hakespeare's time,
no doubt, _The Merchant of Venice_ was acted as it is written, the
female persons in it being played by boys, or by men who could "speak
small." Alexander Cooke (1588-1614) played the light heroines of
Shakespeare while the poet was alive. All students of the subject are
aware that Burbage was the first Shylock, and that when he played the
part he wore a red wig, a red beard, and a long false nose. No record
exists as to the first Portia. The men who were acting female characters
upon the London stage when that institution was revived immediately
after the Restoration were Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, William
Betterton, Mosely, and Floid. Kynaston, it is said, could act a woman so
well that when at length women themselves began to appear as actors it
was for some time doubted whether any one of them could equal him. The
account of his life, however, does not mention Portia as one of his
characters.

Indeed the play of _The Merchant of Venice_, after it languished out of
sight in that decadence of the stage which ensued upon the growth of the
Puritan movement in England, did not again come into use until it was
revived in Lord Landsdowne's alteration of it produced at the theatre in
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701, and even then it was grossly perverted.
Forty years later, however, on St. Valentine's Day 1741, at Drury Lane,
when Macklin regenerated the character of Shylock, the original piece
was restored to the theatre. Women in the meantime had come upon the
stage. The garrulous and delightful Pepys, who had seen Kynaston play a
female part, records in his marvellous Diary that he first saw women as
actors on January 3, 1661. Those were members of Killigrew's company,
which preceded that of Davenant by several months, if not by a year; and
therefore the common statement in theatrical books that the first woman
that ever appeared on the English stage was Mrs. Sanderson, of
Davenant's company, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is erroneous: and indeed
the name of the first English actress is as much unknown as the name of
the first Portia. When Macklin restored Shakespeare's _Merchant of
Venice_ to the stage it is not likely that the character of Portia was
dwarfed, for its representative then was Kitty Clive, and that actress
was a person of strong will. With Clive the long list begins of the
Portias of the stage. She was thirty years old when she played the part
with Macklin, and it is probable that she played