Act 5, Scene 1

Belmont. The avenue to PORTIA's house.

[Enter LORENZO and JESSICA.]
Lorenzo
2279 The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
2280 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
2281 And they did make no noise, in such a night,
2282 Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,
2283 And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents,
2284 Where Cressid lay that night.
Jessica
2285 In such a night
2286 Did Thisby fearfully o'ertrip the dew,
2287 And saw the lion's shadow ere himself,
2288 And ran dismay'd away.
Lorenzo
2289 In such a night
2290 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
2291 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
2292 To come again to Carthage.
Jessica
2293 In such a night
2294 Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs
2295 That did renew old AEson.
Lorenzo
2296 In such a night
2297 Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
2298 And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
2299 As far as Belmont.
Jessica
2300 In such a night
2301 Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well,
2302 Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,—
2303 And ne'er a true one.
Lorenzo
2304 In such a night
2305 Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,
2306 Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica
2307 I would out-night you, did no body come;
2308 But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.
[Enter STEPHANO.]
Lorenzo
2309 Who comes so fast in silence of the night?
Stephano
2310 A friend.
Lorenzo
2311 A friend! What friend? Your name, I pray you, friend?
Stephano
2312 Stephano is my name, and I bring word
2313 My mistress will before the break of day
2314 Be here at Belmont; she doth stray about
2315 By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays
2316 For happy wedlock hours.
Lorenzo
2317 Who comes with her?
Stephano
2318 None but a holy hermit and her maid.
2319 I pray you, is my master yet return'd?
Lorenzo
2320 He is not, nor we have not heard from him.
2321 But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica,
2322 And ceremoniously let us prepare
2323 Some welcome for the mistress of the house.
[Enter LAUNCELOT.]
Lorenzo
2324 LAUNCELOT. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!
Lorenzo
2325 Who calls?
Launcelot Gobbo
2326 Sola! Did you see Master Lorenzo? Master Lorenzo! Sola, sola!
Lorenzo
2327 Leave holloaing, man. Here!
Launcelot Gobbo
2328 Sola! Where? where?
Lorenzo
2329 Here!
Launcelot Gobbo
2330 Tell him there's a post come from my master with his
2331 horn full of good news; my master will be here ere morning.
[Exit]
Lorenzo
2332 Sweet soul, let's in, and there expect their coming.
2333 And yet no matter; why should we go in?
2334 My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,
2335 Within the house, your mistress is at hand;
2336 And bring your music forth into the air.
[Exit STEPHANO.]
Lorenzo
2337 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
2338 Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
2339 Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
2340 Become the touches of sweet harmony.
2341 Sit, Jessica: look how the floor of heaven
2342 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
2343 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
2344 But in his motion like an angel sings,
2345 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
2346 Such harmony is in immortal souls;
2347 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
2348 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
[Enter Musicians.]
Lorenzo
2349 Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn;
2350 With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear.
2351 And draw her home with music.
[Music.]
Jessica
2352 I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lorenzo
2353 The reason is, your spirits are attentive;
2354 For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
2355 Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
2356 Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
2357 Which is the hot condition of their blood;
2358 If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
2359 Or any air of music touch their ears,
2360 You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
2361 Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
2362 By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
2363 Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
2364 Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
2365 But music for the time doth change his nature.
2366 The man that hath no music in himself,
2367 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
2368 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
2369 The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
2370 And his affections dark as Erebus.
2371 Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
[Enter PORTIA and NERISSA, at a distance.]
Portia
2372 That light we see is burning in my hall.
2373 How far that little candle throws his beams!
2374 So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Nerissa
2375 When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
Portia
2376 So doth the greater glory dim the less:
2377 A substitute shines brightly as a king
2378 Until a king be by, and then his state
2379 Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
2380 Into the main of waters. Music! hark!
Nerissa
2381 It is your music, madam, of the house.
Portia
2382 Nothing is good, I see, without respect:
2383 Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Nerissa
2384 Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Portia
2385 The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
2386 When neither is attended; and I think
2387 The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
2388 When every goose is cackling, would be thought
2389 No better a musician than the wren.
2390 How many things by season season'd are
2391 To their right praise and true perfection!
2392 Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion,
2393 And would not be awak'd!
[Music ceases.]
