Enter PORTIA with her waiting-woman 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 goodfortunes are. And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they thatstarve with nothing.

It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean.Superfluity come 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, andpoor men's cottages princes' palaces.

It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; Ican easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to followmine own teaching.

The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er acold decree; such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel thecripple.

But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband.

O me, the word"choose"! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of aliving daughter curb'd by the will of a dead father.

Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannotchoose one, nor refuse none?NERISSA.Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations.Therefore the lott'ry that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver, and lead,whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen by anyrightly but one who you shall rightly love.

But what warmth is there in your affectiontowards any of these princely suitors that are already come?PORTIA.I pray thee over-name them, and as thou namest them, I will describe them, and accordingto my description level at my affection.NERISSA.First, there is the Neapolitan prince.PORTIA.Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse, and he makes it a greatappropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself.

I am much afeard mylady his mother play'd false with a smith.