Portia (The Merchant of Venice) Portia (The Merchant of Venice) Portia is the protagonist of William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". A rich, beautiful, and intelligent heiress of Belmont, she is bound by the lottery set forth in her father's will, which gives potential suitors the chance to choose among three caskets. If he chooses the right casket, he wins Portia's hand in marriage. If he chooses the incorrect casket, he must leave and never seek another woman in marriage. She is said to be blonde and has curly hair. As Bassanio says to Antonio in (Act I scene I), she is more beautiful than
Timeline of Shakespeare criticism on Shakespeare" (ed. by Arthur Kirsch) T. S. Eliot: "Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third." T. S. Eliot, 1922 : "We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him. Why he attempted it at all is an insoluble puzzle; under compulsion of what experience he attempted to express the inexpressibly horrible, we cannot ever know. We need a great many facts in his biography; and we should like to know whether, and when, and after or at the same time as what personal experience, he read