Portia monologue from The Merchant of Venice

Portia’s monologue

do, chapels had been churches and poor men's

cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that

follows his own instructions: I can easier teach

twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the

5twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may

devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps

o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the

youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the

cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to

10choose me a husband. O me, the word 'choose!' I may

neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I

dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed

by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,

Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?

Public domain text.