“Now, by this hand. I gave it to a youth,” protested the exasperated Gratiano; “a kind of boy—a little scrubby boy, no higher than yourself, the judge’s clerk, a prating boy that begged it as a fee. I could not find it in my heart to deny him.”
“You were to blame, Gratiano—I must be plain with you—to part so lightly with your wife’s first gift,” said Portia gravely. “I gave my love a ring, and made him swear never to part with it,” she added, looking tenderly at Bassanio. “Here he stands. I dare be sworn he would not give it from his finger for all the wealth contained in the world. Now, in faith, Gratiano, you have given your wife unkind cause for grief. If it were me, I should be mad about it.”
How pleasant for Bassanio to hear this!
“I were best to cut my left hand off, and swear I lost the ring defending it,” he thought ruefully.
“My lord Bassanio gave his ring to the judge, who indeed well deserved it,” said Gratiano, in self-excuse. “And then the boy, his clerk, who took some pains in writing, he begged mine. And neither man nor master would take anything else but the two rings.”
“What ring did you give, my lord?” asked Portia. “Not, I hope, the one you received from me.”
“If I could add a lie to the fault, I would deny it,” said Bassanio. “But, you see, my finger has not the ring upon it; it is gone.”
Portia, on hearing this, pretended to get very angry and jealous, and no excuses that Bassanio made could appease her.
“Sweet Portia,” he said, “if you knew to whom I gave the ring, if you knew for whom I gave the ring, and would understand for what I gave the ring, and how unwillingly I left the ring, when nothing would be accepted but the ring, you would abate the strength of your displeasure.”
“If you had known the virtue of the ring,” retorted Portia, “or half her worthiness that gave the ring, or your own honour to retain the ring, you would not then have parted with the ring.”