ght be
given in point, but it would be insulting the dignity of this court to
argue at length a theory so transparently clear. If the shedding of a
few drops of blood, more or less, was incidental and necessary to the
rights of the plaintiff, if the article of personal property, forfeited
to him on the bond, could be obtained in no other way, then, according
to all the principles of law and common sense, he _had_ a right to spill
those drops, more or less; and that, too, without legal risk.

If the penalty was legal, and that were admitted, the method of exacting
it was legal also. Portia's quibble was so transparent and barefaced
that the decision of the court can only be explained on the theory that
the court was drunk, or in love, which seems to have been the condition
of several of the prominent parties in this proceeding, excepting always
the plaintiff. As to the other part of Portia's plea, it is doubtless
true that the plaintiff would take more of the commodity involved in the
suit than the court awarded him at his peril; but as half a pound, or a
quarter of a pound, cut off from the right spot would have answered his
purpose, I do not see under what principle of law he was defrauded of
that satisfaction. There was nothing to have prevented him from cutting
less than a pound from Antonio's body, and of so releasing him, the
defendant, from a portion of the penalty; and the court should have
instructed the plaintiff as to his rights in this particular, instead of
adopting a quibble worthy of only a Tombs lawyer or a third-rate
pettifogger.

I cannot then believe that Mr. Reporter Shakspeare, in handing down to
posterity the record of this remarkable case, meant to express an
approval of Portia's subterfuge. My inference rather is that he was
aiming a covert sarcasm at those women who thrust themselves
conspicuously upon the notice of the public, and that he meant to hint
that those who thus unsex themselves often make a showy appearance
without displaying much solid merit. If this subtle, sharp, and
strong-minded female did not turn out to be something of a shrew, before
her husband was done with her, I am much mistaken. Possibly, however,
Shakspeare's sarcasm might bear a more general interpretation, and
implies that women in an argument seldom meet the true issue presented
to them, but are prone to go off at a tangent on some side quibble, and
to repel the arguments of their antagonists by the subtlety of their