honour Bassanio just praised.
historical Usury and the bond