Word: bassanio
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Fine touches like this lift the rest of the company into proper importance. Peggy Wood Plays Portia with a humor--in the Elizabethan sense--that erases the memory of wooden Shakespearean heroines. And she is not Junoesque. Bassanio's suit was somehow less plausible for the youth of his friend Antonio; the lines of both were carefully read. Shock-headed and slant-eyed Rummey Brent gave nonchalance to Launcelot Gobbo, and little more can be done with...
That unsavory gentleman, irate because his daughter has eloped with a youth of an opposing race, frantic because he could not extract the pound of flesh which was the price of his loans to one Bassanio, is not one for starched shirts and diamond dignity. The demeanor of flawless respectability which has so often served able Actor Arliss well now plays him false. He finds it difficult to add writhing to his words as they eject ". . . and spit upon my Jewish gaberdine." He finds it difficult to scream "My daughter, my ducat...
...would suggest that any husband in such circumstances could employ with wrath-averting dignity the self-effacing answer Bassanio made to Portia's magnificent devotion of herself: "Madam, you have bereft me of all words."-Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene...