Is it so nominated in the bond?
PORTIA.
It is not so expressed—but what of that?
'Twere good you do so much, for charity.
So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew, that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His gentle, yet manly resignation—the deep pathos of his farewell, and the affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio—
Commend me to your honorable wife;
Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c.
are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.
At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of act," springs on his victim—"A sentence come, prepare!" then the smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at first affected;—particularly in the speech—
Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
But just the pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,
Or less than a just pound,—be it but so much
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,—
Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.
It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock; we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's character,—his deadly and inexorable malice,—would be too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double source of interest and contemplation.