‘Here, in Her Hairs/The Painter Plays the Spider …’

The casket scene in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1596–1598) is the supreme audio–visual manifestation of the cultic and erotic power of Elizabethan portraiture. The late father of Portia, who is an only child, has inserted a clause into his will stipulating a test for her suitors: to marry his daughter they must select one of three caskets made, respectively, of gold, silver, and lead. Bassanio, whom Portia loves, correctly chooses the lead casket, which is inscribed ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’ (ii.7.11–12). Therein he finds a portrait miniature of Portia. However, the meticulousness and sensuousness of the miniature in Shakespeare’s play makes Bassanio jealous of the ‘demi-god’ painter, and of his presumed intimacy with Portia during the sittings. Bassanio believes the painter ‘plays the spider’ in her hairs. It would have been very similar to this oval portrait of an unknown woman by Nicholas Hilliard

Art · Art history · Inscribed figure · Literature · Painting · Portrait · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism