"Beshrew your eyes,
They have o'erlooked me, and divided me:
One half of me is yours, the other half yours,—
Mine own, I would say; but, if mine, then yours,
And so all yours!"
This freshet of disclosure does not carry away maidenly reserve, for that is transferred from her person and locked up in the coyness of the caskets: in them there lurks a threat, a possible disaster, which lends some pathos to her frankness, and prevents it from forfeiting our respect.
Now Bassanio, who lives upon the rack, denies her plea for delay: "Let me to my fortune and the caskets." How profoundly she surmises that music might lull the watching Fate, so that he could pass to his Eurydice! She bids the music play:—
"As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And summon him to marriage."
Bassanio must be attempered to his choice; the song's key must have an instinct for the proper casket's key. Unconsciously she breaks her oath; for what benign influence selected the song that is now sung? Some star, whose tenant was her father? Or was it Nerissa's doing, who determined to convey a hint to the lover? Or did Gratiano hit upon it, who had got from Nerissa a promise of her love if the choice went to suit her? A hint, indeed! It is the very breadth of broadness, and a lover is not dull.
"Tell me, where is fancy bred,—
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourishèd
Reply, reply.
It is engender'd in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell:
I'll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell,
Ding, dong, bell."
A song that did good sexton-service, for fancy's knell is rung indeed. The strain reminds Bassanio of notices in his experience: that error hides its grossness in ornament; vice assumes some mark of virtue; beauty is for sale by the weight, and is a show which cunning puts on to entrap wise men: in short, as the song says, fancies[18] come by gazing, have no life deeper than the eyes, and die where they are born. The strain wakes up his mind into its nobler attitude. "So may the outward shows be least themselves." This fortune-hunter, after all, is Portia's counterpart. The melody woven out of air glides into his hand and becomes a clew to bliss. Oh, the woman thrills! in touching the lead his hand has clutched her heart, and forces from her words that are outbreaks of that which is everlastingly the Woman. They assail, they challenge man to say what is so great as love. This polished, clear, sagacious, gifted, balanced woman dares man to say love is not greatest of all.
"How all the other passions fleet to air,
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair,
And shudd'ring fear, and green-ey'd jealousy!
O love,
Be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;
In measure rein thy joy, scant this excess.
I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,
For fear I surfeit."
Thus the lips which an oath had sealed melt apart in the first kiss, and her heart, like a fluid ruby, rushes through.
Shakspeare's women never trickle into tepid acceptances: their Yes to love is not puckered in a mouth shaped by "prisms and propriety;" it is not a whisper through a closet key-hole, which the lover, overhearing, doubts may possibly be No. The Duke, in "Twelfth Night," steals rhetoric to utter Shakspeare's feeling about great-hearted and full-blooded women:—