"I pray you tarry; ... ... for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company; therefore, forebear awhile."
She has no courage now: love, when it stole her heart, found that trait too, and added it to the booty.
"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."
The noble lady's plea fills us with admiring pity: we admire to see the strong, beautiful woman so downcast with this new emotion which Heaven has quartered upon her life; but we pity, because perhaps it will be doomed to dwell alone. And then the more spacious the lodging, the more dreary the echoes of these few sweet hours.
Has she said too much? She has a chase after this frankness to make a struggle to detain it, but it overcomes and gets away:--
"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."