II - PORTIA

Summary

“In Belmont is a lady richly left.”

IT is such a pleasure to me, dear friend, to do anything to beguile your thoughts from the pain and weariness of your sick-bed, that I will try at once to carry out your wish, and put on paper some of the ideas which have guided me in representing Portia. Your letter tells me that she is “one of your great heroines,” and that you desire to hear about her most of all. I am very glad to know you hold her to be a “real, typical, great lady and woman.” This is my own idea. I have always classed her with Vittoria Colonna, Cassandra Fedele, and women of that stamp; and I have loved her all the more, perhaps, that from the days of Shakespeare to our own the stage has done her but scanty justice.

But it is of little moment to consider how far away from Shakespeare has been the Portia of the English stage, as we gather from its annals. Rather should we try to form a clear and definite conception of her character, and of her influence upon the main incidents of the play, by a conscientious study of her in the leaves of the great master's “unvalued book.” This, then, is how she pictures herself to my mind.

I have always looked upon her as a perfect piece of Nature's handiwork.