"
Antonio answers:
"Your worth is very dear in my regard.
I take it, your own business calls on you,
And you embrace the occasion to depart."
More characteristic still is the dialogue between Gratiano and Antonio
in the same scene. Gratiano, the twin-brother surely of Mercutio, tells
Antonio that he thinks too much of the things of this world, and warns
him:
"They lose it that do buy it with much care."
Antonio replies:
"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one."
Every one who has followed me so far will admit that this is
Shakespeare's most usual and most ingenuous attitude towards life; "I do
not esteem worldly possessions," he says; "life itself is too transient,
too unreal to be dearly held." Gratiano's reflection, too, is
Shakespeare's, and puts the truth in a nutshell:
"They lose it that do buy it with much care."
We now come to the most salient peculiarity in this play. When Bassanio,
his debtor, asks him for more money, Antonio answers:
"My purse, my person, my extremes! means,
Lie all unlocked to your occasions.
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