Monologue

Portia Monologue from The Merchant of Venice

From The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

female · contemplative · 1:15 min

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If to do were as easy as to know what were good to 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 to be one of the twenty 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 choose me a husband. O me, the word “choose”! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?

About this piece

Portia grapples with the constraints placed upon her by her deceased father's will, expressing her frustration and desire for autonomy in choosing a husband.

20s · longing · love · fate · freedom · identity

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