mplished woman but destitute of genius--in which predicament she
probably was not lonesome. On June 11, 1777 Portia was acted at the
Haymarket by Miss Barsanti, afterward Mrs. Lister, an actress who, since
she excelled in such parts as were customarily taken by Fanny Abington
(the distinct opposite of Portia-like characters), must have been
unsuited for it. The names of Miss Younge, Miss Farren, Miss E. Kemble,
Miss Ryder, Mrs. Pope, Miss De Camp, and Miss Murray are in the record
of the stage Portias that comes down to 1800. Probably the best of all
those Portias was Mrs. Pope.

The beautiful Mrs. Glover played Portia in 1809 at the Haymarket
theatre. Mrs. Ogilvie played it, with Macready as Shylock (his first
appearance in that part), on May 13, 1823. Those figures passed and left
no shadow. Two English actresses of great fame are especially associated
with Portia--Ellen Tree, afterward Mrs. Charles Kean, and Helen Faucit,
now Lady Martin; and no doubt their assumptions of the part should be
marked as exceptions from the hard, didactic, declamatory, perfunctory
method that has customarily characterised the Portia of the stage. Lady
Martin's written analysis of Portia is noble in thought and subtle and
tender in penetration and sympathy. Charlotte Cushman read the text
superbly, but she was much too formidable ever to venture on assuming
the character. Portia is a woman who deeply loves and deeply rejoices
and exults in her love, and she is never ashamed of her passion or of
her exultation in it; and she says the finest things about love that are
said by any of Shakespeare's women; the finest because, while supremely
passionate, the feeling in them is perfectly sane. It is as a lover that
Ellen Terry embodied her, and while she made her a perfect woman, in all
the attributes that fascinate, she failed not, in the wonderful trial
scene, to invest her with that fine light of celestial anger--that
momentary thrill of moral austerity--which properly appertains to the
character at the climax of a solemn and almost tragical situation.

On the American stage there have been many notable representatives of
the chief characters in _The Merchant of Venice_. In New York, when the
comedy was done at the old John Street theatre in 1773, Hallam was
Shylock and Mrs. Morris Portia. Twenty years afterward, at the same
house, Shylock was played by John Henry, and Portia by Mrs. Henry, while
the brilliant Hodgkinson appeared as Gratiano.