William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice

ACT 3. SCENE 2. Belmont. A room in PORTIA's house.

[Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and Attendants.]

PORTIA.
I pray you tarry; pause a day or two
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,
I lose your company; therefore forbear a while.
There's something tells me, but it is not love,
I would not lose you; and you know yourself
Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand me well,--
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,--
I would detain you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you
How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;
So will I never be; so may you miss me;
But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o'erlook'd 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. O! these naughty times
Puts bars between the owners and their rights;
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,
Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long, but 'tis to peise the time,
To eke it, and to draw it out in length,
To stay you from election.

BASSANIO.
Let me choose;
For as I am, I live upon the rack.

PORTIA.
Upon the rack, Bassanio! Then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.

BASSANIO.
None but that ugly treason of mistrust,
Which makes me fear th' enjoying of my love:
There may as well be amity and life
'Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.

PORTIA.
Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.

BASSANIO.
Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth.

PORTIA.
Well then, confess and live.

BASSANIO.
'Confess' and 'love'
Had been the very sum of my confession:
O happy torment, when my torturer
Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
But let me to my fortune and the caskets.