Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed,
And let him sign it, we’ll away tonight,
And be a day before our husbands home.
This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo.
Find out where Shylock lives, deliver him this deed, and let him sign it. We'll leave tonight and be home a day before our husbands. This deed will be very welcome to Lorenzo.
Go find Shylock's house and give him this deed to sign. We're leaving tonight and we'll get home a day before our husbands do. Lorenzo will be really happy about this deed.
find shylock. give him the deed. we leave tonight. lorenzo will love this.
Fair sir, you are well o’erta’en.
My Lord Bassanio upon more advice,
Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat
Your company at dinner.
Good sir, I've caught up with you. After thinking about it more, my Lord Bassanio has sent me with this ring for you and asks if you would join us for dinner.
Sir, I'm glad I caught you. Bassanio thought about it more and wanted you to have this ring. He's also inviting you to dinner.
bassanio sent this ring. he wants u for dinner.
Scene 4-2 is barely a scene — it's a handoff and a pivot. But it does exactly what Shakespeare needs: it shows us Portia in command of the narrative even as she's leaving the stage. She has the ring. She has a plan. She knows where everyone will be and when.
Disguise comedy in Shakespeare always depends on the audience being ahead of the characters — which means the audience needs moments like this to understand how much further ahead the heroines are than the men think. Portia and Nerissa aren't reacting to events; they're orchestrating them. By the time Bassanio arrives at Belmont, he'll be entering a stage Portia has already set.
Nerissa copying Portia's scheme — trying to get Gratiano's ring as well — is the play's version of a subplot doubling. The same joke will play twice in Act 5, which makes Gratiano's bluster funnier and Nerissa's authority sharper. Two rings, two tests, one principle: these women are not passive recipients of marriage.
That cannot be;
His ring I do accept most thankfully,
And so I pray you tell him. Furthermore,
I pray you show my youth old Shylock’s house.
I can't go to dinner, but I accept his ring with great thanks. Please tell him so. Also, please show my young companion here where Shylock's house is.
I can't make dinner, but I appreciate the ring very much. Tell him that for me. Also, can you show my companion where Shylock lives?
i can't do dinner. love the ring. show us shylock's place.
That will I do.
I'm on it.
Sure, I'll do that.
will do.
Sir, I would speak with you.
Sir, I'd like to speak with you.
Sir, can I talk to you?
need to talk.
Portia's instruction — 'we'll away tonight, and be a day before our husbands home' — is not just plot logistics. It restores the status quo that the disguise disrupted. Portia has been operating outside the domestic sphere assigned to her (waiting at Belmont while the men handle the crisis), and she needs to return to it before anyone notices she left.
The play's comedy depends on the husbands not knowing what their wives are capable of. If Bassanio arrived home and Portia said 'by the way, I was the lawyer who saved Antonio's life,' the ring test would be unnecessary — he'd simply be overwhelmed with gratitude. Instead, she chooses to make him confess the ring, to surface the conflict between his loyalty to her and his loyalty to Antonio, and to resolve it on her terms.
The race home is the scene where we see that Portia's plan is not accidental — she has thought through the entire sequence, and she is running it.
I’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring,
Which I did make him swear to keep for ever.
I'll try to get my husband's ring, which I made him promise to keep forever.
I'm going to try to get my husband's ring back—I made him swear he'd keep it forever.
gonna try to get my husbands ring back i made him swear hed keep it forever
[_To Nerissa_.] Thou mayst, I warrant. We shall have old swearing
That they did give the rings away to men;
But we’ll outface them, and outswear them too.
Away! make haste! Thou know’st where I will tarry.
You can, I promise you. We'll hear them swear that they gave the rings to men, but we'll face them down and swear them down too. Let's go! Move fast! You know where I'll wait.
Trust me, you will. They'll swear they gave those rings away to men, but we can call them liars and out-swear them. Come on, hurry up! You know where I'll be waiting.
u got this they'll deny it we'll deny harder let's go u know where im at
Come, good sir, will you show me to this house?
Come on, good sir, will you show me where this house is?
Come on, will you show me where the house is?
show us the house.
The Reckoning
A brief exhale after the courtroom's intensity — but the women are already running the next play. Portia accepts the ring with the calm of someone who knew exactly what she was doing when she asked for it. Nerissa, inspired, decides to get her own ring from Gratiano. The scene is eight lines of plotting and logistics, but underneath it is Portia driving the entire narrative: she is two moves ahead of everyone, and she is flying.
If this happened today…
Two women in professional disguise on the way back from an international arbitration they secretly ran. One says to the other: the client's just had a courier bring my wedding ring — the one I asked for while in character. Let's get the signed paperwork to the defendant, get ahead of our husbands home, and see what happens when they realize. The other says: I'm going to get my ring back too while I'm at it.