Sketch the character of Portia.
Answer: Portia may be regarded as Shakespeare's depiction of the ideal wife. We congregate her at the moment when Brutus was concealing from her the conspiracy which he was joining. Portia's wifely dignity was hurt by her husband's want of faith in her and she remonstrated with him in words that embodied the noblest conception of a wife's duties and privileges. She informs her husband that between a wife and a husband there can be no secrets. A wife is not destined only “to keep with him at meals, to comfort his bed and talk to him sometimes.' There is dignity and anguish when she cries out-"If it be no more, Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.” No wonder Brutus is moved to exclaim, "O ye gods, render me worthy of this noble wife!"
We see Portia again on the eve of the assassination and see how warmly anxious she is in her nervousness regarding her husband. Essentially she is not sturdy; she is as high-strung and nervous as Calpurnia. But unlike Calpurnia, she would not put obstacles in the way of her husband. Rather she would suffer in silence at home, tortured with uncertainty, impatient for news.
This power to bear all circumstances however adverse is born of the stoical training she had received from her father Cato. She has steeled herself against calamities. Proudly she declares that she has put herself to the test of severe physical pain in order to test her powers of endurance.
There is something magnificently in Portia's life and her death. When her husband fled from Rome and was embroiled in the uncertainties of a civil war, she fell distracted, and her attendants absent, swallowed fire." Her husband with her, she can bear everything; away from him, she breaks down and commits suicide.
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