Lorenzo
2394 That is the voice,
2395 Or I am much deceiv'd, of Portia.
Portia
2396 He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo,
2397 By the bad voice.
Portia
2398 LORENZO. Dear lady, welcome home.
Portia
2399 We have been praying for our husbands' welfare,
2400 Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.
2401 Are they return'd?
Lorenzo
2402 Madam, they are not yet;
2403 But there is come a messenger before,
2404 To signify their coming.
Portia
2405 Go in, Nerissa:
2406 Give order to my servants that they take
2407 No note at all of our being absent hence;
2408 Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you.
[A tucket sounds.]
Lorenzo
2409 Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet.
2410 We are no tell-tales, madam, fear you not.
Portia
2411 This night methinks is but the daylight sick;
2412 It looks a little paler; 'tis a day
2413 Such as the day is when the sun is hid.
[Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their Followers.]
Bassanio
2414 We should hold day with the Antipodes,
2415 If you would walk in absence of the sun.
Portia
2416 Let me give light, but let me not be light,
2417 For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,
2418 And never be Bassanio so for me:
2419 But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.
Bassanio
2420 I thank you, madam; give welcome to my friend:
2421 This is the man, this is Antonio,
2422 To whom I am so infinitely bound.
Portia
2423 You should in all sense be much bound to him,
2424 For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.
Antonio
2425 No more than I am well acquitted of.
Portia
2426 Sir, you are very welcome to our house.
2427 It must appear in other ways than words,
2428 Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.
[To NERISSA]
Gratiano
2429 By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;
2430 In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk.
2431 Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,
2432 Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.
Portia
2433 A quarrel, ho, already! What's the matter?
Gratiano
2434 About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
2435 That she did give me, whose posy was
2436 For all the world like cutlers' poetry
2437 Upon a knife, 'Love me, and leave me not.'
Nerissa
2438 What talk you of the posy, or the value?
2439 You swore to me, when I did give it you,
2440 That you would wear it till your hour of death,
2441 And that it should lie with you in your grave;
2442 Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,
2443 You should have been respective and have kept it.
2444 Gave it a judge's clerk! No, God's my judge,
2445 The clerk will ne'er wear hair on's face that had it.
Gratiano
2446 He will, an if he live to be a man.
Nerissa
2447 Ay, if a woman live to be a man.
Gratiano
2448 Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth,
2449 A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy
2450 No higher than thyself, the judge's clerk;
2451 A prating boy that begg'd it as a fee;
2452 I could not for my heart deny it him.
Portia
2453 You were to blame,—I must be plain with you,—
2454 To part so slightly with your wife's first gift,
2455 A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger,
2456 And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.
2457 I gave my love a ring, and made him swear
2458 Never to part with it, and here he stands,
2459 I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it
2460 Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth
2461 That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,
2462 You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief;
2463 An 'twere to me, I should be mad at it.
[Aside]
Bassanio
2464 Why, I were best to cut my left hand off,
2465 And swear I lost the ring defending it.
Gratiano
2466 My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away
2467 Unto the judge that begg'd it, and indeed
2468 Deserv'd it too; and then the boy, his clerk,
2469 That took some pains in writing, he begg'd mine;
2470 And neither man nor master would take aught
2471 But the two rings.
Portia
2472 What ring gave you, my lord?
2473 Not that, I hope, which you receiv'd of me.
Bassanio
2474 If I could add a lie unto a fault,
2475 I would deny it; but you see my finger
2476 Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone.
