Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/325

 *able air, grows rusty, and lifts up a vapid invitation to some splendor to nod and mingle sweets. Shakspeare has no language of conventional avowal: no acceptances that are inspired by respect, calculation, immaturity, acquaintanceship, water his page with insipidity. His pen is love's shaft, and always has somebody's blood upon the tip.

So do not include Portia's sublime deference in your modern programme of reform. Man would grow less worthy of woman, less obedient to her inspirations, if that fell into disrepute. It is the first unstudied stratagem of love,—one that so humbles man into a greater deference that she can no longer call him lord. She listens in turn to his emotion: every line lifts her into equality, with the gesture that kings make when they acknowledge:—

"Madam, you have bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins; And there is such confusion in my powers, As after some oration, fairly spoke By a beloved prince, there doth appear Among the buzzing pleased multitude; Where every something, being blent together, Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, Express'd, and not express'd."

This is the quality in Shakspeare's courtships which convinces us that all his marriages will turn out happily. And he makes it plain in all his plays that he is a devotee of marriage. Portia is quite competent to lead a single life, and might earn a brilliant living if fate stripped her of wealth. Being without a particle of ambition, she would have to be driven by poverty into