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Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO

Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well;

We leave you now with better company.

SALERIO.

I would have stay'd till I had made you merry,

If worthier friends had not prevented me.

ANTONIO.

Your worth is very dear in my regard.

I take it your own business calls on you,

And you embrace th' occasion to depart.

SALERIO.

Good morrow, my good lords.

BASSANIO.

Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say when.

You grow exceeding strange; must it be so?

SALERIO.

We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO

LORENZO.

My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

We two will leave you; but at dinner-time,

I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.

BASSANIO.

I will not fail you.

GRATIANO.

You look not well, Signior Antonio;

You have too much respect upon the world;

They lose it that do buy it with much care.

Believe me, you are marvellously chang'd.

ANTONIO.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano-

A stage, where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

GRATIANO.

Let me play the fool.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;

And let my liver rather heat with wine

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Why should a man whose blood is warm within

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster,

Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice

By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio-

I love thee, and 'tis my love that speaks-

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say 'I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.'

O my Antonio, I do know of these

That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.

I'll tell thee more of this another time.

But fish not with this melancholy bait

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.

Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile;

I'll end my exhortation after dinner.

LORENZO.

Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time.

I must be one of these same dumb wise men,

For Gratiano never lets me speak.

GRATIANO.

Well, keep me company but two years moe,

Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

ANTONIO.

Fare you well; I'll grow a talker for this gear.

GRATIANO.

Thanks, i' faith, for silence is only commendable

In a neat's tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.

Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO

ANTONIO.

Is that anything now?

BASSANIO.

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than

any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid

in, two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find

them, and when you have them they are not worth the search.

ANTONIO.

Well; tell me now what lady is the same

To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,

That you to-day promis'd to tell me of?

BASSANIO.

'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,

How much I have disabled mine estate

By something showing a more swelling port

Than my faint means would grant continuance;

Nor do I now make moan to be abridg'd

From such a noble rate; but my chief care

Is to come fairly off from the great debts

Wherein my time, something too prodigal,

Hath left me gag'd. To you, Antonio,

I owe the most, in money and in love;

And from your love I have a warranty

To unburden all my plots and purposes

How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

ANTONIO.

I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it;

And if it stand, as you yourself still do,

Within the eye of honour, be assur'd

My purse, my person, my extremest means,

Lie all unlock'd to your occasions.

BASSANIO.

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the self-same flight

The self-same way, with more advised watch,

To find the other forth; and by adventuring both

I oft found both. I urge this childhood