Portia
2477 Even so void is your false heart of truth;
2478 By heaven, I will ne'er come in your bed
2479 Until I see the ring.
Nerissa
2480 Nor I in yours
2481 Till I again see mine.
Bassanio
2482 Sweet Portia,
2483 If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
2484 If you did know for whom I gave the ring,
2485 And would conceive for what I gave the ring,
2486 And how unwillingly I left the ring,
2487 When nought would be accepted but the ring,
2488 You would abate the strength of your displeasure.
Portia
2489 If you had known the virtue of the ring,
2490 Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
2491 Or your own honour to contain the ring,
2492 You would not then have parted with the ring.
2493 What man is there so much unreasonable,
2494 If you had pleas'd to have defended it
2495 With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
2496 To urge the thing held as a ceremony?
2497 Nerissa teaches me what to believe:
2498 I'll die for't but some woman had the ring.
Bassanio
2499 No, by my honour, madam, by my soul,
2500 No woman had it, but a civil doctor,
2501 Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me,
2502 And begg'd the ring; the which I did deny him,
2503 And suffer'd him to go displeas'd away;
2504 Even he that had held up the very life
2505 Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady?
2506 I was enforc'd to send it after him;
2507 I was beset with shame and courtesy;
2508 My honour would not let ingratitude
2509 So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady;
2510 For, by these blessed candles of the night,
2511 Had you been there, I think you would have begg'd
2512 The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.
Portia
2513 Let not that doctor e'er come near my house;
2514 Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,
2515 And that which you did swear to keep for me,
2516 I will become as liberal as you;
2517 I'll not deny him anything I have,
2518 No, not my body, nor my husband's bed.
2519 Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.
2520 Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus;
2521 If you do not, if I be left alone,
2522 Now, by mine honour which is yet mine own,
2523 I'll have that doctor for mine bedfellow.
Nerissa
2524 And I his clerk; therefore be well advis'd
2525 How you do leave me to mine own protection.
Gratiano
2526 Well, do you so: let not me take him then;
2527 For, if I do, I'll mar the young clerk's pen.
Antonio
2528 I am the unhappy subject of these quarrels.
Portia
2529 Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome notwithstanding.
Bassanio
2530 Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong;
2531 And in the hearing of these many friends
2532 I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes,
2533 Wherein I see myself,—
Portia
2534 Mark you but that!
2535 In both my eyes he doubly sees himself,
2536 In each eye one; swear by your double self,
2537 And there's an oath of credit.
Bassanio
2538 Nay, but hear me:
2539 Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear
2540 I never more will break an oath with thee.
Antonio
2541 I once did lend my body for his wealth,
2542 Which, but for him that had your husband's ring,
2543 Had quite miscarried; I dare be bound again,
2544 My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord
2545 Will never more break faith advisedly.
Portia
2546 Then you shall be his surety. Give him this,
2547 And bid him keep it better than the other.
Antonio
2548 Here, Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.
Bassanio
2549 By heaven! it is the same I gave the doctor!
Portia
2550 I had it of him: pardon me, Bassanio,
2551 For, by this ring, the doctor lay with me.
Nerissa
2552 And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano,
2553 For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor's clerk,
2554 In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.
Gratiano
2555 Why, this is like the mending of high ways
2556 In summer, where the ways are fair enough.
2557 What! are we cuckolds ere we have deserv'd it?
Portia
2558 Speak not so grossly. You are all amaz'd:
2559 Here is a letter; read it at your leisure;
2560 It comes from Padua, from Bellario:
2561 There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,
2562 Nerissa there, her clerk: Lorenzo here
2563 Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,
2564 And even but now return'd; I have not yet
2565 Enter'd my house. Antonio, you are welcome;
2566 And I have better news in store for you
2567 Than you expect: unseal this letter soon;
2568 There you shall find three of your argosies
2569 Are richly come to harbour suddenly.
2570 You shall not know by what strange accident
2571 I chanced on this letter.
Antonio
2572 I am dumb.
Bassanio
2573 Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?
Gratiano
2574 Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?
