Preparing to leave for Bassanio's dinner party, to which he has accepted an invitation after all, Shylock encounters Launcelot, who has come to deliver Lorenzo's reply to Jessica. Shylock chides his former servant and says that in Launcelot's new capacity as Bassanio's attendant, Launcelot will no longer be able to "gormandize" and "sleep and snore" as he was (theoretically) able to do with Shylock. All the while that Shylock is expostulating to Launcelot, his speeches are broken with repeated calls for Jessica. When she finally appears, he gives her the keys to the house and tells her that he is going to attend Bassanio's dinner party. Grumbling, he confesses that he accepted the invitation "in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian." He elaborates further and says that he is "right loath to go"; he has a foreboding that "some ill [is] a-brewing."
Launcelot urges his former master to go; he too has a premonition. He has a "feeling" (because his "nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o'clock in the morning . . .") that Bassanio is preparing an elaborate masque as part of the evening's entertainment. Shylock is horrified at the suggestion that he may have to endure the bawdy, showy heresies of a Christian masque. He insists that if Jessica hears any sounds of the masque, she is to "stop up [his] house's ears," and she herself is to keep inside and not "gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces [painted masks]"; he vows that no "sound of shallow foppery" will enter his "sober house." Despite grave misgivings, Shylock finally decides to set out for Bassanio's dinner party — but not before repeating one final command for Jessica to stay inside: "Fast bind, fast find — / A proverb never stale in thrifty mind." Shylock exits then, not realizing that Launcelot was able to whisper a quick word of advice to Jessica before he left: She is to be on watch for "a Christian" who will be "worth a Jewess' eye" — Lorenzo.
Alone on the stage, Jessica anticipates her impending elopement and utters a prophetic couplet that closes the scene:
Farewell; and if my fortune be not crossed,
I have a father, you a daughter, lost.
(55-56)
