ACT 3 |
SCENE 2 lines 73-107 |
BELMONT: Portia's House |
BASSANIO |
So may the outward shows be least themselves: |
The world is still deceived with ornament. |
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, |
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, |
Obscures the show of evil? In religion, |
What damned error, but some sober brow |
Will bless it and approve it with a text, |
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? |
There is no vice so simple but assumes |
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: |
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false |
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins |
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars; |
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk; |
And these assume but valour's excrement |
To render them redoubted! Look on beauty, |
And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; |
Which therein works a miracle in nature, |
Making them lightest that wear most of it: |
So are those crisped snaky golden locks |
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, |
Upon supposed fairness, often known |
To be the dowry of a second head, |
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. |
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore |
To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf |
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, |
The seeming truth which cunning times put on |
To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, |
Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee; |
Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge |
'Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, |
Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, |
Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; |
And here choose I; joy be the consequence! |