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[Here music.]

A song, the whilst Bassanio comments on the caskets to himself.

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart or in the head?

How begot, how nourished?

[All.]

Reply, reply.

It is engend’red in the [eyes],

With gazing fed, and fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies.

Let us all ring fancy’s knell.

I’ll begin it.Ding, dong, bell.

All.

Ding, dong, bell.

Bass.

So may the outward shows be least themselves—

The world is still deceiv’d with ornament.

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt

But, being season’d with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil? In religion,

What damned error but some sober brow

Will bless it, and approve it with a text,

Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

There is no [vice] so simple but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false

As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins

The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,

Who inward search’d, have livers white as milk,

And these assume but valor’s excrement