Think you, I am no stronger than my sex, BRUTUS. You are my true and honourable wife: Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse-acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plu VOL. II. R tarch relates, that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circumstance literally. PORTIA. I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house, LUCIUS. To know my errand, madam. I would have had thee there and here again, Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there. O constancy! be strong upon my side: Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue! Ah me! how weak a thing The heart of woman is! OI grow faint, &c. There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatised. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude; but, afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.1 If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of 1 When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretto which now deforms it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses, and fig-trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance. madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it: Brutus. O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs! CASSIUS. Of your philosophy you make no use, BRUTUS. No man bears sorrow better: Portia 's dead. CASSIUS. Ha!-Portia ? BRUTUS. She is dead. CASSIUS. How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so? Upon what sickness? BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. So much for woman's philosophy! MALONE has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,' with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism convincing and unanswerable; 1 "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590. |