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Upon a knife, ' Love me, and leave me not.'
NERISSA. What talk you of the posy, or the value? You swore to me, when I did give it you, That you would wear it till your hour of death, And that it should lie with you in your grave; Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, You should have been respective and have kept it. Gave it a judge ' s clerk! No, God ' s my judge, The clerk will ne ' er wear hair on ' s face that had it.
GRATIANO. He will, an if he live to be a man.
NERISSA. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.
GRATIANO. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth, A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy No higher than thyself, the judge ' s clerk; A prating boy that begg ' d it as a fee; I could not for my heart deny it him.
PORTIA. You were to blame,--I must be plain with you,-- To part so slightly with your wife ' s first gift, A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger, And so riveted with faith unto your flesh. I gave my love a ring, and made him swear Never to part with it, and here he stands, I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano, You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief;