The written scrolls which are enclosed in the caskets show that her father anticipated acutely the ordinary motives of mankind. The suitors imagine that they are reflecting in a superior style as they give their reasons for taking to the gold or the silver; but they are realty biased by the common sentiment, as Portia sees:--
"Oh, these deliberate fools! When they do choose, They have the wisdom by their wit to lose."
So one by one they slaughter themselves and clear the way.
How Shakspeare's verse celebrates Bassanio's approach to Belmont? It is like a gracious prelude conceived by her secret preference, escaping to guide him to her where she lies under a spell which he must break.
There enters a messenger, sumptuous in blank verse, like the tabard of a herald whose message is desired.
"Madam, there is alighted at your gate A young Venetian, one that comes before To signify the approaching of his lord. ... I have not seen So likely an ambassador of love: A day in April never came so sweet, To show how costly summer was at hand, As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord."
The lover has reached the enchanted palace, and is in haste to liberate its inmate. Portia might have said, with the antique grace that always clothes her speech, that he came to attack, like a new Perseus, those menacing metals which rivet her in reach of danger, to lift her passionately out of fetters. How she struggles not to show her love, and thus she shows it!--
"There's something tells me (but it is not love) I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality."
An ordinary woman might have enmeshed him in a cocoon of delicate coquetries: any woman dead in love, and a little less than strict to an oath, would have managed in some way to provoke that lead casket into twinkling a hint to him. But she is too honest for either. A woman with a soul as tender as it is firm, here she stands dismayed as Destiny is about to rattle its dice upon her heart: happiness, and a future worthy of her, all at stake. For though her mental resources might compete with any fate, she is all woman, made to be a wife, and without wifehood to feel herself at one essential point impaired,--all the more defrauded because so well endowed. How she clings for support to the few moments that yet stand before his choice! She wishes there were more of them to stay her.