act from occurring, then Dame Fortune herself should be damned to hell.
Despite Portia’s pleas to postpone making his choice, Bassanio is too anxious. Bassanio says that waiting to find out his fate will be torture to him: “I live upon the rack” (25). Therackwas a device used to torture prisoners – traitorsespecially
– into making confessions. The prisoner’s arms and legs would be pulled in opposite directions, and the excruciating pain would cause any man to confess to just about anything. Portia wittily asks Bassanio if he is a traitor to love: that is, she is asking him if he would be an unfaithful lover. But Bassanio plays on the idea of confession and swears that he will confess all if Portia promises him life (line 34). For Bassanio, life can only mean life with Portia. Life without Portia is death tohim.
Portia finally agrees to allow Bassanio to make his choice, and she requests thatmusicbe played while Bassanio thinks about the inscriptions on the caskets. Portia compares the situation to the custom of playing music beneath a bridegroom’s window on the morning of his wedding day (lines 52-53). She is hoping, of course, that Bassanio will be a bridegroom and that this will be their own wedding day.