O me, the word 'choose!'

This week, given constant and abundant uncertainties every which way, let's check in with the ever-magical Merchant, as Act I Scene ii opens in Belmont:

A room in PORTIA'S house.
Enter PORTIA and NERISSA

PORTIA
By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a
weary of this great world.

NERISSA
You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in
the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and
yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit
with too much as they that starve with nothing. It
is no mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the
mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but
competency lives longer.

PORTIA
Good sentences and well pronounced.

NERISSA
They would be better, if well followed.

PORTIA
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men's
cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that
follows his own instructions: I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done, than be one of
the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may
devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps
o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the
youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the
cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to
choose me a husband. 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?

A quiet one tonight after the Horsepower ruckus and hijinks of yesternight, but should be able to find a shot or two of the Crown. You know, looking back, Ackroyd really was worth the trouble, beyond the novelty of the "Blues Brother" persona gracing the garage-style underground stage of a favorite spot. When he closed with "Flip Flop and Fly", spirits soared. Give me one long kiss, hold it a long long time. Yeah baby. That's just good stuff.