Portia julius caesar biography summary

The Shakespeare Sisterhood: Portia

This lady, daughter of Cato, and wife of Marcus Brutus, is introduced with grateful effect in the tragedy of Julius Caesar, affording relief, by her truly feminine presence, to that painful record of "treason, stratagems," and foul conspiracy.

Portia is the just impersonation of a matron "after the high Roman fashion," -- carefully finished, and severely classic in its lightest touches. Full of sensibility, tenderness, and all the timid flutterings of her sex, she yet entertains lofty ideas of the heroic fortitude, severe virtues, and unflinching nerve that become "Cato's daughter," and "the woman that Lord Brutus took to wife;" and in her unavailing self-discipline to attain those stoical perfections, she presents one more example of the ineffectuality of the "schools" to divert the natural bent of the female character.

"For the picture of this wedded couple, at once august and tender," says Campbell, "human nature, and the dignity of