BRUTUS.
You are my true and honorable wife:
As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart!
Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse—acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates, that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circumstance literally.
PORTIA.
I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,
Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
Why dost thou stay?
LUCIUS.
To know my errand, madam.
PORTIA.
I would have had thee there and here again,
Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.
O constancy! be strong upon my side:
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
... Ah me! how weak a thing
The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.
There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.[92]