SCENE II: Belmont. 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 pronounced.
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 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 curbed
By the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,
Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?
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 pronounced.
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 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 curbed
By the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,
Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?
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