"
But I felt ashamed and shy whenever I played that scene. It was the
Casket Scene over again.
The unkind _Blackwood_ article also blamed me for showing too plainly
that Portia loves Bassanio before he has actually won her. This seemed
to me unjust, if only because Shakespeare makes Portia say _before_
Bassanio chooses the right casket:
"One half of me is yours--the other half yours--_All yours!_"
Surely this suggests that she was not concealing her fondness like a
Victorian maiden, and that Bassanio had most surely won her love, though
not yet the right to be her husband.
"There is a soul of goodness in things evil," and the criticism made me
alter the setting of the scene, and so contrive it that Portia was
behind and out of sight of the men who made hazard for her love.
Dr. Furnivall, a great Shakespearean scholar, was so kind as to write me
the following letter about Portia:
"Being founder and director of the New Shakespeare Society, I
venture to thank you most heartily for your most charming and
admirable impersonation of our poet's Portia, which I witnessed
to-night with a real delight. You have given me a new light on the
character, and by your so pretty by-play in the Casket Scene have
made bright in my memory for ever the spot which almost all critics
have felt dull, and I hope to say this in a new edition of
'Shakespeare.
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