Nerissa
2575 Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,
2576 Unless he live until he be a man.
Bassanio
2577 Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow:
2578 When I am absent, then lie with my wife.
Antonio
2579 Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;
2580 For here I read for certain that my ships
2581 Are safely come to road.
Portia
2582 How now, Lorenzo!
2583 My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.
Nerissa
2584 Ay, and I'll give them him without a fee.
2585 There do I give to you and Jessica,
2586 From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,
2587 After his death, of all he dies possess'd of.
Lorenzo
2588 Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
2589 Of starved people.
Portia
2590 It is almost morning,
2591 And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
2592 Of these events at full. Let us go in;
2593 And charge us there upon inter'gatories,
2594 And we will answer all things faithfully.
Gratiano
2595 Let it be so: he first inter'gatory
2596 That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is,
2597 Whe'r till the next night she had rather stay,
2598 Or go to bed now, being two hours to day:
2599 But were the day come, I should wish it dark,
2600 Till I were couching with the doctor's clerk.
2601 Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing
2602 So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
[Exeunt.}]

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Notes

TLN 2282classical allusion
“Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls”
Troilus was a Trojan prince who loved the Greek captive-girl Cressida; when she was sent back to the Greek camp he climbed Troy's walls to sigh across the plain toward her tent. He became the classical type of a lover faithful to the point of helpless longing. Lorenzo uses him to set a romantic, moonlit tone for the evening.
TLN 2286classical allusion
“Thisby fearfully o'ertrip the dew”
Thisbe was a Babylonian girl who crept out by night to meet her forbidden lover Pyramus; finding his cloak bloodied by a lion, she fled in terror, then returned to find him dying and killed herself beside him. 'O'ertrip the dew' means to tiptoe lightly across the dew-wet grass — Jessica compares her own night escape from her father's house to Thisbe's fearful flight.
classical Pyramus and Thisbe
TLN 2290classical allusion
“Dido with a willow in her hand”
Dido was the queen of Carthage who fell in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas when he was shipwrecked on her shore; when he sailed away to found Rome, she killed herself. The willow was the traditional emblem of a forsaken, grieving lover. Lorenzo pictures Dido waving to the departing ships from the shoreline, a willow branch in her hand — a lover calling vainly for a return.
classical Dido, queen of Carthage ('widow Dido')
TLN 2294classical allusion
“Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs”
Medea was a sorceress-princess of Colchis who loved the Greek hero Jason. She helped him steal the Golden Fleece and later, to restore his aged father Aeson to youth, gathered herbs by moonlight and brewed a magical potion that reversed old age. Jessica chooses the image of a woman who used supernatural arts at night — a darker note in the lovers' banter than it first appears.
TLN 2315historical topical
“By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays”
In Catholic Italy — and in pre-Reformation England — wayside crosses were stone or wooden crucifixes erected at crossroads and the edges of roads where travelers could stop to pray. Portia pausing at them to pray for her husband's safety is a gesture of Catholic piety that marks Belmont's world as a distinctly Christian one, against which the play's treatment of Shylock is placed.
TLN 2342archaic vocab
“thick inlaid with patines of bright gold”
A patine (or paten) is the shallow gold or silver plate used in the Christian Communion service to hold the consecrated bread. Lorenzo compares the stars inlaid in the floor of heaven to hundreds of those small gleaming discs. The image is both visual (scattered gold coins of light) and carries a faint liturgical resonance, since the paten was a sacred vessel.
TLN 2344historical topical
“in his motion like an angel sings”
Lorenzo is describing the ancient theory of the 'music of the spheres.' Medieval and Renaissance cosmology held that the planets and stars were fixed to transparent revolving spheres, and that as those spheres rotated they produced a perfect, inaudible harmony — the music of the cosmos, heard only by angels and by souls before birth. Living humans, imprisoned in flesh ('this muddy vesture of decay'), cannot hear it.
TLN 2345archaic vocab
“Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins”
'Quiring' means singing together in a choir; 'cherubins' (cherubim) are angels of the highest rank, imagined in the Renaissance as radiantly beautiful, often pictured as winged infants with large, clear eyes. 'Young-eyed' means sharp-sighted and eternally youthful. The spheres perpetually choir to angels whose eyes are bright enough to see and hear celestial things that mortal bodies cannot perceive.
TLN 2347archaic vocab
“muddy vesture of decay”
'Vesture' means clothing or covering. Lorenzo calls the human body a 'muddy vesture of decay' — a rotting, earthen garment wrapped around the immortal soul. While the soul wears this mortal flesh it cannot hear the celestial music that the spheres produce.
