Portia Monologue (Act 3, Scene 2)

Aww, Portia is falling in love! This monologue from The Merchant of Venice is a warm, engaging and active piece that is perfect for auditions. It’s also potentially a very comedic one. This piece is great for a variety of different performance styles and interpretations of the text. An added bonus is that it’s not super popular, so it’s a strong choice for auditions! Below, we’ll dive into context for the piece, a modern translation, and tool you up with some practical advice for prepping your performance!

Context

In Merchant of Venice Portia lives at Belmont, her family’s estate outside of Venice. It is located on one of the surrounding islands just outside Venice.Portia’s family come from wealth, so the estate is immaculate and richly appointed as . You can think of Belmont as a sort of magical idealised place, like the Forest of Arden in As You Like It or the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

 

It is at Belmont where Portia receives suitors from all around the world who seek to win her hand in marriage. But, there’s a catch: not just anyone can marry the noble Portia! When Portia’s father passed away he devised a test for these suitors. Visiting statesmen and nobles must choose between 3 caskets (one gold, one silver, one lead) in order to win Portia as their wife. If they choose correctly, Portia is bound to marry them. If they choose wrong, they must leave Belmont immediately, sworn to secrecy of their choice of casket and swear to never marry anyone else. Yikes. Harsh terms, dude!

Leading up to this monologue, Bassanio has arrived at Belmont in order to try to win Portia’s hand. Unlike most suitors who come to Belmont (who are usually brutish and gross, and Portia has no interest in) Portia and Bassanio have met before. Massive win here for Portia, as she’s already got the hots for him! If Bassanio can get this right, they’re set for life. She desperately wants him to choose correctly, so they can get married and live happily ever after. But, annoyingly, she swore to her father before he died that she would not tell any suitor the correct answer.

As we head into this monologue, Bassanio is about to make his guess at the casket. If he makes the wrong choice he will have to leave Portia forever. She, obviously, doesn’t want him to choose yet because she’s enjoying his company so much and has fallen in love with him. She’s afraid he’ll get it wrong and have to leave her forever. The stakes are high!

Text

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’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. 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 peize the time,
To eke it, and to draw it out in length,
To stay you from election.

Unfamiliar Language

Tarry – pause, stay, wait.
Hazard – take a chance.
Forbear – have patience, wait.
Quality – disposition.
Forswear – break my word.
Beshrew – curse.
O’erlooked – bewitched, subjected to magic.
Naughty – wicked, evil.
Bar – impediment.
Fortune – Fortuna, the goddess of luck.
Peize – prolong, drag out.
Eke – add to, increase.

Modern Translation

I beg you to wait! Give it another day or two
Before you make your guess, because if you choose wrong
You’ll have to leave and then I’ll be alone. So just wait a little bit,
Something inside me says – but don’t think that I’m, like, in love with you –
That I don’t want to lose you, and you have to admit that means something,
Because you don’t feel that way about people you hate.
Let me speak it plainly for you –
But as a well bred woman I’m meant to keep these feelings inside –
I’ll say it anyway, I would have you stay another month or even two,
Before you try my father’s test. I could instruct you
Which casket is the right one, but no then I would be breaking my word.
And I won’t do that. So you might choose wrong.
But if you do get it wrong, you’ll make me wish something sinful,
That I had broken my word. Curse your eyes!
They have bewitched me and split me into two,
One half is yours, and, who am I kidding, both halves are yours,
I would have said I’m half mine and half yours, but if something’s mine it already belongs to you,
So, yes, I’m all yours. Ugh this screwed up situation
Blocks you, who I belong to, from your rightful claim to me.
So, though I am yours in my heart, I’m not yours in practice. You’ll have to prove that we belong together,
I won’t perjure myself and go to hell, I will let lady luck take the blame.
I know I’m talking to much, but it’s because I want more time with you
And the longer I talk, the longer you’re with me,
The longer I can stop you from making your choice.

Notes on Performance

Who hasn’t felt like this? Blathering on like an idiot to try and tell someone how you feel, without totally admitting how you feel, then blurting it out anyway? Noble Italian ladies, they’re just like us!

This monologue is the very beginning of Act 3, Scene 2. Right after it, Bassanio begs Portia to let him choose. He says, “For as I am, I live upon the rack.” Meaning that it’s literally torture to be stuck in the place of not knowing if they can be together forever. These two obviously feel very strongly about each other, and that fact is crucial to your performance. Portia isn’t lukewarm on this guy. She’s red hot.

Since the monologue is the beginning of the scene, you have real freedom to play with the physicality of the piece. She is a noble lady, and bound to a typical sort of decorum in the way she conducts herself, but all of that falls apart in the face of love. It could be very exciting to play with how exactly she might try and stop Bassanio from making his choice, and where he is in the room. Has he just walked towards the chamber, and she’s now calling out behind him for him to stop? Him turning around to face her to see what she wants? How might that change her physically?

She also spends a lot of this monologue arguing with herself and interrupting herself. Shakespeare often has his characters speak their thoughts out loud, and Portia is very much doing so in this monologue. She is an educated woman, with a quick intellect, and her thoughts come thick and fast as she tries to puzzle out how to get Bassanio to delay his choice so she can spend more time with him. Allow those thought shifts to happen quickly (as she is quick-witted) but don’t feel the need to rush.

It’s pretty safe to say that eventually her usual cool exterior cracks and she comes totally undone here. She is humbled by the strength of her emotions. In the beginning of the monologue, she might be trying to play it cool, but she doesn’t succeed in the end. As the monologue concludes, she is being completely honest with him and laying her feelings bare. That vulnerability takes real courage.