Page:Merchant of Venice (1923) Yale.djvu/20

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And from your love I have a warranty

To unburthen all my plots and purposes

How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

Ant. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it;

And if it stand, as you yourself still do,

Within the eye of honour, be assur'd,

My purse, my person, my extremest means,

Lie all unlock'd to your occasions.

Bass. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the self-same flight

The self-same way with more advised watch,

To find the other forth, and by adventuring both,

I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof,

Because what follows is pure innocence.

I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth,

That which I owe is lost; but if you please

To shoot another arrow that self way

Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,

As I will watch the aim, or to find both,

Or bring your latter hazard back again,

And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

Ant. You know me well, and herein spend but time

To wind about my love with circumstance;

And out of doubt you do me now more wrong

In making question of my uttermost

Than if you had made waste of all I have:

Then do but say to me what I should do

That in your knowledge may by me be done,

And I am prest unto it: therefore speak.

Bass. In Belmont is a lady richly left,

 138 eye: view, scope

142 flight: power of flight, range

144 forth: out

146 innocence; cf. n.

149 self: same

151 or: either

154 spend but: only waste

157 question: doubt

161 prest: ready

162 richly left: a wealthy heiress 