TLN 2349classical allusion
“wake Diana with a hymn”
Diana (Greek Artemis) was the Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt. To 'wake Diana with a hymn' means to fill the moonlit night with music — sending the sound up to rouse the moon-goddess herself, so the musicians can use the light to draw Portia home. Lorenzo asks the musicians to honor the night by making it even more beautiful.
classical Diana, virgin goddess of the moon
TLN 2362classical allusion
“the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods”
Orpheus was the greatest musician in Greek myth; his lyre-playing was so beautiful that it moved not just people but inanimate things — trees, rocks, and rivers followed or stilled at his music. The 'poet' Lorenzo refers to is Ovid. Lorenzo uses the myth to explain why music can tame wild creatures: if music could move the senseless and the savage, it can certainly still a herd of colts.
TLN 2366rhetorical device
“The man that hath no music in himself”
Lorenzo's speech moves from the concrete description of colts calmed by music to a sweeping moral judgment: a man who cannot respond to music is disordered in his soul and untrustworthy — fit for 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils.' 'Spoils' here means pillage and rapine. The argument proceeds by inversion: if music orders the soul, its absence signals disorder.
classical Erebus
TLN 2374archaic vocab
“So shines a good deed in a naughty world”
'Naughty' in Shakespeare's time meant wicked or worthless, not merely mildly disobedient. Portia's simile says a single candle lighting a dark hall is like a single good act in an evil world — conspicuous and precious against the surrounding dark. The word's force is stronger than modern readers expect.
TLN 2392classical allusion
“The moon sleeps with Endymion”
Endymion was a beautiful shepherd boy with whom the moon-goddess (Selene in Greek, Luna in Latin) fell in love; she kept him in eternal sleep on a mountain so she could visit him each night and gaze at him forever. Portia is saying the moon has gone to be with her sleeping lover, so her musician has woken it from its absence — and she gently asks for silence so it can rest again.
TLN 2396wordplay
“He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo”
A blind man cannot see the cuckoo, only recognizing it by its distinctive two-note call — not the most musical of sounds. Portia is making a self-deprecating joke: Lorenzo recognized her only by her voice, and her voice (she is implying) is as unremarkable as the cuckoo's. It is warm social irony rather than genuine self-criticism.
TLN 2409stage direction note
“I hear his trumpet”
The stage direction just before this line reads 'A tucket sounds.' A tucket was a short personal fanfare on a trumpet, distinctive to a particular nobleman — a kind of musical signature that announced his arrival, like a personal call-sign. This allows Lorenzo to identify Bassanio before he appears, while telling the audience what to expect.
TLN 2414archaic vocab
“We should hold day with the Antipodes”
'The Antipodes' means the people living on the opposite side of the earth — when it is night here, it is day for them. Bassanio is paying Portia an elaborate compliment: if she walked about, her radiance would give light enough that it would always be daytime wherever she was, even when the sun is on the other side of the globe.
TLN 2416wordplay
“let me not be light, for a light wife doth make a heavy husband”
Portia puns on three senses of 'light': (1) luminous, giving physical light; (2) frivolous or unchaste — a 'light woman' meant one of loose morals; and (3) the opposite of heavy (in weight). A wife who is 'light' (wanton) makes her husband 'heavy' (sorrowful, weighed down). Portia insists she will give light without being 'light' — brilliant without being faithless — which casts a knowing glance at the ring-plot she is about to reveal.
TLN 2435historical topical
“whose posy was for all the world like cutlers' poetry”
A 'posy' (or 'poesy') is a short verse motto engraved inside a ring — a common Elizabethan custom for betrothal or love-rings. Cutlers (knife-makers) also engraved brief rhymes on the blades of knives to advertise their shops; Gratiano is dismissing the inscription on Nerissa's ring as cheap and commonplace as knife-trade doggerel. His contempt for the posy reveals how little he valued the ring's sentimental meaning.
TLN 2443archaic vocab
“You should have been respective and have kept it”
'Respective' here means respectful, considerate, or attentive to proper regard. Nerissa is saying Gratiano should have been mindful of what the ring meant — of the vows sworn on it — even if he didn't care about its material worth or its verse inscription.
