Comedy of The Merchant of Venice Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: To hold a rival place with one of them, I have a mind presages me such thrift, That I should questionless be fortunate! Antonio. Thou know'st that all my for... more »tunes are at sea; Neither have I money nor commodity To raise a present sum : therefore go forth ; Try what my credit can in Venice do: That shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost, To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go, presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is, and I no question make To have it of my trust or for my sake. [Exeunt. Scene II. Beltnont. A Room in Portia's House. Enter Portia and Nerissa. Portia. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. Nerissa. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean' happiness therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. Portia. Good sentences and well pronounc'd. Nerissa. They would be better, if well followed. Portia. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the i Small. meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word " choose! " I may neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I dislike ; so is the will of a living daughter curb'd by the will of a ...« less