Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

                                            

If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father’s will, if you should refuse to accept him.

 

Nerissa

The Merchant of Venice       Act I, Scene ii, Line 92

 

I think Nerissa’s wording is a little bit confusing. In the second part of that sentence she’s saying that Portia would be refusing to do what her father asked if she refuses to accept him, him being the Duke of Saxony’s nephew.

So, just to recapitulate: Portia is the daughter of a very rich man who has died and left very odd instructions. Her father has decreed that any man of significant financial worth can come and try a game of chance to win his daughter’s hand (and his estate). There are three small boxes (caskets). Only one has the picture of Portia in it. The suitor must pick one box and if it’s the one with her picture he wins. If he picks one of the other two he loses and supposedly must go away and promise never to marry anyone; though I’m not at all sure how that would ever be enforced.

Anyway, in this scene Portia and her waiting-maid (that’s what Nerissa is called in the Dramatis Personae) are discussing the various suitors who have shown up to try their luck. Portia is not pleased about the prospect of marrying any of them. The he/him that she’s referring to in Today’s Line is the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew. According to Portia, she likes him

Very vilely in the morning when he is sober; and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk; when he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is a little better than a beast. An the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him.

In that last sentence Portia is saying that if the worst were to happen, i.e. the German picks the right box, she hopes that she’ll be able to contrive some way to not have to be with him. And that’s where Nerissa comes in with Today’s Line, warning that Portia would be going against her father’s wishes. Portia’s reply to this is to put a glass of wine on the wrong box to get the German to pick that one.

In any event, it doesn’t matter too much because we never hear about the drunk German again.

 

Now hold on just a minute there Mr. Blagys, what’s this nonsense about “little better than a beast?”

That's nothing Mojo; pay it no mind.