TLN 2489archaic vocab
“If you had known the virtue of the ring”
'Virtue' here does not mean moral goodness but inherent power, value, or efficacy — the word's older, stronger Latin sense (from virtus, meaning force or potency). Portia is asking: if Bassanio had truly grasped the power and significance of the ring — the vow it embodied, the thing it represented — he would not have given it away so easily.
TLN 2495syntax grammar
“wanted the modesty to urge the thing held as a ceremony”
This syntax is compressed and inverted. The meaning is: 'What man, if you had defended the ring earnestly, would have had the bad manners to keep pressuring you to give up something you held as a sacred token?' 'Wanted the modesty' means lacked the decency or social grace. Portia argues no one could reasonably have kept pressing Bassanio once he declared the ring a ceremonial pledge — implying he simply gave it up without protest.
TLN 2500historical topical
“a civil doctor”
A 'civil doctor' is a doctor (i.e., a learned expert, a doctorate-holder) in civil law — Roman law, as opposed to common law or canon law. Portia disguised herself as just such a trained civilian lawyer named Balthazar, a credential she bolstered with a letter from the real civil-law expert Doctor Bellario of Padua. The audience knows Bassanio is unknowingly describing his own wife.
TLN 2520classical allusion
“watch me like Argus”
Argus (or Argos) was a giant with a hundred eyes — fifty of which stayed open while the other fifty slept, so he could never be fully surprised. The god Hermes sent him to sleep and killed him, but his hundred eyes were thereafter placed in the peacock's tail. Portia tells Bassanio that he should have set Argus himself as a watchman over her — because she intends to be as 'liberal' (free) as he was with her ring.
TLN 2535wordplay
“In both my eyes he doubly sees himself, in each eye one”
Bassanio had sworn by Portia's 'fair eyes' because he could see his own reflection in them — a conventional compliment meaning her eyes are like mirrors. Portia pounces on the metaphor: his image is doubled, one in each eye, so when he swears 'by thine eyes' he is swearing by a double self — two images of himself, not a single truthful reflection. She is calling him two-faced under the cover of a compliment.
TLN 2541cultural context
“I once did lend my body for his wealth”
Antonio recaps what he staked in the bond: his own body — literally a pound of flesh, under Shylock's knife. He now offers himself as a surety (guarantor) again, pledging his soul this time that Bassanio will keep his oath. The echo of the flesh-bond is deliberate: Antonio's loyalty to Bassanio is so deep that he once offered his body for him, and now offers his soul. The language of bonding and surety runs through both scenes.
historical Renaissance friendship and the friend-versus-love ideal
TLN 2585historical topical
“There do I give to you and Jessica, from the rich Jew, a special deed of gift”
Nerissa hands Lorenzo a legal document: Shylock's forced bequest of all his estate to Jessica and Lorenzo after his death. In Act 4 the Duke had required, as part of Shylock's punishment, that he write a deed of gift leaving his goods to his daughter and her husband at his death. This is that document, delivered now through Portia's clerk. The moment shows Portia's management of the trial's aftermath.
historical The 'Jew' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 2588biblical allusion
“you drop manna in the way of starved people”
Lorenzo compares the news of Shylock's bequest to manna — the miraculous bread God sent from the sky to feed the Israelites wandering starving in the desert after their escape from Egypt. 'Starved people' echoes the Israelites' desperate hunger. The image means: this unexpected gift arrives exactly when it is most needed, like a miracle. The irony is sharp: the Old Testament image of God feeding his chosen people is used by a Christian to receive the forced gift of a Jewish man's entire estate.
TLN 2593historical topical
“charge us there upon inter'gatories”
An 'interrogatory' (often shortened to 'inter'gatory' in the play) was a formal set of written questions put to a witness under oath in a legal proceeding, especially in the ecclesiastical or civil courts. Portia is playfully proposing that the assembled company cross-examine her and Nerissa formally, under oath, about everything that happened — using the same legal vocabulary that dominated Act 4. The comic inversion is that the lawyer now offers herself as a witness.