A Neurotic Portia

Summary

One of our most skilful actresses – Stratford’s Portia of 1971 – has suggested informally that Shakespeare wrote comedies, tragedies, histories, and The Merchant of Venice. For her the play’s ‘problem’ is that it has no attractive characters – not even Portia. (How, then, can it be so popular?)

What a far cry from the sunny sounds of another person of the theatre, writing in 1930:

The Merchant of Venice is the simplest of plays, so long as we do not bedevil it with sophistries . . . Logic may land us anywhere.. .It is as smoothly and completely successful, its means being as well fitted to its end, as anything Shakespeare wrote.

The Merchant is surely more of a problem play than Granville-Barker allowed. It is, as Auden calls it, one of Shakespeare's Plays Unpleasant. We have no easy way, for example, round the problem of Shylock. But it is doubtful if the marriage of Portia and Bassanio was the problem for Shakespeare that it becomes in this Stratford production by Terry Hands.

Portia is generally regarded as one of Shakespeare's most attractive and admirable women. Jessica says of her, though not at Stratford:

Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match, And on the wager lay two earthly women, And Portia one, there must be something else Pawned with the other; for the poor rude world Hath not her fellow.

(iii, v, 74-8)