it with dignity and
certain that she played it with sparkling animation and piquant grace.
The German Ulrici, whose descriptive epithets for Portia are "roguish
and intellectual," would doubtless have found his ideal of the part
fulfilled in Clive. The Nerissa that night was Mrs. Pritchard, then also
thirty years old, but not so famous as she afterward became.

The greatest actress on the British stage in the eighteenth century
undoubtedly was Margaret Woffington (1719-1760). Sarah Siddons, to whom
the sceptre passed, was only five years old when Woffington died. Both
those brilliant names are associated with Portia. Augustin Daly's _Life
of Woffington_--the best life of her that has been written, and one of
the most sumptuous books that have been made--contains this reference to
her performance of that part: "All her critics agree that her
declamation was accurate and her gesture grace and nature combined; but
in tragic or even dramatic speeches her voice probably had its limits,
and in such scenes, being overtaxed, told against her. As Portia she
appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice,
or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as
the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed
outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great
good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is
mentioned in the _Table Talk_ (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly
refers. Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on the London stage as
Portia December 29, 1775, and conspicuously failed in the part on that
occasion, but she became distinguished in it afterward; yet it is
probable that Mrs. Siddons expressed its nobility more than its
tenderness, and much more than its buoyant and glittering glee, which
was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg
Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs.
Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of _Thespis_,
calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"--from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the
reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs.
Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger
Barry could not, for he married her, and after his death she became Mrs.
Crawford. Miss Maria Macklin, daughter of the first true Shylock of the
stage, acted Portia, April 13, 1776, with her father. She is recorded as
an acco