LORENZO Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!
JESSICA I wish your ladyship all heart's content.
PORTIA I thank you for your wish, and am well pleased To wish it back on you: fare you well Jessica. Exeunt JESSICA and LORENZO
Now, Balthasar, As I have ever found thee honest-true, So let me find thee still. Take this same letter, And use thou all the endeavour of a man In speed to Padua: see thou render this Into my cousin's hand, Doctor Bellario; And, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, Bring them, I pray thee, with imagined speed Unto the tranect, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words, But get thee gone: I shall be there before thee. BALTHASAR Madam, I go with all convenient speed.
Exit
PORTIA Come on, Nerissa; I have work in hand That you yet know not of: we'll see our husbands Before they think of us.
NERISSA Shall they see us?
PORTIA They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit, That they shall think we are accomplished With that we lack. I'll hold thee any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace, And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride, and speak of frays Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies, How honourable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; I could not do withal; then I'll repent, And wish for all that, that I had not killed them; And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell, That men shall swear I have discontinued school Above a twelvemonth. I have within my mind A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, Which I will practise.
Portia declares that she will live in a monastery while Bassanio is away in Venice. She leaves Lorenzo in charge of the house and gives Balthazar a letter to deliver to her cousin in Padua, arranging for him to meet her later with the clothes and papers the cousin will give him.
She then tells Nerissa her real plan: the two of them will dress as men and head to Venice.
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