at character
was for the first time in the modern theatre adequately interpreted and
conveyed. Upon many play-going observers indeed the wonderful wealth of
beauty that is in the part--its winsome grace, its incessant sparkle,
its alluring because piquant as well as luscious sweetness, its
impetuous ardour, its enchantment of physical equally with emotional
condition, its august morality, its perfect candour, and its noble
passion--came like a surprise. Did the great actress find those
attributes in the part (they asked themselves), or did she infuse them
into it? Previous representatives of Portia had placed the emphasis
chiefly, if not exclusively, upon morals and mind. The stage Portia of
the past has usually been a didactic lady, self-contained, formal,
conventional, and oratorical. Ellen Terry came, and Portia was figured
exactly as she lives in the pages of Shakespeare--an imperial and yet an
enchanting woman, dazzling in her beauty, royal in her dignity, as
ardent in temperament as she is fine in brain and various and splendid
in personal peculiarities and feminine charm. After seeing that
matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have
been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that
the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again
be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the
high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that
character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia
is a type of decorum and declamation.

Aside from Hazlitt, who thought that Portia is affected and pedantic,
and who did not like her because he did not happen to appreciate her,
the best analytical thinkers about Shakespeare's works have taken the
high view of that character. Shakespeare himself certainly took it; for
aside from her own charming behaviour and delightful words it is to be
observed that everybody in the play who speaks of her at all speaks her
praise. It is only upon the stage that she has been made artificial,
prim, and preachy. That misrepresentation of her has, perhaps, been
caused, in part, by the practice long prevalent in our theatre of
cutting and compressing the play so as to make Shylock the chief figure
in it. In that way Portia is shorn of much of her splendour and her
meaning. The old theatrical records dwell almost exclusively upon
Shylock, and say little if anything about Portia. In S