Portia, in this scene, is rather despairing of ever
marrying--even if she lives to be as old as Sibylla she'll die as chaste (pure and
untouched) as Diana, the virgin goddess. She laments her inability to do her own
choosing of a husband because of her father's posthumous and rather unconventional plan
for selecting a groom--they must choose the correct casket full of coins in order to win
her hand.
"O me, the word 'choose!' I
may
neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom
I
dislike; so is the will of a living daughter
curbed
by the will of a dead father. Is it not
hard,
Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse
none?"
Nerissa's
reply is fairly straightforward and simple. She clearly does not think it's a "hard"
fate--though that's much easier for her to say since she doesn't have to live with the
edict herself.
"Your father was ever
virtuous; and holy men at their
death have good
inspirations:"
Nerissa
believes Portia's father father was a good man who had a good plan, inspired by his
impending death.
"...therefore the
lottery,
that he hath devised in these three chests of
gold,
silver and lead, whereof who chooses his
meaning
chooses you, will, no doubt, never be chosen by
any
rightly but one who shall rightly
love."
Nerissa's
view is rather fatalistic and simplistic. She assumes whoever chooses the right chest
will, of course, also be the right man--one who will love her (and presumably will be
loved by her in return). She goes on to ask Portia how she feels about each of the
proposed suitors, but Nerissa is confident in her romanticized view that all will end as
it should--happily ever after.
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